The Top 12 Slot Machine Cheats
March 25, 2023Slot machines are extremely profitable for the casino, the players, and the cheaters.
Since their inception, slot machines have been a game of cat and mouse between cheaters and the house due to the large potential winnings.
Let’s look at some of the dirty tactics cheats have used to win slots throughout the years. But please only try them on your own!
1. Cheat Code
Officials in the gambling sector exist to maintain standards of honesty and integrity in the market.
Engineers create gaming systems that can be tracked and checked for fairness in the industry. Yet, what happens if an engineer attempts to cheat the system by altering the codes?
A former engineer for the Nevada Gaming Commission by the name of Ronald Dale Harris was caught cheating at slots. He was a master at slot machine deception.
He used his knowledge of computer coding to deceive machines for a long time. After his partner won $100,000 on a keno game in 1995, suspicions were raised about the legitimacy of their casino dealings.
2. Shaved Coins
Shaved coin fraud is a historical curiosity rather than a current threat.
Light sensors replaced coins in slot machines as technology improved. In many devices, the optical sensor functioned independently from the mechanical comparator.
If a shaved coin and an object matching the shape and size of the requisite stake coin were sent down at the same time, the shaved coin would be returned and the other thing would land in the machine, beginning play.
3. Fake Coins
Historically, counterfeit coins were also used to cheat at slots.
Louis “The Coin” Colavecchio was a con artist who used counterfeit coins to rip off casinos for years before he was finally caught in 1998.
After his release in 2006, he immediately resumed his cheating ways. Unsurprisingly, he was uncovered once more within a few of months.
4. Magnet
How to use a magnet to deceive a slot machine is a question we are frequently asked.
To clarify things up, current slot machines are not susceptible to being hacked with a magnet because they are all programmed by computer software and are not magnetic.
Yet, when the machines were built of metal, cheating was possible with a magnet.
A powerful magnet placed on the outside of a slot machine could be used to cheat by stopping the reels from spinning when a player sees a winning combination.
In order to collect the prize, cheaters would take the magnet out of the machine.
This was a more stealthy scam, but it might net huge payouts if executed correctly.
5. Yo-Yo
The technique was the focus of this slot machine hack.
The player attaches a thread to the coin, drops it into the machine until it activates the game, and then retrieves it.
Because to technological advancements, this method is now largely obsolete.
It’s a true classic, though, and you would have won huge if it had worked.
6. Light Wand
In the annals of gaming, Tommy Glenn Carmichael occupies a prominent place. The light wand was his idea.
Carmichael would wave his light wand and make jackpot winners materialize out of nowhere, unlike magicians like David Copperfield, Dynamo, and David Blaine who can only create the illusion of anything occurring.
The light wand would render the optical sensor in slot machines useless, making it impossible for the machine to determine when or how much money should be paid out.
This meant that Carmichael might increase the value of his tokens by manipulating a slot machine to his benefit.
7. Piano Wire
In the world of slot machine tricks, this one is a classic.
In 1982, a crew of male employees at Atlantic City’s Caesars Boardwalk Regency casino bonded over their shared love of poker. The suspect slot machine was opened, and 20-inch piano wires were affixed to the machine’s gears.
The group could manipulate the wheel spins by jamming the clock that kept track of their movements using the wires.
Unfortunately, their scheme was caught on camera, and the winner was detained before he could leave with the $50,000 prize.
8. Top-Bottom Joint
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, con artists used this as one of the most common ways to cheat at slot machines.
A unique, two-part tool was used for the job. Both a top (a metal rod with a “q”-bent end) and a bottom are required (a long wire).
The cheats jammed the machine by inserting the bottom through the coin chute and the top through the coin slot, causing the game to spill all its coins.
Several, significant successes have occurred.
9. Monkey Paw
It’s that Carmichael guy once more. In the world of deceit, he was a true mastermind.
The “monkey paw” originated with him. He used a video poker machine to try out various strategies before constructing the ideal device. Incredible ease of use.
He grabbed a guitar string and strung it along a curved metal rod. He’d force it into the vent and wiggle it until he found the switch that activated the coin hopper.
Prepare for a deluge of cash.
10. Bill Validator Device
A straightforward strategy for cheating at slots with surprising results.
This is a gadget that can be wrapped around a single dollar bill to make it look like a $100 bill when inserted into a slot machine.
11. Computer Chip Replacement
With this new method, slots cheat Dennis Nikrasch.
He purchased a slot machine to find its weaknesses and experimented with it in his basement.
He discovered that the machines’ embedded computer chips could be reprogrammed to automatically award prizes.
Nikrasch placed an order for a large quantity of these chips, assembled a group of con artists, and obtained a large number of slot machine keys, therefore beginning a reign of fraud that would drain casinos dry for years.
And he did it all by exchanging the uncontrolled chips for the ones he had manipulated.
12. Software Glitch
For decades, cheaters have used bugs in computer programs to their advantage.
Players can fool the machine into awarding the jackpot by following a specific pattern of stakes and games.
Over the years, many slot cheaters benefited from this, but now many jackpot winners are having their money withheld due to this practice.
The most well-known case occurred in 2015, when an Illinois grandmother named Pauline McKee, at 90 years old, won $41 million playing a Miss Kitty slot machine at the Isle Casino Hotel Waterloo.
She filed her first lawsuit against the casino in 2012 regarding online slot games, but all of her subsequent appeals were denied. The casino prevailed because of precedential cases, which is unfortunate.
