Hacker News Reader

Comment by YeGoblynQueenne | Hacker News Reader

To make matters worse, after all this effort to hook players in with a promise of a win just around the corner, it seems that casinos often don't pay up when players win big. Instead, they blame jackpots on malfunctions.

Three cases of this from Ars:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/10/1-4-million-jack...

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/06/sorry-maam-you-d...

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/04/sorry-grandma-th...

The incomprehensible thing is that courts have stood behind the casinos in such cases.

View on HN

I used to work for a large online casino company and they were really proud of paying out the largest slots jackpot at the time because it attracts players. These companies make so much money they can afford their jackpots when they get the maths right.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/pa/article-3267379/Soldier-...

This is reasonable when machines list a maximum reward of say 10,000$ and then it says has someone win 2000x that. After all, the players did not make the bet thinking such a payout was possible.

IMO, it is a sign the machines are not setup to follow the states rules. But, people are suing for the amount listed not trying to shut the casino down.

It would make sense to still pay out the maximum amount listed in that case.

If malfunction voids all pays and plays, and if the casino can legally not pay what the machine says it should, then it should also be on the casino to track down every single person who's ever put money into that machine and give them a full refund. If a machine has the kind of coding glitch that could cause this sort of payout, who's to say it hasn't been stealing from players all along?

i agree in principle with your argument, but i imagine the only way to properly track historical players of that machine is if they kept some sort of ledger or database on every single user of the machine, which probably means they'd need to store your personal information somewhere indefinitely. not sure too many gamblers would be cool with that.

Players who spend a lot of money already let the casino track them on purpose so they can get perks.

blockchain slots? I like it....

It's called a rewards card, and almost every frequent slot machine player uses them because they get perks.

>This is reasonable when machines list a maximum reward of say 10,000$ and then it says has someone win 2000x

I disagree. It should be trivial to code a machine to not display a number greater then it's maximum bet.

Forcing slot makers to honor their machine's output will incentivize them to better bug test their products.

Memory gets randomly corrupted over time. So, you can make things unlikely, but impossible is more difficult than you migh think.

Having shat said, some penalties for this is reasonable. Aka, treat it as a maximum payout.

If we could send a space probe billions of miles away and have it still work, despite being 40-year-old technology, I think we can make a robust system to run a slot machine without having to spend astronomical figures. But that's just me.

Many probes fail, but we care about success.

On the other hand with slot machines ~999,990 work 'just fine' and we care about the 10 that fail at some point.

Each machine may be used ~100 times an hour for 20 years. Odd crap is going to happen.

That said someone probably messed up at some point. However, perfection is never going to happen.

> Memory gets randomly corrupted over time.

That's not a good excuse. Same memory gets corrupted on machines which are processing our online money transfers and yet we don't see problems when buying things online. Why? Because there are layers upon layers validating data integrity, so that even if something gets corrupted, no invalid payment is made.

Banking uses audits after the fact, the number listed on you bank statement is often incorrect. EX: all the people who end up with far more in their checking accounts that they should have. And frankly, casinos are using the exact same process two systems that compare results to correct things after the fact.

link 1: "Gambler has no right to contest non-payment because casino is on tribal land"

link 3: "there was "clearly a display malfunction" and that the machine's maximum payout was programmed for $6,500"

link 3: "the user-agreement, available on the touch screen, said the maximum payout was $10,000"

Why incomprehensible? Because you know (the latter 2) aren't really malfunctions?

From the article: the courts did not stand behind the casinos, they said that they do not have jurisdiction.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com