August 29, 2006
Online gambling enthusiasts love to hear stories about players winning extra money, whether it’s the player’s skill, luck, or the casino’s error – wait casino’s error! Do I have your attention now? While this is not a breaking news story, we feel it is worth discussing in more detail after the fact.
Not too long ago (as many of our online gambling players out there already know) a casino error at Caesar’s Indiana has had one slot machine paying out way more than it should have. While mistakes from casinos are extremely rare, they do happen. This situation is worth discussing not only for your enjoyment, but for all involved to learn something by it.
The incident we want to chat about in this online gambling article has to do with a credit meter on an Extra Money slot machine that was generating credits that were ten times the amount truly entered into the machine by players. Basically, when a player would put one credit worth of cash into the machine it would produce ten credits instead of one credit. Caesars Indiana actually lost a whopping $487,000 on the machine within two days. As of one week ago, it seems the casino was still attempting to come up with a plan as to how they could possibly recover some of the losses that casino players took from the machine.,
Needless to say, this event was devastating to the casino. I would be devastating to any casino. Losing nearly half a million dollars in 48 hours due to a slot machine doling out ten times the amount of credits is hard to fathom. You may have already heard many of the details on this major error, so we will only point out what we have taken from this issue.
The exact problem the machine was having is that was programmed to certify Philippine monies instead of US currency. This, my friends, was not a computer error, but a human error. The machine had to have been programmed by a casino employee to change the currency exchange. Whether it was a simple overlook or not, Caesars did not complete the proper checks and balances on the machine the last time it was serviced or reset by the casino.
I am not an expert of slot machine technology and have no casino experience as far as working goes, but I can totally imagine that the main focus of this investigation will be on the employee(s) who last worked the machine and whether this was done on purpose or was a honest service error. In fact, I bet all the casinos around the planet have looked into this issue and made adjustments to prevent this type of error form happening at their facilities.
Many of you are probably wondering why the machine was capable of accepting Pilipino currency when it is located in Indiana of all places. This is a good question. With the massive advances being made with slot machine technology, companies that make these bill validators have designed accept foreign currencies from all countries and have been building them for awhile. In major casinos, this is necessary to keep customers playing – it’s very convenient and many foreign customers like playing in their own currency – they better understand it.
Just about any casino in any major gambling destination has these units on most of their slots. It is the future of gaming machine technology and the casino is responsible for running these types of machines properly. Any casino using these types of currency validation devices must ensure proper usage.
A major slap in the face of Caesars Indiana is that the casino itself never even caught on to this travesty until one honest casino slot player reported that the machine was giving them too many credits. This means Caesars Indiana was not even aware of any mistakes or errors with the machine at all before this person came forward.
Now, many of you may be asking how this could of happen for 48 hours with out the casino knowing about it. The best guess we can come up with is non cash ticketing. You know, you insert your bar coded ticket that you earned from another machine and insert it into another machine which will give you another ticket if you win on it. Why you ask. In order for this machine to lose that amount of money ($487,000) it could not have possibly been doling out cash or even accepting that much cash. No slot machine is going to have that amount of cash in it for 48 hours. If it did, the casino would have certainly taken note of the fact that it was constantly paying out huge awards to players over that period of two days.
So, the machine had to have been printing out these ticketed vouchers instead of cash for the most part. Even though you may now being wondering why this was never addressed as a potential disaster in the making during some quality control survey before something actually happened in this manner, ticketed machines make more money for casinos than this mistake lost for one.
Yes, the technology of the machine made this disaster possible, but the casino is ultimately responsible for making sure their machines are running properly on the casino floor.
We are also certain that the slot manager(s) on the casino floor during these days of lose should be looked into for not noticing a $487,000 jump in slot pay outs during that 48 hours.
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