How to Cheat at Slot Machines and Pick the Best Slots
In most gambling circuits, tales of famous slot machine cheaters are quite popular. It seems that there are several methods that have been used in the past in order to unjustly score winnings from slot machines. It may sound pretty pessimistic, but before you read any further you should know that modern slots are pretty technologically advanced and are nearly impossible to cheat. Please keep this in mind before you attempt any of these methods on newer slot machines.
When slot cheating was in its heyday, one of the most important aspects to the practice was knowing which machines to hit. No matter how tight the security in any given casino may be, it is virtually impossible for every single slot machine to be monitored. Folks that really know their way around a casino know how to use “blind spots”. These are spots that are untouched by the casino’s surveillance cameras and when you know where they are, you can be unstoppable. It is a good idea to constantly move around, though so that you don’t draw too much attention to yourself. One way to avoid this is to work with a team. In the past, some pros would be willing to train novice cheater; this kept new faces circulating through the casino, making it harder for security to focus on one particular person.
As far as devices are concerned, there have been a number of popular ones. When slot machines were made of nothing more than a series of pulleys and gears, you could actually cheat a slot machine with a coat hanger if you know what you were doing. By inserting the hanger into the mechanical coin counter, the machine would not be able to keep up with the payout. As a result, it would usually reward payouts when there was no winner—typically to the cheater using the coat hanger.
Another popular method was what has commonly been referred to as the Money’s Paw. This device was designed by renowned slot cheat Tommy Carmichael and is perhaps the most popular took in slot cheating history. The Monkey Paw consisted of a piece of flexible steel about a foot long with the end bent into a claw shape. The cheater would insert it into the payout chute and keep shoving it in until it made it to the coin counter. Then, similar to the coat hanger effect, the machine would overpay or even pay when it was not necessary.
Another clever way that people used to cheat slot machines was the use of counterfeit tokens. Some people also used shaved coins to trick the machine. If done correctly, the cheater can play a machine for free since shaved coins are designed to come right back out, but after triggering the machine into action. An even cooler trick was to drill a tony hole into a coin and loop a string through it. The cheater could then insert the coin and pull it back out, thus fooling the machine into thinking money had been deposited. Current machines come with a catch inside to stop this clever trick. Nice way to pay back that cash advance loan you took out to pay the bills.
In a much more intricate strategy, some cheats have been known to hire the help of an “inside man”, someone that works for the slot manufacturer or delivery company. When cheaters employed such services, these inside men would flaw into the machines in a number of ways before they were delivered to the casino. Sometimes this inside man was actually a slot machine programmer. There have been a few documented cases where programmers have worked with cheats, coming up with a very intricate solution: if programmed correctly, the machine will pay out if the machine’s buttons are pushed in a certain pattern or sequence.
As previously stated, slot machines are pretty much impenetrable these days thanks to a history of millions of dollars in theft. Still, there are no doubt cheaters out there that are quickly working on new ways to trick these money machines.