With such astronomical prizes on offer it is hardly surprising that many mischievous gamblers try their luck at cheating the reels rather than simply spinning them. This is becoming increasingly difficult in the online world were brands such as Casino Dames have flawless security features. Over the years there have been many methods tried, but all too often they fail and the guilty party usually faces a criminal sentence of some sort. It is stealing after all, especially when it becomes a rather large sum of cash.
Nobody apart from criminals would advocate cheating on the slot machines; it ruins the fun for everybody else and even yourself. If there is no chance of losing it makes the winning far less exciting. Nonetheless, it is remarkably interesting to see how these people attempted to cheat the system, and some methods can teach us a great deal about the mechanics of slot machines. So, without further ado, here are a few past and present slot machine cheats.
Coin & String
Does it get more old school than this? Cheating gamblers would drill a hole through a coin and thread a very thin nylon string through it. After feeding it through the coin slot and watching the machine register the coin they would fish it back out and repeat the process. Free money! Unfortunately for them technology has improved since the 70s and 80s, making this particular cheat obsolete.
Foreign/Fake Coins
Another method that took advantage of the inferior technology of a few decades ago, this time using foreign or fake coins to trick the machines. As long as the coins were of the same dimensions and weight of American cents many cheaters across Nevada would fill the slots with miscellaneous coins and effectively have as many free spins as they would like.
Magnets
This cheating method is slightly more high-tech, although it is still one that would only work in the past. Strong magnets could tamper with most reels on the slot machines, all a cheater would have to do is use a magnetic field to spin the reels manually into a winning combination. Slightly less subtle than the previous two, this one was a favourite among cheats in the 60s and 70s. Since then however machines have been protected from outside magnetic influence rendering this tactic useless in the present day.
RNG Crack
All slot machines, online or land-based, these days use a Random Number Generator to influence how the reels will stop spinning. This is, essentially, a computer algorithm and is therefore liable to be hacked. The US endured a RNG crack epidemic in 2017 that led to a number of arrests.
Engineer Fraud
There have been reports of a few renegade casino software engineers using their knowledge of the slot machine inner mechanics to influence the result in their favour. In fact, a man called Ronald Dale Harris was arrested in 1995 for using insider knowledge to win $100,000 on a slot.
