Of all the games within a casino, probably the most tricky one to scam or cheat are the slots machines. This is intrinsically linked to the amount of human interaction required at any given time. So for example, whilst a roulette croupier’s arm might get tired and continually throw the ball into a similar part of the wheel, leaving the wheel at the mercy of the keen scammer; or a multi hand blackjack game can get ‘owned’ by a crew of card counters taking advantage of their outnumbering the one dealer who can only watch whilst they bet deep at the bottom part of the last deck, having noted the copious amounts of aces left in the stack…the same most definitely cannot be said for the slot machines. Occupying the vast majority of most casino floors, and justifying that space due to their enormous profit margins and relatively low maintenance costs, these machines are practically 100% scam secure.

There are a number of high risk methods that could be adopted, some of which will be described below, but please do NOT try these at any establishment where you are not prepared to suffer the consequences – which would include jail time, some pretty rough treatment and being black listed from any future gambling visits. Don’t forget, being caught red-handed is not the only way you might be collared, the casinos are no longer wet behind the ears, and they know mathematically what the average profit/loss each machine should be paying out on an hourly basis. There are likely early warning indicators for any suspicious betting patterns (or constant wins) for the slot machines – so it wouldn’t be long before you’d have someone watching your technique very closely indeed.

One method that most definitely won’t work on any kind of regular basis is the old observe and conquer way. What is meant by this is that a prospective scammer can stand by and watch whilst a slot machine is in use by other people, and monitor how long it is between wins…the reason this fails is that there is literally no patterns to look out for. It’s the same as expecting a coin to land heads if its landed tails on the last 5 spins. It simply doesn’t work like that, the coin is just as likely to land tails for a sixth time – it’s 50:50. The same principle applies for a slot machine, just because it hasn’t paid for 12 hours, or 3,000 spins, or whatever, does not necessarily mean that a payout is imminent. It’s not a completely worthless method, because you can be lucky, but this isn’t strictly scamming – it is actually being discreet with your forward planning. So instead of choosing a slot machine based on its flashing lights or proximity to the buffet bar, you can choose a machine that appears ‘hot’.

Some of the other methods of attempted scamming could end up sounded totally ridiculous, but sometimes the wackiest schemes turn hugely profitable. The good old fashioned quarter on a piece of string method, is a very basic thing, and most likely the eye in the sky would spot this within a matter of moments IF indeed it could trick the machine into thinking it has received the money – so your window for scamming is limited.

But, with that said, most, if not all, slot machines now have trigger devices to prevent this kind of scamming. This is possibly most effective if you are down on your luck and are down to your last couple of dollars in the whole wide world, and are a relatively fast runner – allowing you to dash into an offstrip casino, with antiquated slots machines, use your quarter a handful of times, and then dash out when you win a few dollars. To actually win the jackpot and go over to the cashier with your quarter-on-a-string in your pocket would take a level of bravado unseen in the civilised world!

There is of course the long game to consider, possibly a more viable and ‘safer’ option and one that would result in the big win as it were. Now, previously mentioned scams have simply been amateur examples of things you could do to ‘break’ into the machine – a bit raw and unrefined. This long-game strategy is the big win for a reason. The best analogy for this scam is to think about the tech bods who crack or hack video games.

The are usually involved or know someone that is involved with the creation of the video game. The same principle applies here, whereby the future scammer can get a job working for a company that creates these games and/or machines. After a while, they would slip in a tiny, unnoticeable flaw in the programming, only known to them and undetectable by the most stringent testing – because believe it or not, these slot machines are tested to death!