As with any other casino game, slot machines are designed to make you lose slowly but surely. Some people can't accept this fact, and instead of inventing various winning systems, they decide to outsmart the casino. Here are 11 of the most interesting ways they've come up with (or used).
Yo-yo
This is the granddaddy of all slot machine scams in the world. Even Donald Duck's nephews tried it back in 1949. It's a very simple trick. The scammer wraps a line around a coin, then drops the coin into the machine and waits for the machine to recognize the payment. Then he quickly jerks the coin and pulls it back out, then repeats the process.
Polished coins
As technology advanced, slot machine manufacturers increasingly resorted to optical sensor coin verification precisely to prevent fraudsters from using the yo-yo trick. Ironically, this soon led to another wave of fraudsters…
Some do-gooder figured out that the mechanism would register the coin and accept payment even if it was slightly polished. However, the second control mechanism that weighed the coin considered the coin bad and spat it out without canceling the payment. In essence, you had an unlimited supply of money with just one coin.
Counterfeit coins
What could be better than polished coins? Well, fake coins! Using an advanced production line, Luis “The Coin” Colavecchio printed coins that slot machines accepted, even though they were not handmade. These coins were once used to flood slot machines from Connecticut to New Jersey. You can watch the documentary about this event:
Metal spiral
The metal spiral haunted (and still haunts) casino operators with old slot machines, the so-called "one-armed bandits". With the help of a twisted wire, fraudsters can stop the reels exactly where they need them. Thanks to this, winnings worth thousands and tens of thousands of dollars are very easy to make. That is why slot machines are also monitored by cameras...
Metal spiral with electric discharges
A metal spiral with electrical discharges, also known as a "Carmichael spiral" (after the surname of its inventor), is nothing more than a spiral with a small flashlight attached to it that, on command, gave off electrical discharges. These discharges confused the optical sensor, making it think you had thrown money into it. That's all.
Paper money depositing device
This little device is basically a handy holder for paper money that you can insert into a slot machine, similar to the "yoyo" above. The machine reads the note, recognizes it as play money, and then you pull the note out. And so on and so forth. This holder is also used in some Czech casinos.
Working from the inside
The clever programmer Ronald Dale Harrison was thinking ahead. When a large company operating online roulettes asked him to write a program to make them work, he got to work. In the end, he had a very ingenious program that did everything it was supposed to do – seemingly. The program contained a “bug” that made the programmer a huge amount of money. When he was caught about 12 years after the contract was awarded, he had about $20,000 in cash on him. Casino operators in America then estimated the damage at more than $30,000,000 (720 million crowns). It seems incredible, because Ronald Dale allegedly worked alone. But in the end – why not, a search of his home turned up famous paintings, three luxury cars and flirtatious girls who were said to have lived with Ronald for several months at a time.
