As an Slot technician, none of this is considered part of “secret accounting menu” (which doesn’t exist) and this man exposed absolutely zero secrets If you’re IT nerd, you’d know this is all a simple algorithm developed in the games software.
@@Bagolters as a tech this is nothing new or big to you. As someone who is a network admin, I understand it's just software that was written to pay out randomly (which is why I don't play slot machines it's a waste of time and money), but the statistics are still cool to see. I was just in Vegas this weekend and I'm sure I would have gotten some weird looks if I had asked to see the payout statistics. As the consumers we are never supposed to see these menus and that's why it's fasinating to people like me. It's not like it's some magical window into how to win the jackpot every time, but it's still none the less cool.
@@Techguyericd As someone who has been working in slots for twenty years, I can tell you that those menus you will absolutely see if you hit a jackpot when the attendant comes to check and verify your win. And the events log and history recall, we will show you these if you ever have a question about the amount of money you inserted or an error that may have occurred. Again, nothing secret or something that gets hidden from the public, but everything I said is very common and happens daily.
As a person that writes software for a slot machine company, I thought this video was really neat. Especially since this was a competitors slot machine. And even more that it was Class II standalone progressive slot. Much of what you showed isn't a trade secret and just stuff that is required by regulations. It was particularly interesting to see which events get recorded and how they are recorded compared to how I'm used to seeing them. Another interesting tidbit was the BMM at the end of the executable name. BMM is a group that verifies slot machines are compliant with regulations so I'm guessing the devs just ensure they don't send a test .exe to the compliance lab by specifically calling it out as BMM. Thanks for the video it was really neat.
The Bingo ID fact has me flabbergasted. It is both such a clever trick that quite clearly by definition fits within the word of the law...yet also shows how useless many of these types of prohibitive laws are.
Gambling is forbidden by the law in Poland, so there are video slot machines, which are classified as "skill games". The difference to a regular video slot is that all the combinations are in a fixed sequence, and you can go into a screen, where all the combinations are listed. That's about tens of thousands of pages. If you're determined enough to find your current position in the sequence (that would take ages, of course), you can predict any winning combinations and rise your bet accordingly before. This means it's technically not gambing. Of course, noone is looking through the list of the combinations, they just hammer on the start button, as on a regular video slot machine :D
I used to work as a QA Tester at a video lottery terminal company in Atlantic Canada a number of years ago and the 92.5% pay ratio is very typical for these machines. We manufactured and shipped machines all over the world and the payout was generally between 92 and 95 percent. Those menus all look very familiar to me, although they are clearly more modern graphically than what we were working on. If anyone remembers the game "swinging bells" from the late 90s and early 2000s, well that's one of the games I worked on. The later machines we worked on at the time had 16MB of flash storage and had to hold 10 games plus all the accounting and communication back-end. This forced the programmers to clean-up their code to make it run as efficiently as possible in the limited storage allocation.
College math professor here (usually Precalculus), I’ve been considering leaving education and getting a gaming license to work in that industry. Keep this style of video coming!
Absolutely, keep the content coming. It's beyond interesting to me and anyone else who feels the need to glimpse upon generally 'hidden' things or see how things work - things that you might see every day and the public wouldn't ever have a clue as to what is really going on behind the screen. I'm one of those who like to take things apart just to see how they work - starting with the Atari ST 520 FM at 5 years old, me who worked out how to use a screwdriver. Even now, many decades later, I find it fascinating to pick things apart and see how they operate. Imagine my joy to stumble upon an interface on an ATM that 'accidentally' allows you to operate the machine and change variables...
Fortunately, in the slots there is no way to tweak settings related to payouts, that is hard coded and can only be done by GC. As far as service menus in TVs, I love those, my favourite setting in the Samsung service menus is to disable this automatic dimming CRAP enabled by default and that cannot be disabled ........
^^ You just have a stroke there bud? Anyway. Yeah, when the fine print gets read and you find out that a computer can play bingo while you play something else, I fail to see the point in continuing with the charade. Frankly, I'm allowed to bet on Amazon and Google. Why can't someone bet on pixel-art of fruit?
Very informative. I recall decades ago the casinos all advertised on billboards that their slots all paid back 99.75% or some such unbelievable %. I highly doubted it because my wife and I seldom won anything, let alone that kind of return. The info you got pretty much confirmed my suspicions. We quit blowing our savings in Nevada after the state took over the casinos from the mobs. I find it ludicrous how much better the slots and tables paid back the gamblers when the mobs ran things.
What casino was that ? REGULATED casinos are required to provide factual information on a slot and the payout percentage must be given as it is, they cannot lie about it, that's a big no-no. The payout % is just one piece of info, it is just a payout over time, actually the machine's life cycle, fortunately for casinos this does not mean that a 99% will pay you back 99 cents for each dollar you spend, the ACTUAL payout will fluctuate it can be far lower than the actual Payout, or far higher, in the end the average will make your advertised payout for the life of the machine, so a payout % does not mean the machine will ALWAYS be at that % - it could remain for a while far lower, and far higher - RTP is one thing, and hit frequency is another. Some machines are configured to pay less frequently (high skill set) and others are set to hit more frequently (low skill set). If slots are set to pay out more frequently the smaller wins, it will be harder to hit that jackpot - Those penny slots are the WORST slots one can play -this is a marketing gimmick - because those slots often have a large number of payout lines, and if you want to play them all which is recommended, then it means you would have to spend several DOLLARS a spin - quite a lot more than the cylinder slots where you had to put only 3 quarters in ....
Hi, as a Slot Tech nothing in those menus are secret and ,though I can't speak for her casino, she shouldn't get in trouble for showing you any of that information. I've personally walked guest through all of it to solve complaints they had or just general curiosity about the game. Cancelled credits are hand pays that are under the IRS limit and don't require the tax form. From my experience generally happens when a game loses network connection and cant print out a ticket voucher so forces a hand pay for that balance. Also I'm very confused on what this tech is looking for unless the machine didn't print off the Jackpot receipt and needed to get into the menu to get the information for a ticket exception.
Suppose "secret" is subjective. If I were a casino manager, I wouldn't want the players to see the payback percentage, as they can use that to determine whether they want to go to another casino. With that said, I don't know if that number is something they don't have to disclose to people who ask.
I totally agree, this information is not "secret", it is actually required to be shown upon request. If you want to get a really good long look into a machine, ask for a reel strip verification on an older physical, non video machine. You will not make friends with that tech, and you will not be interested with the inside of machine anymore.
I've seen similar menus on video poker machines. I play video poker rather than other slots because the payout percentages are known (not disclosed directly by the casinos, but can be calculated or looked up from a variety of online sources, as the probabilities are known), and payouts are generally better than slots because there is strategy involved, and the casino relies on the fact that most people don't play correct strategy. Video poker strategy for the many games and pay tables is also available from internet sources.
@@russlehman2070 that is exactly why you do not see a lot of video poker in Indian casinos here in Northern California. It's been a few years since I was last back up where I used to work, but at the time I left you could find a lot more video poker as a percentage of total machines installed on the floor there then you could in Indian casinos here.
As someone who also has ASD, I love it when you do these deep dives, it's so interesting. I find it crazy how literally everything in the US is taxed, here in Canada, gifts / gambling isn't taxed (unless you are a professional gambler).
Gifts below a certain amount from family are not taxed in the US. I think the limit is $25K. But yeah, "income from whatever source derived" covers just about everything.
A friend of mine who I won’t name used to work for a company that creates the games used in these machines. He had lots of stories about the random number generators and how they tested them. Other software testing stories too. Also stories about the way the games are developed from a marketing perspective. Getting licensing for old TV shows or movie franchises. He has said that he and his family were not allowed to play any of the games that he had any involvement in. I think that this topic is good for your channel. It reminds us that not all software is operating systems and websites and phone apps. Thanks Dave Charlie
I used to develop the machines back in late 90's to early 2000's. First of all these machines are highly regulated. And it's on a per state basis. Each state has there own gambling board with their own regulations but are very similar between each. I forget the exact rules for Indian casinos but since you are probably trying to make your machine cover all jurisdictions (thus doing highest common denominator rule and statistic over them all). This is a good thing to know for the machines. If you play them. It's not some wild west scenario where the casinos just do what they want. At least normally anyhow, sure a casino could illegally swap the ROMs/programming to do what they wanted. And first of all from looking at the trade publicans (that probably anyone can find now of days), slot machines have the worst payout although they are the most popular gambling machines. You are better off with skills based games like Blackjack or better poker. You can increase your skill in these games and thus have a higher chance of payout. Slots are all random. On the RNG. We used a pure software based PRNG. It had to pass a very high accuracy battery of RNG tests per the regulations. Had to be seeded well (typically by doing a loop of many PRNG reads). I forget if/how we had some system entropy source for seeding too, seems like we saved the seed in NVRAM. And then we had to our PRNG getter function mixed in the UI loops. By having it in the UI loops it makes it impossible for anyone to time, thus unable to sync to the PRNG sequence which had a been a problem with machines that used PRNGs in the past before the regulation.
@@joeneighbor Another element is that the machines continually generate the numbers on idle - so the outcome is known as soon as a player presses the spin button - this is another thing - you will often see someone playing at a machine, and then leave, and then someone else comes, spins and wins the jackpot - the person who left would often say "Oh I wish I had stayed one more spin I would have won" - well this is a myth and not true, he would have had to match that exact TIMING between spins - so the process of continuous generation helps - there are also stories about RNG - it's amazing how much they can get away with it, even if there is a LOT of manipulation of RNG ranges - I won't mention which specific games, but there are old cylinder slots where you could literally tell the machine is changing "cycles", especially if you were one of those people continually slamming the spin button - you would sometimes run into a little DELAY before the spin, and notice that after that delay, machine pays more frequently, then you hit that delay again and then machine is tight.........software can change the range of random numbers, whilst still remaining random - machines go through extensive testing at the factory before shipped at casinos - it's simple, majority of generated numbers are tied to LOSING combinations, machines can progressively ADD in winning numbers to the range as needed or remove as needed, it has to be that way in order for a machine to stay within the LOW, HIGH and Payout%. Modern electronic machines have evolved - no "delays" but they work along the same principle. I like to call it CRNG (Controlled Random Number Generation). Because that is what it is - I could easily write a computer game to emulate how a true slot machine works - people should stay away from slots ......
I did work experience as a teenager at a small business near my high school where they built “poker machines” (that’s what Aussies call slot machines) These were machines destined for Singapore so they had a higher “payout rate” than the Australian ones, it was literally a switch in a hidden menu. The hidden menu was accessed via a special key on the side of the unit and gave you all sorts of diagnostics, I believe the machines were running some form of Linux on an embedded board. The fun for me was going into the deep storage area where there were a bunch of old dusty machines that had what I think were 486 boards and had CRTs with some major burn in! It was awesome.
@jon smith Modern machines have a jurisdictional chip (really just a flashed EEPROM) that defines the range available pay tables (coin in/coin out percentage), among other things. The machines actually do a software integrity check at every reboot, though the gaming authorities do also manually verify the information they have on file (typically a full rundown of every machine in every gaming facility, including firmware, OS and software versions, enabled denominations, percentages and so on). The states often take a big cut of gaming revenue in the form of taxes, so they want to make sure nothing's slipping through the cracks.
@jon smith If it can be read, it can be copied. If it can't be read, it can't be used. It's possible there's a local key on the motherboard to decrypt, but the chips can be exchanged between similar machines. That would mean the key is the same on every motherboard, wouldn't it? Not very secure.
@jon smith I think they're sold by the machine manufacturer, based on the state's specs. That probably varies from state to state - some keep the keys to the CPUs and put anti-tamper tape on them. Keeping the firmware and software locked up would make sense too.
Very few slot machines run Windows... I suspect it's too hard to audit to the level that satisfies the gaming commissions. I've seen player tracking systems (player ID cards for perks and tax tracking) that run Windows CE and local-area coordination type equipment (progressive servers, bonus event controllers, media servers and such) running de-package'd desktop Windows. The machines themselves generally run a flavor of linux, or are customized enough that it simply won't admit what it's based on.
Why do people hate on premieres? I'm not launching it until the next morning anyway, would it be better to just not announce? I don't get the angst! But I don't think I'll continue doing it as it seems to bother some.
Who knows, Dave.... Hang on a sec, did you launch this last night, and leave watchers at the "please wait" screen for 7 hours? That night do it. People getting anxious waiting for it to start...
I hate premiers and here's why: 1. They show up in my subscription feed at the front of the list crowding out other actually viewable videos. 2. Ironically, premiers don't stay at the top of the subscription list so they crowd out videos but then fall down do be forgotten; why would I remember the start time of a video that I haven't seen in my stream for a whole day? 3. They have a distracting different presentation that draws your eye to it even though it isn't available. 4. When actually premiering it's listed as "live n--- it seems like the text has changed to "premiering now" but it is still in the standard red "this is live" color 5. If I'm not on when the video is premiering, I'll tend to see the same thumbnail leading me to believe that the video is a reupload of something rather than a new video. The only time I don't have issues with premiers is when they are for live streams but doesn't seem to be the case often for channels I follow.
In school, especially math and programming classes, you always wonder how you can apply what you learn to life. This type of video is an excellent example of math and programming in real life. Thoroughly enjoyed, thanks Dave.
Love the 'peek behind the curtain' on these arcade games. Remember years ago playing Outrun I believe, and the game locked up. I moaned to the bloke running the arcade place, and he simply flipped the power switch. When it came back up he flipped the switch again, and this time it came up with 99 credits. He simply walked away. I was there all day! Didn't get much better at the game though... Remember walking home with backache and leg cramp as playing that game all day!
@@skaruts ; Yes, they are. They are in an arcade. They are games. They are arcade games. They are also fruit machines. Doesn't mean you get a real banana if you win, nor do you feed it half a pound of grapes. I've a laptop. It sits on my desk, rather than my lap. Doesn't mean I call it a desktop. Words associated with an object may not always make sense, but they are still valid. So yes, they're arcade games.
@@chrisjlocke no one ever refers to these games as arcade games. Casino games is the what people always call them. It's also debatable whether these "games" should be should be considered games. I've never played the spin wheels, but it's probably close to the process of playing slot machines, where all you do is mindlessly press one button.
Agreed. Calling peanuts 'peanuts' is mad too - they're not nuts. They're in the same family as peas, so maybe they should be called 'peapeas' ? Language is a weird thing. But flat out bonking me on the head saying 'they're not arcade games' is wrong. You may disapprove of the categorisation which is all fine and dandy, so just prefix it with 'I believe ...' and suffix it with '... because '.
@@chrisjlocke This isn't merely semantics, though. Casino games (games of chance) were also separated by law from all the others. You wouldn't find those games in any regular arcade place.
The percentage is for the lifetime of the machine. So typically you will not get paid 92.50% of every 1$ going into the game. Its just the expected payout percentage of the machines lifetime, which if I remember correctly is on average over 7 years or around 10million spins. For context I work in a casino, which is how I learned this. Also 92.50 is a good "RTP" percentage, in my area we average 87-90 depending on the manufacturer and game. I also just wanted to say still love the content. Its nice to see someone's perspective on the casino and seeing the attendant screen deciphered lol.
The other day I was next to an ATM restarting. I wanted so much to stand around and record the boot up process (it ran windows 7) but I was pretty sure that the other people waiting and the camera above me would not be so happy. I really enjoyed your video, you don't see the inner workings of this stuff every day.
it's kinda anoying that it feel so taboo. I mean if the machine can be completely owned just by the information being displayed on film why wouldn't you want tech nerds to film every single machine so that you can actually patch things up? I worked at a retail store were customers had a front facing screen where it displayed the price and obviously some promotions, what they didn't know was that it also was a touch screen. that touch input resulted on a touch input on the cashiers side! When I told my boss and showed that anybody could literally walk up to the cash point, press "randomly" on > more, deposit, 1999, ok, ok" and get 1999 NOK out of the machine. my boss didn't care since "obviously nobody is going to know that". The other issue I notified was with the "50% off because out of date" stickers we had, we had those fancy stickers that had the EAN code with the discount already coded into it. My main issue was that the code would be like 01yyyy0000000xxxxxx, where Y was the product number (PLU) and X was the "weight" where the last three X are 0.x grams or if the number started with 02 it was the price where the last two x are in cents. My boss did absolutely nothing, I sendt out an email to the main IT department and years later nothing has changed.
LOL, one of the buys at the bank needed to restart and OLD and clunky ATM (mostly IBM HW) and offered me to see the boot process .... When it splashed the OS/2 WARP screen ... I was spechless LOL .... OS/2 booted in a decent time but as soon as the desktop appeared, a BIG OLD 80's image "OFF LINE" in giant caracters covered the screen. It has been there for 20 to 30 minutes. At this point the machine (I believe) the machine is downloading some sort of client and launchs it. at the end. The ATM app was Diebold's. I have seen some ATM on the desktop but its is PRETTY RARE .... In some machine the bar for the language of the keyboard is floating on the bottom LOL.
As one who has won quite a few substantial jackpots I found this quite interesting. Thank you. I've never personally seen these screens on any of my handpays.
11:56 - They'll identify the employee easily .They'll look where and when you won the jackpot, then look at the camera / admin creds used at the machine, and they'll have her.... You identified many unique identifiers for this jackpot session, so they can pinpoint it easily.
The employee is at the bottom deck of a freighter to Brazil. The Casino sent 3 "Erasers" to her home. She was ready for them. After defeating them she went off the grid and is starting a new life.
Just a quick comment, 92.5% payout on a penny slot is really really good! A report from 2019 shows Las Vegas slot machine payouts on average (better payouts offstrp, then downtown with they strip being the worse) - Penny slots - 88.30% RTP (11.7% house edge) Nickel slots - 91.63% RTP (8.37% house edge) Quarter slots - 89.40% RTP (10.60% house edge) Dollar slots - 92.30% RTP (7.70% house edge) Multi denomination - 93.61% RTP (6.39% house edge) Penny slots will be the worst house edge most of the time. If you are playing on the strip, expect a worse payout than a locals casino.
I work in this industry. The credit meter limit is a max value the credit meter can reach. If it goes over that, it will automatically pay out the balance. So if the credit limit is 500, and you win 750, the credit will count to 500 and print a ticket for 250.
Thanks! I guess that's the same as the "credit limit" on old video games, where Tempest was limited to 40, for example. Except I think Tempest just ate money after that!
I always love seeing behind the scenes configuration panels. When I was a cashier at the 99c Store, you could crash the POS software by mashing TOTAL a bunch on the register. It would kick you back out to the Windows XP POS desktop and you could browse around the files and different programs installed on the desktop (including relaunching the POS software).
Interesting. I had a book about 25 years ago called “beat the one armed bandits” or something like that. Talked all about the machine percentages and how combinations were cycled in and out and the frequency depended on how close it was to the percentage payback, length since that last jackpot, etc…. That stuff was never really a secret, but the book ventured into some different territory with supposed secrets on how to locate the better machines in the casino and when they might be ripe to pay, etc.. House always wins in the long term though, of course
in my village some tough guys returned from working abroad and they were geniuses - They put half of what they earned into an illegal slot machine, they waited 5 hours for someone to win "their money" so they take it back, they decided to go to their homes to get the rest of their money from wife/mother. when they returned some guy put 1$ and won their 3 month salaries and went home, one accepted his fate another one (village retard) poured gasoline on the bar and was barely contained by his friend. It was in that moment I was grateful that gun control by NATO after the war was so strict.
@@raidenpz It ended at that, he didn't pour a lot and it was outside, the guy who won called his family and they took wheelbarrows and filled them with coins and went home.
House will always win because it’s everyone else money in the machines 🤣🤣. So even if you “win” you’re winning someone’s money from all the times before
I think that many of the nerds on this channel, like myself, intimately enjoy taking things apart and seeing how they work. In that way, even though this is a "digression" from your regular content, it is 100% on brand.
Awesome video, pretty neat to see the stuff behind the scenes. One of my favorite shows back in the day was Breaking Vegas, I wish they would bring that back. One of my favorite episodes was when a programmer hacked a slot machine ROM to pay a jackpot after a specific series of events.
I actually played in a casino in California that used Class II slot machines (that is, the ones that use bingo cards and draws to determine wins). On those machines, the actual bingo card is shown in the lower corner of the display somewhere, so you know it's actually using them. I assume that the machines are loaded with firmware designed for both Class I (traditional RNG) and Class II play - there's probably just a toggle switch in the service menu somewhere that enables the two modes.
the "bill in" is the amount of cash in since the last count on the machine. and the "Drop" is when they remove the money from the machine. i was a slot tech and cash cage person on a casino boat in key largo Fl the good old SUN CRUSE #1 boat.
In my days while I was a student (1st year of uni). I used to be a programmer for those kind of machines (some really shitty old Russian machines). The menu was by far less friendly, but I remember that you can program a lot of stuff like the payout rate, how frequent the machine throws "jackpots", the type of credit depending on the coin sensor (yes, those where coin operated), an a lot of other stuff. I remember that there even was a menu to empty the machine of every credit using the coin hopper and the coin count was displayed in the screen to "speed up" counting (even when internally most of those machines also had a bypass button to make the coin hopper work). Btw. The roms of those old machines can be emulated with MAME32. I don't remember the rom name, but what I remember is that I used the roms to test some settings before programming that to a real machine.
@@keylanoslokj1806 Considering that there are a quite a few online casinos out there.. technically yes, practically it's probably not a market you want to join (for one, you need to register that company in the right country to get the right legislative grounds).
@@keylanoslokj1806 Online casinos are everywhere in Sweden for an example. It used to be illegal but that changed quite recently. If you have a unique casino theme with an easy to remember/catchy name then honestly it's quite an easy market to get into I believe.
I think the biggest correlation between all the videos I watch on RUclips is that the creators genuinely enjoy what they’re making the video on. Of course your advanced knowledge helps a lot in what makes me click on the video. I guess what I’m saying is you could really do some crazy topics and I’d still keep watching as long as it really interests you.
Enjoyed it - hope there’s no fallout. Maybe the old lady was hoping you’d throw a few bills her way since you were actively being paid out on a jackpot.
There's a demographic of casino-goers that will jump at any opportunity (even manufacturing them in some cases) to look like they've been wronged and start a stink. Their goal being to work their way up the management chain until someone decides it's not worth their time and just pays the person to go away.
@@bobski3333 I wish Dave would've shared a video of that! She sounds like my imagination of any of the pedestrians I run-over in Grand Theft Auto... un-guilty pleasure.
This is a great video. As a games programmer, i always code menus like this into my games. It helps debugging, level skipping and testing etc. It's just the remembering to disable these menus on release that can be an issue!
First rule of PII, if there is a date time to the second and another unique value (amount won or validation ticket numbers in this case) it can be linked back with little effort.
I found your channel a couple weeks ago and I was just tonight remarking to my SO about how much I've learned so much from you about Windows' inner workings. This is very divergent from your usual content but your unique background equips you to speak to the things you're seeing on this screen and gives us all more insight on what is going on inside this. I would love to see more of your understanding applied to other random things you find in the wild.
Seeing that you were very considering of the employee (and the casino’s reaction to her missing your video), I think I should point out that your censor on the Bingo Card ID moves at the end of that clip and shows the full identifier, undoing all of your effort to protect her.
If you go back and look at the Bingo Card ID and the values of the Bingo Card, you will see that the ID is nothing more than the Values (in Hex) of the BINGO column off set by 15 for each column. So even if the censor did not move it is eazy to create that ID for the last column.
Circa 2007-2008 I was friendly with a slot supervisor. He had worked at one casino where I occasionally played. Then came to work where I mostly played. He was relating all this "new" data on the "new" machines. He could see the holds, and percentages. Which machines were setup to be payers and attract players to the other losers. The 1 cent machines are the tightest. The progressives are next. Glad you caught this video. Last weekend I was at a casino and met a recently retired manufacture's tech. I won't say which company, but a biggy. Boy did we have a lot to discuss. As expected, he said the old 3 reel are the best payers. Not always set to pay on MAX bet.
"Attendant paid cancelled credits" sometimes refers to tickets that have been invalidated - e.g. someone found a ticket dropped by someone else, and attempted to cash it in, most often in sportsbooks. It can also be used if tech support are testing certain aspects of the machine to ensure it is functioning correctly - i.e. printing tickets of certain denominations, but then invalidating them.
Close. A channelled credit is the industry term for a pay out, if the ticket printer has a fault and they do a manual key off its listed as a attendant pay.
As a former slot attendant, yes, a cancelled credit is when a printer has a fault, the machine has a network error and cannot print a voucher, or is the machine goes down due to a GPU overheat. The customers credit payout is then “cancelled” and paid by the attendant so the Machine doesn’t attempt to print a secondary form of payment.
@@GSo_Echo This is the correct answer: CANCELLED CREDITS are any credits that are recorded and paid manually via a ticket book or such, and have not been paid out electronically via a registered ticket etc.
someone found a ticket dropped by someone else? . lol casinos don't care if you lose a ticket that loss is on you & ticket cashing machines don't care who won they don't ask for an ID . now if someone cashes out a machine they are not playing that's a huge NO NO subject to police action trespassing from casino property etc.
Hey Dave... I really enjoyed your sidestep here, and I would certainly be interested if you do more of these videos. A few weeks after you posted this video, I actually was working at a Casino hotel myself. Unfortunately due to the "atmospheric conditions" on the gaming floor and in the main casino area, I would not have been able to venture to the slot machines or anything else in order to try my hand at the games. So, I'm glad you were able to go and have a good time - little old frantic lady aside - and take home some fat stacks. Thanks for sharing this sneak peek behind the scenes - and over the shoulder - of the casino gaming industry!
That bingo thing is absolutely insane! So funny that there's some little piece of code in the slot machine program that generates a mini bingo game for every pull, that nobody can ever see, just to deal with some old law. Thanks a ton for this, this sort of behind the scenes look at not-publicly-available software is really cool. Really got me thinking about what their development must be like.
I always like to see the gears turn on machines like this, getting a look at the technical side on machines where they'd rather you don't is always cool. My preferred domain is arcade games (and certain very specific games within that) but casinos have been a point of curiosity as well, particularly due to how enigmatic they are
"Attendant paid cancelled credits". This is simply the amount of money attendants have had to pay because for one reason or another it was unable to print a valid ticket. This could be because or a printer jam or more commonly the player tracking system. Used was unable to be reached. Therefore when you hit cash out it would be unable to give you a validation number. The procedure then is for an attendant to process a "hand pay" and key the credits off the machine. This will always be proceeded by a surveillance investigation before clearing the attendant to pay. "Coin in" is the amount of money wagered on the machine. "Coin out" is the amount won by the player. If you put a $20 bill in there, play $7.50 of that, win $2.50 and cash out $15. Your bill in is $20, coin in is $7.50, coin out is $2.50 and voucher out is $15.
interesting, I always love seeing screens, menus, and programs regular folks don't get to see, for example as a pizza hut employee we use touch screen menu terminals, but after I got my hands on one's HDD I found out it was just running Ubuntu 18.04.2 LTS with a local webserver acting as the menu screen
That was pretty cool, I love seeing the back end of these things. Everyone already knows that these are games of change and that the house always wins but it is interesting to see by how much.
I like the nod to the Friendly Giant at the end. My wife picked up on it across the room. I just found your channel and subscribed. I enjoyed the video and content I’ve viewed so far. Excellent presentation, talking pace and clarity - thank you!!!!
This was a super cool concept. I'd love to see a really deep dive into the machine based on whatever information you can find, though I know they keep it pretty locked down. Footage like this is *rare* so thanks for sharing! I don't think I've ever been so interested in a slot machine :p
Adding to that, I'd love to see Dave talk about how to implement a game like this especially because these machines don't have true random odds. The odds can be configured per profit margins, local laws, etc.
Even though I'm seeing this video 2 years after it was uploaded, I really enjoyed it!! The information is totally up to date and it is a rarity that we all get to see some, 'behind the scenes,' action in a casino. Thanks Dave for making this information available!👍
The ones here in Califormia run Windows CE, you can amusingly crash them by just menuing too fast, or if you're boring you can just show them a QR code with malformed data.
Brings back bad memories of working at a casino, but would geek out on the menus when they would setup new machines and would often see machines dump out to the Shell scrips but didn't understand them and got to ignoring them. Occasionally saw machines with the 'blue screen of death' with the frowny face.
If you showed the actual amount of money you won, then the casinos won't have any trouble to verify the amounts payed, hence identifying the employee. The only real protection to her is that casinos probably do not follow your channel.
@@schwingedeshaehers Dave had to provide id for tax purposes and there is a record somewhere of the employee who paid out the cash to Dave and also which machine was played. It is simply a matter of looking up Dave's name to identify the employee. I would not be suprised if the eye in the sky followed the employ to the machine meaning there would be video of this whole transaction.
@@schwingedeshaehers I agree 100% with "NuncNunc". Additionally, the time that this occurred is clearly shown at 4:30: "SYSTEM DATE/TIME: 11/6/2021 9:40:22 PM".
the employee wouldnt get in trouble tho, but id be worried about getting sued for recording their information and displaying it to the public, cuz they can do that if you hold a membership to their casino
@@Macksbet I agree with you, the employee should be fine. I wouldn't have posted this video. Casinos, and gaming machine companies, are super secretive about their IP. Today is 11/29/21 and frankly I'm surprised this video is still up.
Hey Dave! I am but one of many, but I'm fascinated with anything technical, and will gladly watch. Thanks for sharing your passion and interest with us all :)
I used to ponder the extremely complex rules slot machines must operate by. You know, they probably incorporate principles of operant conditioning, etc, to keep us pressing that button. After many attempts to decode it, I've come to the conclusion that there are no rules. It's just a win/loss percentage that is rigged to favor the house. Why? Because any set of rules -- no matter how subtle and complex -- could eventually be learned and then gamed.
this is definitely ok your channel is both content and personality driven, and I personally enjoy listening to you talking about things you find interesting
My 2 cents. I love your videos because I remembering installing Windows 95 for the first time. Knowing you came from that era just makes it that much better. Plus like this video it gives me some insight to the random geeky kind of things I am always asking questions about. Maybe you could do a video on how a compiler actually gets built by a team? We all loved using tasm/tlink, but always wondered how did a group of people come together to code that?
Former casino employee here. The 92.5 payback is probably pretty good nowadays. Last good year to play machines was 2007 IMO. During 2008 all of them tightened up.
So refreshing to see a youtuber that understands that feedback is valuable and is not bothered by people putting a thumbs down. I did like the video, it was really interesting.
92.5 is not the worst win percentage, trust me. And Credit meter limit simply refers to the maximum value in credits that may be present for a player to bet with. To clarify, anything above 3k would require an attendant to dispense on cash out, and would be treated in a similar fashion to a 'jackpot hand pay', just without the tax deduction procedure. The 3k ticket in limit just means the cap for an individual ticket when adding credits to the machine, but there is no limit on how many 3k tickets you can add.
Loved the video, thank you! FYI: As someone who uses subtitles it would be really helpful to have them match the spoken dialogue, rather than be a totally different narrative
Hey!! Awesome video! I had a situation involving cancelled credits at my local casino! Apparently for mine, and it might not be the case in every casino, but that's when I cashed a ticket out that was worth more than $1200, not one in a single spin but over time. In the system on their end it showed as a machine lock-out jackpot, not a typical Jackpot Handpay as they would see, and came up as a canceled credit at the cashier cage. Maybe that's what happened in this situation too. I do know that it is most typically with Konami machines.
Percentage is the RTP% (Return To Player) and yes its the payout for every 1$ inserted in to the game. Basically in a 100 spins of 2$ you'll receive back in winnings around 92% of it. HOWEVER, if you're lucky, you may win the jackpot or a bigger win that puts you in the positive.
I think the "attendant paid cancelled credits" loops back to the "max ticket out" you mentioned earlier If the maximum amount of a cash out ticket is $3,000 any credit balance above that amount needs to be manually paid by an attendant (in a similar way to a handbag but not necessarily having an IRS reportable win of $1,200) so a player has probably run up a number of small wins
Some machines will do that but most will just automatically print a voucher when the limit is exceeded. Surprised at how low the limit is at that casino. Cancelled credits though commonly occur when the machine has an error like loses network connection and forces the balance of the credits to be paid out.
A voucher will print for accumulated wins. If it was a bonus win, the machine will lock up into a handpay for jackpots $1200 or higher. Amounts do not matter. It is the nature of the win. The machine will lock vouchers of certain amounts, depending on the casino, and will require a cage cashier to cash, often with management override. (You won't be able to use a voucher kiosk.)
Some of the meters you were seeing are 'lifetime' meters and can be misleading, although a machine can appear to have played millions of credits that figure will often include testing and workshop cycles that add thousands of games to stress the software and hardware in the machine. The 'denom' you were seeing allows the machine to be set to a level which equalises it against all sizes of bets and across all other machines in that establishment, this means individual machines can do their calculations re payout etc by reducing those calculations down to a single cent meaning it can always give the set percentage payout no matter what denomination goes into it.
I have seen them open up that area once in Laughlin. I had a concern that I hadn't been paid on what I thought was a winning line. They came over and opened up a similar screen and were able to go back through my previous 5 to 10 spins and verify that what I thought was a winning spin was not actually a pay line. My mistake. It is amazing the amount of information each screen holds. Love the music at the end, brings back childhood memories of the Giant, Rusty and Jerome.
Hey Dave. I’m glad to see that you are exactly how I am. If a casino attendant started pressing magic key combos on the screen, I would zone out and stare like a diligent student.
Thanks for having the balls to show us other Slot players only what Casino employees see. IMHO, the most important thing that we got to see was the "Percentage" of 92%. From what I've learned some of the low denom reel slots can be set at horrid percentages...even way lower than the 92% we viewed. That's why I stick with Video Poker and BlackJack.
I used to work at a casino. There's really nothing secret, or any kind of hack in these menus. Logs, software versions, settings (most of which are fixed), financial data, and to no one's surprise...the payback percentage, which shows how much you will lose. It might be interesting to an outsider, but trust me, if you had free access to the menu, you would get bored quick.
this is really cool, i've always had a interest towards how many common things work behind the scenes, it's very inspiring towards my own projects to see what others have done and i'd love to see more things like this!
Attendant Paid Cancelled Credits is likely a cashout that was over $3000 (ticket limit) but not $1200 or more in one spin. The machine would lock up and have an attendant pay that out because it's set to not print a >$3000 ticket. The bingo card is because this is an Oklahoma-style Class II machine; they're common in areas where the state refuses to negotiate a Class III compact with the tribes to allow house-banked games like blackjack and real slots; these tribal casinos are allowed under federal law to have player-funded games like bingo and poker, but house-banked games are only allowed in those casinos if the state either agrees to allow the tribe to have them, or automatically under federal law if the state has legal non-tribal casinos that are allowed to offer Class III games.
Great Video, Here in Montana by law the max payout percentage the machine can be set to is 88% and the minimum payout percentage is 80%. The rake is killer but still millions of dollars every day go through our casinos. Interesting side note, the max number of machines allowed in an establishment (non reservation) was 20. All the gambling machines are only available in small casinos---local bars.
This machine is know in the states as a “Stand Alone Progressive”, the banks of games linked together that accumulate a larger prize are called “Linked Progressives”. Very popular here in the US at least where I work. It gives the player that familiar feel of allowing them a large prize without the slow build up that a larger prize pool would have to endure.
Surprised that casino security did not intervene. I enjoy your videos. Used to be a high-level programmer, but seldom did little assembly programming. Well done!
A large Australian gaming machine manufacturer had an IP leak about 10-12 years ago and 4 game emulators got out onto the internet. With them you could run the games on your PC. Unticking a few boxes and ticking another got you into the service menu. From there you could see similar statistics to what are seen on the machine seen in this video. You could also change them like the payout percentage, coin value (Setting this to $100 saved having to spam the coin "button" to get a decent amount of credits in before playing for a while) and also run tests on the machine, including playing ALL the sound effects. I now have several "ring and text" tones that faithfully replicate the sounds of a popular poker machine (what us aussies call slots) on my phone thanks to those emulators, audaicty and a mp3 to ringtone converter (not really required, just change the extension to m4r).
Sounds like Aristocrat the only slot manufacturer I know of from there. I wonder if Dave Sands still works there? Anyone in the slot industry tends to know many people it's a small community but global.
Dude I absolutely loved this video. Thanks! My favourite thing in the world is learning about obscure embedded devices and software like this. The first thing that comes to my mind whenever I see any kind of public kiosk is "I wonder where I have to tap on the screen to bring up the hidden menu". Recently I also stumbled upon a trove of ISOs for well known arcade/ticket games and spent days reverse-engineering them. Deal or No Deal, Angry Birds, Snowball Toss, Monopoly Roll 'N Go, etc. It was especially really cool extracting the official audio and graphic assets from Deal or No Deal. HMU anyone if you want more info on these
Love everything about this! I don’t know how I arrived at your video today but I’m sure glad I did, your creativity and skill are fabulous 😊 I gave you a thumbs up, subscribed to your channel and shared your video with a friend…..who also subscribed 👍🏻 and now I’m checking out ALL of your videos 😎
I did find this very interesting. But I can't help but miss the old school one arm bandits that didn't rely on a CPU. And, I don't want to be paid with a voucher, there is nothing more rewarding than the sound of dozens of quarters crashing into a hopper. But, those days are gone. I would imagine the IRS and perhaps state tax agencies require casinos to have some kind of digital accounting for their slots.
Well, it's pretty much a matter of personal taste, but I like the ticketing systems. When payouts were done all in coins, cashing out a decent win usually involved waiting for slot techs and security to refill the machine after it ran out of coins, then hauling buckets of coins to the cage. Tickets make the whole process more efficient, both for the casino and the player.
This is the stuff that I am really interested in. Everyday when I see some kind of hardware I try to figure out how it works. Thanks for sharing this, it is extremely interesting.
I own an older slot machine from the 90's Total Drop is the money that falls into the coin bucket bellow the game. As the Coin hopper fills with coins at some point it overflows into the drop bucket below the machine.
When I first started gambling on video poker in the late '90's, the machines paid out in coins or tokens (generally dollar or more machines used casino tokens, while nickel or quarter machines used actual coins), but most had bill accepters for taking money in, though there were still some older machines around that you had to hand feed coins. A side effect of this was that when you cashed out, they would often run out of coins, and you would have to wait for a slot tech to come by, then they would have to get security people to handle actually loading more coins or tokens into the machine. I find it amusing that most slot and video poker machines still play a sound file of coins dropping into a hopper while printing out a ticket.
I'd say this falls under the scope of your content. You're looking under the hood of something to show, in this case at a pretty high level, how it works. I found your channel from your videos on Task manager and I feel this fits under than general theme.
I had a similar experience with a slot machine that would not accept my money. I was inputting bills, and when it came to putting in $1 dollar bills, the machine froze and disabled, causing a tech to come and get my money out. A similar menu came up when the tech accessed the screen and I could see how much the machine had taken in and had paid out. That machine also was set on a 93% payout. Needless to say, I did not play the machine and moved on to another, where I won no less than $900 on. As I moved from machine to machine, I estimated by my observations which machines may be paying out a sizable jackpot, and won $8,000 that night playing slots that I felt were going to pay out. I never had done that before..and it was what helped start my photography business that I have today...
11:38: The exact payout amount + the timestamps, or the unique Bingo ID, will definitely give the employee away if the video ever reaches the security team of the casino.
This bussiness is very sensitive. Even when it os nice to see how this things tick .... I would have avoided uploading. The people in the bussiness can tell the maker of the machine and many other things. The last thing you want is IGT or any of those big boys seeing this.
Just found your channel today and am binge-ing while I build some stuff, I found this video fascinating and I'm sure will enjoy anything you find interesting as well. Thanks for taking the chance and recording during the verification!
The "Cash In" amount at $1400 is probably the cash taken since the cash inside was last cleared from the machine - I'd bet that gets reset every time the machine is opened and emptied, it's just confusing that it's in with the other lifetime or annually cumulative stats.
I used to work in a casino as security and can confirm this, every day they all get emptied. The voucher in amounts are likely also just that days tickets, tickets cause the same $ to get used on multiple tickets all day long as people typically only insert cash once or twice, but they will use the tickets all day long.
So the payback percentage programmed for the penny denomination was 92.5% but the actual payout was (1.98 million paid/1.21 million played) 90.48% payback. The win pct is 44.4, which is pretty good (remember, wins could also mean wins that pay less than original bet). Also, the game number is not the number of games played (which was 181K + 407K), it's the game ID, which means the slot game and its specific payback percentage that's registered with the gaming commission.
![Jack Harlow - Hello Miss Johnson [Official Music Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Q86_nlRoIGw/mqdefault.jpg)
As an IT nerd, i absolutely love seeing tech like this, that we don't ever get to see or aren't supposed to see.
As an Slot technician, none of this is considered part of “secret accounting menu” (which doesn’t exist) and this man exposed absolutely zero secrets
If you’re IT nerd, you’d know this is all a simple algorithm developed in the games software.
@@Bagolters as a tech this is nothing new or big to you.
As someone who is a network admin, I understand it's just software that was written to pay out randomly (which is why I don't play slot machines it's a waste of time and money), but the statistics are still cool to see.
I was just in Vegas this weekend and I'm sure I would have gotten some weird looks if I had asked to see the payout statistics. As the consumers we are never supposed to see these menus and that's why it's fasinating to people like me.
It's not like it's some magical window into how to win the jackpot every time, but it's still none the less cool.
Lot of overlap with vending machines and associated hardware nama is a good place to start if your interested in that sort of thing
@@Techguyericd As someone who has been working in slots for twenty years, I can tell you that those menus you will absolutely see if you hit a jackpot when the attendant comes to check and verify your win. And the events log and history recall, we will show you these if you ever have a question about the amount of money you inserted or an error that may have occurred. Again, nothing secret or something that gets hidden from the public, but everything I said is very common and happens daily.
@@Prettse I'm not a huge gambler so I'll never hit a jackpot that'll get me to this screen, it's still cool non the less
As a person that writes software for a slot machine company, I thought this video was really neat. Especially since this was a competitors slot machine. And even more that it was Class II standalone progressive slot. Much of what you showed isn't a trade secret and just stuff that is required by regulations. It was particularly interesting to see which events get recorded and how they are recorded compared to how I'm used to seeing them.
Another interesting tidbit was the BMM at the end of the executable name. BMM is a group that verifies slot machines are compliant with regulations so I'm guessing the devs just ensure they don't send a test .exe to the compliance lab by specifically calling it out as BMM.
Thanks for the video it was really neat.
I don't consider this strictly a programming channel as much as a tech channel, so this qualifies. I'd like to see more like this.
So would Dave as he would have to win again....😊
The Bingo ID fact has me flabbergasted. It is both such a clever trick that quite clearly by definition fits within the word of the law...yet also shows how useless many of these types of prohibitive laws are.
Gambling is forbidden by the law in Poland, so there are video slot machines, which are classified as "skill games". The difference to a regular video slot is that all the combinations are in a fixed sequence, and you can go into a screen, where all the combinations are listed. That's about tens of thousands of pages. If you're determined enough to find your current position in the sequence (that would take ages, of course), you can predict any winning combinations and rise your bet accordingly before. This means it's technically not gambing.
Of course, noone is looking through the list of the combinations, they just hammer on the start button, as on a regular video slot machine :D
Wow! Gambling is not legal in Poland. Thanks for the interesting story about the slots. 🙂
@@AttilaSVK wow, interresting
@@Locutus Smart people, they are!
And FYI they were the ones to break Hitler's Enigma Encryption machines used to encrypt/decrypt codes.
Agreed that was one of the most interesting parts of the whole story for me as well.
I used to work as a QA Tester at a video lottery terminal company in Atlantic Canada a number of years ago and the 92.5% pay ratio is very typical for these machines. We manufactured and shipped machines all over the world and the payout was generally between 92 and 95 percent. Those menus all look very familiar to me, although they are clearly more modern graphically than what we were working on. If anyone remembers the game "swinging bells" from the late 90s and early 2000s, well that's one of the games I worked on. The later machines we worked on at the time had 16MB of flash storage and had to hold 10 games plus all the accounting and communication back-end. This forced the programmers to clean-up their code to make it run as efficiently as possible in the limited storage allocation.
College math professor here (usually Precalculus), I’ve been considering leaving education and getting a gaming license to work in that industry. Keep this style of video coming!
Absolutely, keep the content coming. It's beyond interesting to me and anyone else who feels the need to glimpse upon generally 'hidden' things or see how things work - things that you might see every day and the public wouldn't ever have a clue as to what is really going on behind the screen.
I'm one of those who like to take things apart just to see how they work - starting with the Atari ST 520 FM at 5 years old, me who worked out how to use a screwdriver.
Even now, many decades later, I find it fascinating to pick things apart and see how they operate.
Imagine my joy to stumble upon an interface on an ATM that 'accidentally' allows you to operate the machine and change variables...
Imagine stealing/losing money in a gamble, and a advertiser getting oh wait
I like these, like service menus in TV'S and monitors. Allows you to tweak settings not normally exposed to the consumer.
Fortunately, in the slots there is no way to tweak settings related to payouts, that is hard coded and can only be done by GC. As far as service menus in TVs, I love those, my favourite setting in the Samsung service menus is to disable this automatic dimming CRAP enabled by default and that cannot be disabled ........
Its fascinating how the game has to be written so that it takes its input values from another "legal" game (bingo in this case).
Gotta love loop wholes.
@@greggoog7559 hahaha lawyers are not useless
@Velzekwell have fun fighting for your rights without representation
^^ You just have a stroke there bud?
Anyway. Yeah, when the fine print gets read and you find out that a computer can play bingo while you play something else, I fail to see the point in continuing with the charade.
Frankly, I'm allowed to bet on Amazon and Google. Why can't someone bet on pixel-art of fruit?
@@nickwallette6201 please explain this better???
Very informative. I recall decades ago the casinos all advertised on billboards that their slots all paid back 99.75% or some such unbelievable %. I highly doubted it because my wife and I seldom won anything, let alone that kind of return. The info you got pretty much confirmed my suspicions. We quit blowing our savings in Nevada after the state took over the casinos from the mobs. I find it ludicrous how much better the slots and tables paid back the gamblers when the mobs ran things.
What casino was that ? REGULATED casinos are required to provide factual information on a slot and the payout percentage must be given as it is, they cannot lie about it, that's a big no-no. The payout % is just one piece of info, it is just a payout over time, actually the machine's life cycle, fortunately for casinos this does not mean that a 99% will pay you back 99 cents for each dollar you spend, the ACTUAL payout will fluctuate it can be far lower than the actual Payout, or far higher, in the end the average will make your advertised payout for the life of the machine, so a payout % does not mean the machine will ALWAYS be at that % - it could remain for a while far lower, and far higher - RTP is one thing, and hit frequency is another.
Some machines are configured to pay less frequently (high skill set) and others are set to hit more frequently (low skill set). If slots are set to pay out more frequently the smaller wins, it will be harder to hit that jackpot - Those penny slots are the WORST slots one can play -this is a marketing gimmick - because those slots often have a large number of payout lines, and if you want to play them all which is recommended, then it means you would have to spend several DOLLARS a spin - quite a lot more than the cylinder slots where you had to put only 3 quarters in ....
It was an insight experience that most people wouldn't get to share or record. Thanks for presenting and sharing.
Hi, as a Slot Tech nothing in those menus are secret and ,though I can't speak for her casino, she shouldn't get in trouble for showing you any of that information. I've personally walked guest through all of it to solve complaints they had or just general curiosity about the game. Cancelled credits are hand pays that are under the IRS limit and don't require the tax form. From my experience generally happens when a game loses network connection and cant print out a ticket voucher so forces a hand pay for that balance. Also I'm very confused on what this tech is looking for unless the machine didn't print off the Jackpot receipt and needed to get into the menu to get the information for a ticket exception.
Suppose "secret" is subjective. If I were a casino manager, I wouldn't want the players to see the payback percentage, as they can use that to determine whether they want to go to another casino. With that said, I don't know if that number is something they don't have to disclose to people who ask.
I totally agree, this information is not "secret", it is actually required to be shown upon request.
If you want to get a really good long look into a machine, ask for a reel strip verification on an older physical, non video machine. You will not make friends with that tech, and you will not be interested with the inside of machine anymore.
I've seen similar menus on video poker machines. I play video poker rather than other slots because the payout percentages are known (not disclosed directly by the casinos, but can be calculated or looked up from a variety of online sources, as the probabilities are known), and payouts are generally better than slots because there is strategy involved, and the casino relies on the fact that most people don't play correct strategy. Video poker strategy for the many games and pay tables is also available from internet sources.
@@russlehman2070 that is exactly why you do not see a lot of video poker in Indian casinos here in Northern California. It's been a few years since I was last back up where I used to work, but at the time I left you could find a lot more video poker as a percentage of total machines installed on the floor there then you could in Indian casinos here.
Foxflares I wonder if she was trying to key it off the machine and didn’t remember how 😂
As someone who also has ASD, I love it when you do these deep dives, it's so interesting. I find it crazy how literally everything in the US is taxed, here in Canada, gifts / gambling isn't taxed (unless you are a professional gambler).
Gifts below a certain amount from family are not taxed in the US. I think the limit is $25K. But yeah, "income from whatever source derived" covers just about everything.
Mental ableism and legal theft are not inclusive. Do something helpful for society, don’t steal and then excuse yourself based on bullshit
Thankful for the non taxable status of Canadian winnings! As a Canadian, I have enjoyed about $65,000 untaxed dollars this year!
A friend of mine who I won’t name used to work for a company that creates the games used in these machines. He had lots of stories about the random number generators and how they tested them. Other software testing stories too. Also stories about the way the games are developed from a marketing perspective. Getting licensing for old TV shows or movie franchises. He has said that he and his family were not allowed to play any of the games that he had any involvement in.
I think that this topic is good for your channel. It reminds us that not all software is operating systems and websites and phone apps.
Thanks Dave
Charlie
I'm very interested in the random number generation used, and how it was tested, do you have any more information to share?
@@theRPGmaster I don't have any idea how they tested them, just stories of how complex the testing was.
I used to develop the machines back in late 90's to early 2000's.
First of all these machines are highly regulated. And it's on a per state basis. Each state has there own gambling board with their own regulations but are very similar between each. I forget the exact rules for Indian casinos but since you are probably trying to make your machine cover all jurisdictions (thus doing highest common denominator rule and statistic over them all).
This is a good thing to know for the machines. If you play them. It's not some wild west scenario where the casinos just do what they want. At least normally anyhow, sure a casino could illegally swap the ROMs/programming to do what they wanted.
And first of all from looking at the trade publicans (that probably anyone can find now of days), slot machines have the worst payout although they are the most popular gambling machines. You are better off with skills based games like Blackjack or better poker. You can increase your skill in these games and thus have a higher chance of payout. Slots are all random.
On the RNG. We used a pure software based PRNG. It had to pass a very high accuracy battery of RNG tests per the regulations.
Had to be seeded well (typically by doing a loop of many PRNG reads). I forget if/how we had some system entropy source for seeding too, seems like we saved the seed in NVRAM.
And then we had to our PRNG getter function mixed in the UI loops. By having it in the UI loops it makes it impossible for anyone to time, thus unable to sync to the PRNG sequence which had a been a problem with machines that used PRNGs in the past before the regulation.
@@joeneighbor Another element is that the machines continually generate the numbers on idle - so the outcome is known as soon as a player presses the spin button - this is another thing - you will often see someone playing at a machine, and then leave, and then someone else comes, spins and wins the jackpot - the person who left would often say "Oh I wish I had stayed one more spin I would have won" - well this is a myth and not true, he would have had to match that exact TIMING between spins - so the process of continuous generation helps - there are also stories about RNG - it's amazing how much they can get away with it, even if there is a LOT of manipulation of RNG ranges - I won't mention which specific games, but there are old cylinder slots where you could literally tell the machine is changing "cycles", especially if you were one of those people continually slamming the spin button - you would sometimes run into a little DELAY before the spin, and notice that after that delay, machine pays more frequently, then you hit that delay again and then machine is tight.........software can change the range of random numbers, whilst still remaining random - machines go through extensive testing at the factory before shipped at casinos - it's simple, majority of generated numbers are tied to LOSING combinations, machines can progressively ADD in winning numbers to the range as needed or remove as needed, it has to be that way in order for a machine to stay within the LOW, HIGH and Payout%. Modern electronic machines have evolved - no "delays" but they work along the same principle. I like to call it CRNG (Controlled Random Number Generation).
Because that is what it is - I could easily write a computer game to emulate how a true slot machine works - people should stay away from slots ......
I did work experience as a teenager at a small business near my high school where they built “poker machines” (that’s what Aussies call slot machines)
These were machines destined for Singapore so they had a higher “payout rate” than the Australian ones, it was literally a switch in a hidden menu. The hidden menu was accessed via a special key on the side of the unit and gave you all sorts of diagnostics, I believe the machines were running some form of Linux on an embedded board.
The fun for me was going into the deep storage area where there were a bunch of old dusty machines that had what I think were 486 boards and had CRTs with some major burn in! It was awesome.
@jon smith Modern machines have a jurisdictional chip (really just a flashed EEPROM) that defines the range available pay tables (coin in/coin out percentage), among other things. The machines actually do a software integrity check at every reboot, though the gaming authorities do also manually verify the information they have on file (typically a full rundown of every machine in every gaming facility, including firmware, OS and software versions, enabled denominations, percentages and so on). The states often take a big cut of gaming revenue in the form of taxes, so they want to make sure nothing's slipping through the cracks.
@jon smith If it can be read, it can be copied. If it can't be read, it can't be used. It's possible there's a local key on the motherboard to decrypt, but the chips can be exchanged between similar machines. That would mean the key is the same on every motherboard, wouldn't it? Not very secure.
@jon smith I think they're sold by the machine manufacturer, based on the state's specs. That probably varies from state to state - some keep the keys to the CPUs and put anti-tamper tape on them. Keeping the firmware and software locked up would make sense too.
get on the pokies boys
I was almost expecting you to suggest a button combination that would bring up task manager in the game 🤣
I'd need root access for that, but an intriguing idea :-)
Very few slot machines run Windows... I suspect it's too hard to audit to the level that satisfies the gaming commissions. I've seen player tracking systems (player ID cards for perks and tax tracking) that run Windows CE and local-area coordination type equipment (progressive servers, bonus event controllers, media servers and such) running de-package'd desktop Windows. The machines themselves generally run a flavor of linux, or are customized enough that it simply won't admit what it's based on.
@@bobski3333 The game specifically was a .exe file which makes me think it's a Windows-based machine.
@@thenoble1 It's relatively obvious by the look of the UI and mouse pointer as well.
@@thenoble1 Could still be Windows CE as pointed out. Pretty curious about it. Hope the binaries leak at some point.
Why do people hate on premieres? I'm not launching it until the next morning anyway, would it be better to just not announce? I don't get the angst! But I don't think I'll continue doing it as it seems to bother some.
I like Premieres as it’s a cool way to interact with content creators, I don’t know why nobody loves them
Who knows, Dave.... Hang on a sec, did you launch this last night, and leave watchers at the "please wait" screen for 7 hours? That night do it. People getting anxious waiting for it to start...
probably because they pop up in the subscription feed like a video, get you interested, but then you can't actually watch it
I hate premiers and here's why:
1. They show up in my subscription feed at the front of the list crowding out other actually viewable videos.
2. Ironically, premiers don't stay at the top of the subscription list so they crowd out videos but then fall down do be forgotten; why would I remember the start time of a video that I haven't seen in my stream for a whole day?
3. They have a distracting different presentation that draws your eye to it even though it isn't available.
4. When actually premiering it's listed as "live n--- it seems like the text has changed to "premiering now" but it is still in the standard red "this is live" color
5. If I'm not on when the video is premiering, I'll tend to see the same thumbnail leading me to believe that the video is a reupload of something rather than a new video.
The only time I don't have issues with premiers is when they are for live streams but doesn't seem to be the case often for channels I follow.
It's like normal TV, you have to watch now or miss out and it's not a real RUclips live stream so it falls between them. Kinda pointless... 🤷🏼♂️
In school, especially math and programming classes, you always wonder how you can apply what you learn to life. This type of video is an excellent example of math and programming in real life.
Thoroughly enjoyed, thanks Dave.
Love the 'peek behind the curtain' on these arcade games. Remember years ago playing Outrun I believe, and the game locked up. I moaned to the bloke running the arcade place, and he simply flipped the power switch. When it came back up he flipped the switch again, and this time it came up with 99 credits. He simply walked away. I was there all day! Didn't get much better at the game though... Remember walking home with backache and leg cramp as playing that game all day!
These are not arcade games, though.
@@skaruts ; Yes, they are. They are in an arcade. They are games. They are arcade games. They are also fruit machines. Doesn't mean you get a real banana if you win, nor do you feed it half a pound of grapes.
I've a laptop. It sits on my desk, rather than my lap. Doesn't mean I call it a desktop.
Words associated with an object may not always make sense, but they are still valid.
So yes, they're arcade games.
@@chrisjlocke no one ever refers to these games as arcade games. Casino games is the what people always call them.
It's also debatable whether these "games" should be should be considered games. I've never played the spin wheels, but it's probably close to the process of playing slot machines, where all you do is mindlessly press one button.
Agreed. Calling peanuts 'peanuts' is mad too - they're not nuts. They're in the same family as peas, so maybe they should be called 'peapeas' ? Language is a weird thing.
But flat out bonking me on the head saying 'they're not arcade games' is wrong. You may disapprove of the categorisation which is all fine and dandy, so just prefix it with 'I believe ...' and suffix it with '... because '.
@@chrisjlocke This isn't merely semantics, though. Casino games (games of chance) were also separated by law from all the others. You wouldn't find those games in any regular arcade place.
The percentage is for the lifetime of the machine. So typically you will not get paid 92.50% of every 1$ going into the game. Its just the expected payout percentage of the machines lifetime, which if I remember correctly is on average over 7 years or around 10million spins. For context I work in a casino, which is how I learned this. Also 92.50 is a good "RTP" percentage, in my area we average 87-90 depending on the manufacturer and game. I also just wanted to say still love the content. Its nice to see someone's perspective on the casino and seeing the attendant screen deciphered lol.
The other day I was next to an ATM restarting. I wanted so much to stand around and record the boot up process (it ran windows 7) but I was pretty sure that the other people waiting and the camera above me would not be so happy. I really enjoyed your video, you don't see the inner workings of this stuff every day.
@Rocket Ronnie did you get the £10?
it's kinda anoying that it feel so taboo.
I mean if the machine can be completely owned just by the information being displayed on film why wouldn't you want tech nerds to film every single machine so that you can actually patch things up?
I worked at a retail store were customers had a front facing screen where it displayed the price and obviously some promotions, what they didn't know was that it also was a touch screen. that touch input resulted on a touch input on the cashiers side!
When I told my boss and showed that anybody could literally walk up to the cash point, press "randomly" on > more, deposit, 1999, ok, ok" and get 1999 NOK out of the machine.
my boss didn't care since "obviously nobody is going to know that".
The other issue I notified was with the "50% off because out of date" stickers we had, we had those fancy stickers that had the EAN code with the discount already coded into it.
My main issue was that the code would be like 01yyyy0000000xxxxxx, where Y was the product number (PLU) and X was the "weight" where the last three X are 0.x grams or if the number started with 02 it was the price where the last two x are in cents.
My boss did absolutely nothing, I sendt out an email to the main IT department and years later nothing has changed.
LOL, one of the buys at the bank needed to restart and OLD and clunky ATM (mostly IBM HW) and offered me to see the boot process .... When it splashed the OS/2 WARP screen ... I was spechless LOL .... OS/2 booted in a decent time but as soon as the desktop appeared, a BIG OLD 80's image "OFF LINE" in giant caracters covered the screen. It has been there for 20 to 30 minutes. At this point the machine (I believe) the machine is downloading some sort of client and launchs it. at the end. The ATM app was Diebold's. I have seen some ATM on the desktop but its is PRETTY RARE .... In some machine the bar for the language of the keyboard is floating on the bottom LOL.
As one who has won quite a few substantial jackpots I found this quite interesting. Thank you. I've never personally seen these screens on any of my handpays.
11:56 - They'll identify the employee easily .They'll look where and when you won the jackpot, then look at the camera / admin creds used at the machine, and they'll have her.... You identified many unique identifiers for this jackpot session, so they can pinpoint it easily.
The employee is at the bottom deck of a freighter to Brazil. The Casino sent 3 "Erasers" to her home. She was ready for them. After defeating them she went off the grid and is starting a new life.
Just a quick comment, 92.5% payout on a penny slot is really really good! A report from 2019 shows Las Vegas slot machine payouts on average (better payouts offstrp, then downtown with they strip being the worse) - Penny slots - 88.30% RTP (11.7% house edge)
Nickel slots - 91.63% RTP (8.37% house edge)
Quarter slots - 89.40% RTP (10.60% house edge)
Dollar slots - 92.30% RTP (7.70% house edge)
Multi denomination - 93.61% RTP (6.39% house edge)
Penny slots will be the worst house edge most of the time. If you are playing on the strip, expect a worse payout than a locals casino.
I work in this industry. The credit meter limit is a max value the credit meter can reach. If it goes over that, it will automatically pay out the balance.
So if the credit limit is 500, and you win 750, the credit will count to 500 and print a ticket for 250.
Thanks! I guess that's the same as the "credit limit" on old video games, where Tempest was limited to 40, for example. Except I think Tempest just ate money after that!
Can you elaborate please? I don't understand
That's called "split pay"
Great to see the complexity of gaming machines, it was informative and well worth a watch. Thanks Dave.
I always love seeing behind the scenes configuration panels. When I was a cashier at the 99c Store, you could crash the POS software by mashing TOTAL a bunch on the register. It would kick you back out to the Windows XP POS desktop and you could browse around the files and different programs installed on the desktop (including relaunching the POS software).
Subway's PoS run Windows 10 and crash every time it auto-updates, especially if Microsoft issues an update to .NET framework.
Interesting. I had a book about 25 years ago called “beat the one armed bandits” or something like that. Talked all about the machine percentages and how combinations were cycled in and out and the frequency depended on how close it was to the percentage payback, length since that last jackpot, etc…. That stuff was never really a secret, but the book ventured into some different territory with supposed secrets on how to locate the better machines in the casino and when they might be ripe to pay, etc..
House always wins in the long term though, of course
in my village some tough guys returned from working abroad and they were geniuses - They put half of what they earned into an illegal slot machine, they waited 5 hours for someone to win "their money" so they take it back, they decided to go to their homes to get the rest of their money from wife/mother. when they returned some guy put 1$ and won their 3 month salaries and went home, one accepted his fate another one (village retard) poured gasoline on the bar and was barely contained by his friend. It was in that moment I was grateful that gun control by NATO after the war was so strict.
@@061Hitachi What did the coppers do? You can't leave us hangin...
@@raidenpz It ended at that, he didn't pour a lot and it was outside, the guy who won called his family and they took wheelbarrows and filled them with coins and went home.
Como se llama el libro
House will always win because it’s everyone else money in the machines 🤣🤣. So even if you “win” you’re winning someone’s money from all the times before
I think that many of the nerds on this channel, like myself, intimately enjoy taking things apart and seeing how they work. In that way, even though this is a "digression" from your regular content, it is 100% on brand.
Awesome video, pretty neat to see the stuff behind the scenes. One of my favorite shows back in the day was Breaking Vegas, I wish they would bring that back. One of my favorite episodes was when a programmer hacked a slot machine ROM to pay a jackpot after a specific series of events.
I actually played in a casino in California that used Class II slot machines (that is, the ones that use bingo cards and draws to determine wins). On those machines, the actual bingo card is shown in the lower corner of the display somewhere, so you know it's actually using them.
I assume that the machines are loaded with firmware designed for both Class I (traditional RNG) and Class II play - there's probably just a toggle switch in the service menu somewhere that enables the two modes.
the "bill in" is the amount of cash in since the last count on the machine. and the "Drop" is when they remove the money from the machine. i was a slot tech and cash cage person on a casino boat in key largo Fl the good old SUN CRUSE #1 boat.
Had this suspicion, glad I came and found confirmation.
In my days while I was a student (1st year of uni). I used to be a programmer for those kind of machines (some really shitty old Russian machines). The menu was by far less friendly, but I remember that you can program a lot of stuff like the payout rate, how frequent the machine throws "jackpots", the type of credit depending on the coin sensor (yes, those where coin operated), an a lot of other stuff. I remember that there even was a menu to empty the machine of every credit using the coin hopper and the coin count was displayed in the screen to "speed up" counting (even when internally most of those machines also had a bypass button to make the coin hopper work).
Btw. The roms of those old machines can be emulated with MAME32. I don't remember the rom name, but what I remember is that I used the roms to test some settings before programming that to a real machine.
Is it worth it or even possible to build an online casino?
@@keylanoslokj1806 Considering that there are a quite a few online casinos out there.. technically yes, practically it's probably not a market you want to join (for one, you need to register that company in the right country to get the right legislative grounds).
@@keylanoslokj1806 Online casinos are everywhere in Sweden for an example. It used to be illegal but that changed quite recently. If you have a unique casino theme with an easy to remember/catchy name then honestly it's quite an easy market to get into I believe.
@@GreenSwede how do i short out the legal issues with the local authorities
@@GreenSwede how would you go on about it
I think the biggest correlation between all the videos I watch on RUclips is that the creators genuinely enjoy what they’re making the video on. Of course your advanced knowledge helps a lot in what makes me click on the video.
I guess what I’m saying is you could really do some crazy topics and I’d still keep watching as long as it really interests you.
Enjoyed it - hope there’s no fallout. Maybe the old lady was hoping you’d throw a few bills her way since you were actively being paid out on a jackpot.
There's a demographic of casino-goers that will jump at any opportunity (even manufacturing them in some cases) to look like they've been wronged and start a stink. Their goal being to work their way up the management chain until someone decides it's not worth their time and just pays the person to go away.
We do not want to encourage bad behaviour by fuckwits.
@@bobski3333 I wish Dave would've shared a video of that! She sounds like my imagination of any of the pedestrians I run-over in Grand Theft Auto... un-guilty pleasure.
This is a great video. As a games programmer, i always code menus like this into my games. It helps debugging, level skipping and testing etc. It's just the remembering to disable these menus on release that can be an issue!
well unless you intentionally added it as a feature or easter egg
First rule of PII, if there is a date time to the second and another unique value (amount won or validation ticket numbers in this case) it can be linked back with little effort.
I found your channel a couple weeks ago and I was just tonight remarking to my SO about how much I've learned so much from you about Windows' inner workings. This is very divergent from your usual content but your unique background equips you to speak to the things you're seeing on this screen and gives us all more insight on what is going on inside this. I would love to see more of your understanding applied to other random things you find in the wild.
Seeing that you were very considering of the employee (and the casino’s reaction to her missing your video), I think I should point out that your censor on the Bingo Card ID moves at the end of that clip and shows the full identifier, undoing all of your effort to protect her.
If you go back and look at the Bingo Card ID and the values of the Bingo Card, you will see that the ID is nothing more than the Values (in Hex) of the BINGO column off set by 15 for each column. So even if the censor did not move it is eazy to create that ID for the last column.
Circa 2007-2008 I was friendly with a slot supervisor. He had worked at one casino where I occasionally played. Then came to work where I mostly played. He was relating all this "new" data on the "new" machines. He could see the holds, and percentages. Which machines were setup to be payers and attract players to the other losers. The 1 cent machines are the tightest. The progressives are next. Glad you caught this video.
Last weekend I was at a casino and met a recently retired manufacture's tech. I won't say which company, but a biggy. Boy did we have a lot to discuss. As expected, he said the old 3 reel are the best payers. Not always set to pay on MAX bet.
"Attendant paid cancelled credits" sometimes refers to tickets that have been invalidated - e.g. someone found a ticket dropped by someone else, and attempted to cash it in, most often in sportsbooks. It can also be used if tech support are testing certain aspects of the machine to ensure it is functioning correctly - i.e. printing tickets of certain denominations, but then invalidating them.
well that is how much shit is tried to insert in the machine.
Close. A channelled credit is the industry term for a pay out, if the ticket printer has a fault and they do a manual key off its listed as a attendant pay.
As a former slot attendant, yes, a cancelled credit is when a printer has a fault, the machine has a network error and cannot print a voucher, or is the machine goes down due to a GPU overheat. The customers credit payout is then “cancelled” and paid by the attendant so the Machine doesn’t attempt to print a secondary form of payment.
@@GSo_Echo This is the correct answer: CANCELLED CREDITS are any credits that are recorded and paid manually via a ticket book or such, and have not been paid out electronically via a registered ticket etc.
someone found a ticket dropped by someone else? . lol casinos don't care if you lose a ticket that loss is on you & ticket cashing machines don't care who won they don't ask for an ID . now if someone cashes out a machine they are not playing that's a huge NO NO subject to police action trespassing from casino property etc.
Hey Dave...
I really enjoyed your sidestep here, and I would certainly be interested if you do more of these videos.
A few weeks after you posted this video, I actually was working at a Casino hotel myself. Unfortunately due to the "atmospheric conditions" on the gaming floor and in the main casino area, I would not have been able to venture to the slot machines or anything else in order to try my hand at the games. So, I'm glad you were able to go and have a good time - little old frantic lady aside - and take home some fat stacks.
Thanks for sharing this sneak peek behind the scenes - and over the shoulder - of the casino gaming industry!
You are a brave man for filming this lol. Thanks for sharing and I would absolutely love to see more random geeky stuff like this!
That bingo thing is absolutely insane! So funny that there's some little piece of code in the slot machine program that generates a mini bingo game for every pull, that nobody can ever see, just to deal with some old law. Thanks a ton for this, this sort of behind the scenes look at not-publicly-available software is really cool. Really got me thinking about what their development must be like.
Actually you should be able to see the bingo game. I'm not sure if that everywhere, but the class II slots that I work on show you the bingo game.
I always like to see the gears turn on machines like this, getting a look at the technical side on machines where they'd rather you don't is always cool. My preferred domain is arcade games (and certain very specific games within that) but casinos have been a point of curiosity as well, particularly due to how enigmatic they are
"Attendant paid cancelled credits". This is simply the amount of money attendants have had to pay because for one reason or another it was unable to print a valid ticket. This could be because or a printer jam or more commonly the player tracking system. Used was unable to be reached. Therefore when you hit cash out it would be unable to give you a validation number. The procedure then is for an attendant to process a "hand pay" and key the credits off the machine. This will always be proceeded by a surveillance investigation before clearing the attendant to pay.
"Coin in" is the amount of money wagered on the machine.
"Coin out" is the amount won by the player.
If you put a $20 bill in there, play $7.50 of that, win $2.50 and cash out $15. Your bill in is $20, coin in is $7.50, coin out is $2.50 and voucher out is $15.
interesting, I always love seeing screens, menus, and programs regular folks don't get to see, for example as a pizza hut employee we use touch screen menu terminals, but after I got my hands on one's HDD I found out it was just running Ubuntu 18.04.2 LTS with a local webserver acting as the menu screen
That detailed explanation was very interesting. Thank you for being respectful and trying to protect her identity.
That was pretty cool, I love seeing the back end of these things. Everyone already knows that these are games of change and that the house always wins but it is interesting to see by how much.
I like the nod to the Friendly Giant at the end. My wife picked up on it across the room. I just found your channel and subscribed. I enjoyed the video and content I’ve viewed so far. Excellent presentation, talking pace and clarity - thank you!!!!
This was a super cool concept. I'd love to see a really deep dive into the machine based on whatever information you can find, though I know they keep it pretty locked down. Footage like this is *rare* so thanks for sharing! I don't think I've ever been so interested in a slot machine :p
Adding to that, I'd love to see Dave talk about how to implement a game like this especially because these machines don't have true random odds. The odds can be configured per profit margins, local laws, etc.
All the dude found was some accounting stuff. Nothing secret or special about it.
@@ComputerJunkie00 the article the is so much so but and the and
Even though I'm seeing this video 2 years after it was uploaded, I really enjoyed it!! The information is totally up to date and it is a rarity that we all get to see some, 'behind the scenes,' action in a casino. Thanks Dave for making this information available!👍
You should see if you can take a look at one of those computerized Coca-Cola branded drink dispensers. I heard some of those machines run Windows CE
I'd believe it. One time I saw one where the screen had a .NET exception.
The CC machines I work on are IC12 or C++ variants.
The ones here in Califormia run Windows CE, you can amusingly crash them by just menuing too fast, or if you're boring you can just show them a QR code with malformed data.
Brings back bad memories of working at a casino, but would geek out on the menus when they would setup new machines and would often see machines dump out to the Shell scrips but didn't understand them and got to ignoring them. Occasionally saw machines with the 'blue screen of death' with the frowny face.
If you showed the actual amount of money you won, then the casinos won't have any trouble to verify the amounts payed, hence identifying the employee. The only real protection to her is that casinos probably do not follow your channel.
It depends on when it was. And the question is, how many casino could it be.
@@schwingedeshaehers Dave had to provide id for tax purposes and there is a record somewhere of the employee who paid out the cash to Dave and also which machine was played. It is simply a matter of looking up Dave's name to identify the employee. I would not be suprised if the eye in the sky followed the employ to the machine meaning there would be video of this whole transaction.
@@schwingedeshaehers I agree 100% with "NuncNunc". Additionally, the time that this occurred is clearly shown at 4:30: "SYSTEM DATE/TIME: 11/6/2021 9:40:22 PM".
the employee wouldnt get in trouble tho, but id be worried about getting sued for recording their information and displaying it to the public, cuz they can do that if you hold a membership to their casino
@@Macksbet I agree with you, the employee should be fine. I wouldn't have posted this video. Casinos, and gaming machine companies, are super secretive about their IP. Today is 11/29/21 and frankly I'm surprised this video is still up.
Hey Dave! I am but one of many, but I'm fascinated with anything technical, and will gladly watch. Thanks for sharing your passion and interest with us all :)
Cool, thanks!
This was incredibly entertaining. Just to see a breakdown like this... awesome. Love your videos Dave - need about 4 or 5 more a day and I'll be good!
As a gambling channel and somewhat of an Tech nerd I thoroughly enjoyed this video, thank you.
I used to ponder the extremely complex rules slot machines must operate by. You know, they probably incorporate principles of operant conditioning, etc, to keep us pressing that button.
After many attempts to decode it, I've come to the conclusion that there are no rules. It's just a win/loss percentage that is rigged to favor the house.
Why? Because any set of rules -- no matter how subtle and complex -- could eventually be learned and then gamed.
92.5 is pretty good for a penny machine. They go by denomination. You aren't going to find a 98% unless you are playing a dollar machine
this is definitely ok
your channel is both content and personality driven, and I personally enjoy listening to you talking about things you find interesting
My 2 cents. I love your videos because I remembering installing Windows 95 for the first time. Knowing you came from that era just makes it that much better. Plus like this video it gives me some insight to the random geeky kind of things I am always asking questions about. Maybe you could do a video on how a compiler actually gets built by a team? We all loved using tasm/tlink, but always wondered how did a group of people come together to code that?
Love revealing secrets. Especially from those who want things all their own way, like casinos.
Former casino employee here. The 92.5 payback is probably pretty good nowadays. Last good year to play machines was 2007 IMO. During 2008 all of them tightened up.
@garyt1957 LOL given the name of the game, I'm not surprised - 😂😁
For anybody curious, I took the short time to calculate the any win percent from this specific machine, it's 44.45%
Thank you very much 👍👍👍 yo....
So refreshing to see a youtuber that understands that feedback is valuable and is not bothered by people putting a thumbs down.
I did like the video, it was really interesting.
Thanks! I figure thumbs down are instructive, hate to see them get rid of them!
Adding to the mass of voices - I'm very interested in learning how things work and this is a great video. Thanks for sharing it!
Glad it was helpful! I'll try more random stuff like it!
92.5 is not the worst win percentage, trust me. And Credit meter limit simply refers to the maximum value in credits that may be present for a player to bet with. To clarify, anything above 3k would require an attendant to dispense on cash out, and would be treated in a similar fashion to a 'jackpot hand pay', just without the tax deduction procedure. The 3k ticket in limit just means the cap for an individual ticket when adding credits to the machine, but there is no limit on how many 3k tickets you can add.
Loved the video, thank you! FYI: As someone who uses subtitles it would be really helpful to have them match the spoken dialogue, rather than be a totally different narrative
Hey!! Awesome video! I had a situation involving cancelled credits at my local casino! Apparently for mine, and it might not be the case in every casino, but that's when I cashed a ticket out that was worth more than $1200, not one in a single spin but over time. In the system on their end it showed as a machine lock-out jackpot, not a typical Jackpot Handpay as they would see, and came up as a canceled credit at the cashier cage. Maybe that's what happened in this situation too. I do know that it is most typically with Konami machines.
This video complements your other videos a lot. I really enjoyed it, hope you make more like these
Percentage is the RTP% (Return To Player) and yes its the payout for every 1$ inserted in to the game. Basically in a 100 spins of 2$ you'll receive back in winnings around 92% of it.
HOWEVER, if you're lucky, you may win the jackpot or a bigger win that puts you in the positive.
I think the "attendant paid cancelled credits" loops back to the "max ticket out" you mentioned earlier
If the maximum amount of a cash out ticket is $3,000 any credit balance above that amount needs to be manually paid by an attendant (in a similar way to a handbag but not necessarily having an IRS reportable win of $1,200) so a player has probably run up a number of small wins
Some machines will do that but most will just automatically print a voucher when the limit is exceeded. Surprised at how low the limit is at that casino. Cancelled credits though commonly occur when the machine has an error like loses network connection and forces the balance of the credits to be paid out.
A voucher will print for accumulated wins. If it was a bonus win, the machine will lock up into a handpay for jackpots $1200 or higher. Amounts do not matter. It is the nature of the win. The machine will lock vouchers of certain amounts, depending on the casino, and will require a cage cashier to cash, often with management override. (You won't be able to use a voucher kiosk.)
I love how you seem more excited about seeing the internals of the machine than winning the jackpot.
Some of the meters you were seeing are 'lifetime' meters and can be misleading, although a machine can appear to have played millions of credits that figure will often include testing and workshop cycles that add thousands of games to stress the software and hardware in the machine. The 'denom' you were seeing allows the machine to be set to a level which equalises it against all sizes of bets and across all other machines in that establishment, this means individual machines can do their calculations re payout etc by reducing those calculations down to a single cent meaning it can always give the set percentage payout no matter what denomination goes into it.
I have seen them open up that area once in Laughlin. I had a concern that I hadn't been paid on what I thought was a winning line. They came over and opened up a similar screen and were able to go back through my previous 5 to 10 spins and verify that what I thought was a winning spin was not actually a pay line. My mistake. It is amazing the amount of information each screen holds. Love the music at the end, brings back childhood memories of the Giant, Rusty and Jerome.
Hey Dave. I’m glad to see that you are exactly how I am. If a casino attendant started pressing magic key combos on the screen, I would zone out and stare like a diligent student.
Thanks for having the balls to show us other Slot players only what Casino employees see. IMHO, the most important thing that we got to see was the "Percentage" of 92%. From what I've learned some of the low denom reel slots can be set at horrid percentages...even way lower than the 92% we viewed. That's why I stick with Video Poker and BlackJack.
I used to work at a casino. There's really nothing secret, or any kind of hack in these menus. Logs, software versions, settings (most of which are fixed), financial data, and to no one's surprise...the payback percentage, which shows how much you will lose. It might be interesting to an outsider, but trust me, if you had free access to the menu, you would get bored quick.
I’m a simple man, I see a video from Dave, I watch it. Thank you for all the amazing content, I have been playing catch up.
this is really cool, i've always had a interest towards how many common things work behind the scenes, it's very inspiring towards my own projects to see what others have done and i'd love to see more things like this!
Attendant Paid Cancelled Credits is likely a cashout that was over $3000 (ticket limit) but not $1200 or more in one spin. The machine would lock up and have an attendant pay that out because it's set to not print a >$3000 ticket. The bingo card is because this is an Oklahoma-style Class II machine; they're common in areas where the state refuses to negotiate a Class III compact with the tribes to allow house-banked games like blackjack and real slots; these tribal casinos are allowed under federal law to have player-funded games like bingo and poker, but house-banked games are only allowed in those casinos if the state either agrees to allow the tribe to have them, or automatically under federal law if the state has legal non-tribal casinos that are allowed to offer Class III games.
Anything a programmer finds interesting, I'm game for. Thanks Dave!
Great Video, Here in Montana by law the max payout percentage the machine can be set to is 88% and the minimum payout percentage is 80%. The rake is killer but still millions of dollars every day go through our casinos. Interesting side note, the max number of machines allowed in an establishment (non reservation) was 20. All the gambling machines are only available in small casinos---local bars.
This machine is know in the states as a “Stand Alone Progressive”, the banks of games linked together that accumulate a larger prize are called “Linked Progressives”.
Very popular here in the US at least where I work. It gives the player that familiar feel of allowing them a large prize without the slow build up that a larger prize pool would have to endure.
Surprised that casino security did not intervene. I enjoy your videos. Used to be a high-level programmer, but seldom did little assembly programming. Well done!
A large Australian gaming machine manufacturer had an IP leak about 10-12 years ago and 4 game emulators got out onto the internet. With them you could run the games on your PC. Unticking a few boxes and ticking another got you into the service menu. From there you could see similar statistics to what are seen on the machine seen in this video. You could also change them like the payout percentage, coin value (Setting this to $100 saved having to spam the coin "button" to get a decent amount of credits in before playing for a while) and also run tests on the machine, including playing ALL the sound effects. I now have several "ring and text" tones that faithfully replicate the sounds of a popular poker machine (what us aussies call slots) on my phone thanks to those emulators, audaicty and a mp3 to ringtone converter (not really required, just change the extension to m4r).
Sounds like Aristocrat the only slot manufacturer I know of from there. I wonder if Dave Sands still works there? Anyone in the slot industry tends to know many people it's a small community but global.
Would love to know more about this in any way.
To answer your question at the end, I thought this was incredibly fascinating and absolutely warranted a video; thanks for sharing!
Dude I absolutely loved this video. Thanks! My favourite thing in the world is learning about obscure embedded devices and software like this.
The first thing that comes to my mind whenever I see any kind of public kiosk is "I wonder where I have to tap on the screen to bring up the hidden menu".
Recently I also stumbled upon a trove of ISOs for well known arcade/ticket games and spent days reverse-engineering them. Deal or No Deal, Angry Birds, Snowball Toss, Monopoly Roll 'N Go, etc.
It was especially really cool extracting the official audio and graphic assets from Deal or No Deal.
HMU anyone if you want more info on these
Glad you enjoyed it!
I want more info on this, this is interesting
Love everything about this! I don’t know how I arrived at your video today but I’m sure glad I did, your creativity and skill are fabulous 😊 I gave you a thumbs up, subscribed to your channel and shared your video with a friend…..who also subscribed 👍🏻 and now I’m checking out ALL of your videos 😎
I did find this very interesting. But I can't help but miss the old school one arm bandits that didn't rely on a CPU. And, I don't want to be paid with a voucher, there is nothing more rewarding than the sound of dozens of quarters crashing into a hopper. But, those days are gone. I would imagine the IRS and perhaps state tax agencies require casinos to have some kind of digital accounting for their slots.
Well, it's pretty much a matter of personal taste, but I like the ticketing systems. When payouts were done all in coins, cashing out a decent win usually involved waiting for slot techs and security to refill the machine after it ran out of coins, then hauling buckets of coins to the cage. Tickets make the whole process more efficient, both for the casino and the player.
This is the stuff that I am really interested in. Everyday when I see some kind of hardware I try to figure out how it works. Thanks for sharing this, it is extremely interesting.
I found it interesting that the actual payout rate seems to be 90.5%, even lower than what the first screen says.
They tend to hold more to buffer large payouts like jackpots. They will rarely if ever overpay.
I noticed that too. 90.48% over a few hundred thousand pulls.
I own an older slot machine from the 90's Total Drop is the money that falls into the coin bucket bellow the game. As the Coin hopper fills with coins at some point it overflows into the drop bucket below the machine.
When I first started gambling on video poker in the late '90's, the machines paid out in coins or tokens (generally dollar or more machines used casino tokens, while nickel or quarter machines used actual coins), but most had bill accepters for taking money in, though there were still some older machines around that you had to hand feed coins. A side effect of this was that when you cashed out, they would often run out of coins, and you would have to wait for a slot tech to come by, then they would have to get security people to handle actually loading more coins or tokens into the machine. I find it amusing that most slot and video poker machines still play a sound file of coins dropping into a hopper while printing out a ticket.
I'd say this falls under the scope of your content. You're looking under the hood of something to show, in this case at a pretty high level, how it works. I found your channel from your videos on Task manager and I feel this fits under than general theme.
I had a similar experience with a slot machine that would not accept my money. I was inputting bills, and when it came to putting in $1 dollar bills, the machine froze and disabled, causing a tech to come and get my money out. A similar menu came up when the tech accessed the screen and I could see how much the machine had taken in and had paid out. That machine also was set on a 93% payout. Needless to say, I did not play the machine and moved on to another, where I won no less than $900 on. As I moved from machine to machine, I estimated by my observations which machines may be paying out a sizable jackpot, and won $8,000 that night playing slots that I felt were going to pay out. I never had done that before..and it was what helped start my photography business that I have today...
11:38: The exact payout amount + the timestamps, or the unique Bingo ID, will definitely give the employee away if the video ever reaches the security team of the casino.
This bussiness is very sensitive. Even when it os nice to see how this things tick .... I would have avoided uploading. The people in the bussiness can tell the maker of the machine and many other things. The last thing you want is IGT or any of those big boys seeing this.
Just found your channel today and am binge-ing while I build some stuff, I found this video fascinating and I'm sure will enjoy anything you find interesting as well. Thanks for taking the chance and recording during the verification!
The "Cash In" amount at $1400 is probably the cash taken since the cash inside was last cleared from the machine - I'd bet that gets reset every time the machine is opened and emptied, it's just confusing that it's in with the other lifetime or annually cumulative stats.
I used to work in a casino as security and can confirm this, every day they all get emptied. The voucher in amounts are likely also just that days tickets, tickets cause the same $ to get used on multiple tickets all day long as people typically only insert cash once or twice, but they will use the tickets all day long.
So the payback percentage programmed for the penny denomination was 92.5% but the actual payout was (1.98 million paid/1.21 million played) 90.48% payback. The win pct is 44.4, which is pretty good (remember, wins could also mean wins that pay less than original bet). Also, the game number is not the number of games played (which was 181K + 407K), it's the game ID, which means the slot game and its specific payback percentage that's registered with the gaming commission.