Look at the payout chart on a slot machine to determine how jackpots are paid. On many slot machines, the 5-coin bet pays out a higher percentage on the top fixed jackpot. For instance, a 1-coin bet might pay $200, a 2-coin bet might pay $400, a 3-coin bet might pay $600, and a 4-coin bet might pay $800.
Like many other games, players can cheat at slots in order to steal money. It is very risky to do and you could go to jail if you get caught using some of these methods. We don't condone slot machine cheating and we don't recommend any of the methods mentioned here. This page is basically an interesting article for those interested in learning how people cheat in the casinos.
Players really can't use good strategies to beat slot machines like they can for blackjack or other table games. Slots use random number generator software in their machines and the computer selects random symbols on the reels. It's very hard to manipulate this and many of the cheats are used to physically rob the machine rather than make the machine land on a jackpot.
Most of the casino games in the building are slot machines and the casino makes the most profit off of them. There is plenty of opportunity to take money from any one of these machines. Many cheaters will find a secluded slot section where they can take enough time to rig the machine. There are so many players who sit at machines for hours and they can wait all day for the right time to strike.
As a matter of fact, almost a billion dollars is stolen out of slot machines around the globe. Even more amazing is that almost all of the slot cheats get away without being caught. The ones that do get caught are usually arrested and charged with a serious crime and many times get sent to jail or prison.
Casinos have a way to protect themselves but it certainly isn't always effective. There are surveillance cameras or 'eyes in the sky' that watch over everything, but many of these cameras are concentrated on table game cheaters. It's also almost impossible to watch every slot machine in a large casino in Las Vegas for example. Some of these major resorts have thousands of machines and they can't have a camera on every one of them. This is a cheater's advantage.
The pro cheaters are known as 'slots cheats'. Some of these people are able to steal $1000 an hour without getting caught and they can take in perhaps a million dollars a year. Talk about a nice salary. When using slots cheating devices, cheaters can take in even more money, but they don't want to take too much money and blow their cover.
Slot machine cheating devices can either be special instruments or computer software that can be used to rob a slot machine. These tools can cost only a few cents or thousands of dollars depending on how sophisticated and complex they are. Many efficient tools can be bought on the black market.
Slots cheats can also train new people in exchange for some of the profit. Casinos may know the more notorious cheats out there and these people have been banned from the casino premises. Therefore they can train new people to go in their place and appear innocent. Usually experienced cheating players go to areas where there is a blind spot in the security cameras or places where it would be hard for them to be watched.
Other cheaters use strategies such as moving from one machine to the other 'winning heat' so they can avoid too much attention at one single spot all night. If they kept winning on the same machine over and over again, it may become obvious.
There are various ways to cheat at slots and there are many cheating devices out there. Some are old ideas like bringing your own fake coins or a hanger, but others are even more complicated. A few of them are listed below:
Casinos have implemented advanced tactics to stop slots cheaters and have installed modern equipment into their machines. One of these features is the coin comparator, which recognizes coin density or weight to check whether a coin is real or fake. This is similar to the technology used in vending machines with paper money.
As I stated earlier, a famous slots cheater is Tommy Carmichael, the inventor of the slider or 'monkey paw'. He is notorious for slots cheating and has been caught and sent to jail many times and is well known in the black book of cheaters that are banned from Vegas. He made off with hundreds of thousands of dollars in stolen cash from slots. This name may sound familiar if you watched all the shows about him on History channel and Discovery channel.
Casinos are now coming up with even better ways to prevent the more primitive ways of cheating by using physical and mechanical slots cheating devices like the monkey paw, slider and coat hanger. Now the slots are leaning more to electronics and circuits, meaning a cheater would have to be more experience at tricking the computer rather than using brute methods. Programmer Sabotage would be the more common way to defeat the slot machines. The slots are the bread and butter to the casinos, so they are willing to upgrade new preventative measures to hold back cheaters.
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Generally the gambling community considers slot machines to be unbeatable. This is because the game outcomes are determined by a random number generator, which is considered completely unpredictable. But a group of Russian hackers have been able to exploit a flaw in a widespread type of random number generator. With the broad range of new slots at internet casinos, the online gambling community has a renewed interest in slots. You can see a list of new slot sites if you’re looking for new places to play.
The affected machines are manufactured by an Australian company named Aristocrat, who are one of the world’s largest suppliers. So the matter is not trivial, and casinos are reporting some enormous losses from the affected machines. As far as we know, slots at online casinos are not affected. But this case may give clues on how to beat slot machines.
So how is this possible if the random number generators are truly random? The answer is they are not random. But before continuing, first let’s explain the two main types of random number generators.
RNG stands for “random number generator”. But there are two main types of random number generators. The most common is Pseudo RNG, which is simply a mathematical algorithm that determines casino game outcomes. It is the technology used in all modern slot machines.
The other type of RNGs typically use sources of radiation to randomise number generation. Such types are mostly hardware, and are called true random number generators. It’s not unlike pointing a radiation meter such as a Geiger counter at the stars, and the interval of the clicks will randomly vary. To be more specific, the clicks are not random. In fact nothing is random. It’s more a matter of whether or not they can be predicted. There is no known way to predict the exact radiation level at an exact time, which makes these types of random number generators reliable and unpredictable.
Finding patterns in just a few spins of a slot machine is almost impossible. Likewise, short-term data doesn’t realistically tell you anything useful. Therefore the Russian hackers purchased a modern slot machine to study in depth. Ultimately they found and exploited a flaw through data crunching.


This involves reviewing tens of thousands of game outcomes, then meticulously checking data for anomalies. A common anomaly is an outcome that occurs more often than it would if the games were truly random. For example, if there were one hundred possible outcomes, normally we can expect each outcome to occur as often as others. But over short-term data, certain outcomes are likely to repeat an inordinate number of times. This is useless short-term data. Analysis of long-term data reveals the true story.
Putting it into perspective of roulette, there are thirty-seven numbers or pockets on the European wheel. After ten thousand spins, we can expect each number to appear around about the same number of times. But if number zero appears significantly above the expected amount of times, we may conclude that the wheel is biased. This is a simple analogy, and not exactly what the slot machine hackers have likely done.
One particularly common flaw in pseudorandom generators is that particular sequences of game outcomes are more likely to appear. The most common sequence is a string of repeated numbers or outcomes. Again in the context of roulette, we may find a pseudorandom generator repeats the same numbers for a brief moment of time. This is often known as a convergence. It is not particularly easy to see by looking at raw logs of game outcomes alone. However, it is relatively easy to see if the game outcomes are placed onto an image. One notoriously unreliable random number generator is from Microsoft Excel. If you use the random function in Excel, you will find patches of the data where the numbers repeat an inordinate number of times.
Only Aristocrat the company knows how many machines are affected, but it is believed to be hundreds of thousands throughout the world. Gaming insiders have stated that the machines are not likely to be replaced, because the cost to replace them may well run into the millions of dollars. Aristocrat has issued a software update for the machines, but this is unlikely to have fixed the root cause of the problem. In fact the hackers specifically stated the flaw still exists. Aristocrat have dismissed this as a possibility, although they probably would have beforehand.
The player sits at the slot machine wearing a hidden camera. The live video feed of the slot machine is streamed to a server, which analyses slot machine behavior. Then at the required time, the play is instructed to press a specific button on the machine. This in turn increases the likelihood of a payout.
Whether or not the approach works on online slot machines remains to be seen. But certainly a low quality pseudorandom generator is likely to generate game outcomes with statistical anomalies. It’s more a question of data crunching, and obtaining enough data. Because realistically you need over ten thousand spins.
One thing to consider is if one of the world’s largest and most reputable slot machine company can make a mistake, so can the many smaller suppliers of psuedo random number generators. This means there is in fact hope to beat slot machines, or any game that uses psuedo random number generators. It’s more a question of obtaining enough data, and finding a usable exploit.