Cheating the One Armed Bandit
If a game has been invented, there is someone somewhere who has tried to invent a way to beat that game some were successful, but many more were not. While it is uncommon and difficult to do these days it does happen! In the early days of Las Vegas and Atlantic City, it was all too common, but that was before casinos became heavily regulated with more sophisticated surveillance equipment and techniques.
The real question is who is cheating whom; is it the players who cheat the casinos or vice versa?
Over the years people have tried to come up with ways in Cheating the One-Armed Bandit some succeeded (at least for a little while) most did not. When slot machines were nothing but mechanical distractions in bars or casino waiting rooms, there have been those with a thirst for more that have tried to gain an advantage.
Before the slot machine had a computer brain, they were just mechanical… with gears, levers, and springs inside, there were plenty of ways to get money out of them without ever having to put money in.
Tommy Glenn Carmichael was probably the most successful casino cheat there was… at least that we know of. He championed the Monkey Paw which was a piece of steel with a claw-like hook on one end that was meant to get stuck in the payout chute and then pushed up to the coin release door.
With the “Monkey’s Paw” in place, when winning your next payout from the machine even the smallest win… the coin release door is held open with the paw for you to collect a huge bundle of cash instead of the small payout you are due. That is one way of Cheating the One Armed Bandit
Without the ability to possess one of Carmichael Monkey devices, people would even go as far as to use a wire coat hanger, but Shaved Coins or were other popular devices that sometimes worked and sometimes did not.
The Shaved Coin method is another way of Cheating the One Armed Bandit… where cheaters would literally shave the edges of a coin down so it would pass through the machine after triggering the slot machine to spin. In essence, cheaters using shaved coins were getting free spins.
The method is a coin on a string that can be pulled back out of a Slot Machine
and used over and over again.
For more advanced cheating, there were the miniature light boxes and other devices used, that would emit light beams and by placing them close enough to the slot machine light sensor it would essentially “confuse” the slot machine so that it couldn’t keep proper track of payout procedures, and this method would often result in overpaying a cheater.
The most trusted source on Cheating the One-Armed Bandit is the Nevada Black Book dedicates a ton of space to cheats for slot machines.
It was much easier to cheat a casino, or a slot machine in a casino back in the good old days… modern casinos with heightened security, new technology, and a well-educated security team has almost put an end to the cheating. Occasionally, modern casinos are still ripped off from time to time. The MIT Blackjack Team is a good example think of how much they made over the years! Smaller scale cheating still happens, however, it is not nearly as easy as in the days of the electromechanical machines.
Nevada State Law defines cheating as
to alter the elements of chance, a method of selection or criteria which determine the amount or frequency of payment in a game, the value of a wagering instrument or the value of a wagering credit.
These days, Slot Machiness are designed to be unbeatable AND uncheatable! That does not stop cheaters from trying to use cheating devices or selling them to ignorant players who are just tired of losing! There are those who also try to sell methods for cheating the machines yes cheats in slot gaming range from crude tools jammed into electronic devices to betting strategies designed to outsmart the RNG. Some of these have had success through the years in the past, but today modern machines are designed with security built right in and they are built to be cheat-proof.
Because of this modern design, you just can’t use the old school cheats anymore… the only way you can cheat a slot machine these days is to get inside the computer brain of the machine and reprogram it to your advantage.
Sure this would be possible to do if you were a software designer who designed slot machine games, but then the next hurdle would be for you to alter the machine with your expert slot machine design education and know-how without anyone noticing what you are doing!
These days, casinos track the income and payouts of all their slot machines, and if they figure out that one of their new progressive slot machines keeps paying you tons of cash, they WILL put two and two together security cameras and lawyers will handle the rest.
Coins are even disappearing from slot machines in a much different way these days, which is they don’t drop the coins to pay out a winner anymore it is all done with a slip of paper the machine prints out when you request for your winnings from the machine, and you just take it to the cashier window where they pay you your winnings. Or there are cards you put into the machine that the machine pays you by electronic means on your card.
As casinos become more sophisticated in their anti-cheating tactics, casino cheats have to become even smarter to come up with ways to cheat them.
Cheating the slot machines or any other kind of cheating at a casino is really dumb anyway… all casino cheats eventually get caught. There’s too much surveillance, too many eyes on the casino floor, and too much money being spent by casinos to prevent cheating.
Most of the cheats you find online are worthless electronic devices designed to separate you from your $19.99 and that’s it. The only cheater, in that case, is the person who is selling these devices knowing full well they don’t work a lick for what they are supposed to.
These days, casinos also hire cheaters to help them find games that are vulnerable to cheating techniques, and also to actively look for cheaters on the floor because they are the few who really know what kind of behavior to look for.
Cheating at slots is designed to make you a big winner, which could be the thing that keeps slot machine cheats from being effective, more than once at least. Casinos keep their eyes on people who win big, and they also like to examine video footage from slot machine jackpots or big payoffs.
That means that cheating a slot machine at a casino is good one time, and one time only. The only way to make yourself better at slot machines is to practice good slot etiquette, watch your bankroll, play machines with good payouts, and make sure you only playing slots when you happy and having fun.
I hope you have enjoyed this article as much as I enjoyed writing it as I learned a great deal from the research. Please stay tuned for more articles like this one feel free to bookmark this site so you can check back often! Subscribe to our newsletter and join as a member we appreciate that you are here and hope you will stop by again soon! Until next time remember slots are sexy when you win on them!
In the Long Run, Winning the One Armed Bandit the Old School Way is Far Better and Much More Fun than Cheating the One Armed Bandit Any Way!
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