If You Can't Beat'em, Cheat'em: Slot Machine Cheats 1. Inserting Cheat Codes into the Software. Only a handful of people have access to slots software. Back in the day, a notorious slots cheater by the name of Ronald Dale Harris rigged the slot machine code to ensure that he could generate winnings for himself. This crafty engineer won a. By putting the bottom in through the coin chute and the top through the coin slot, the cheats were able to jam the machine and force the game to release all the coins it had stored. Not all slot machines are based on the same RNG, therefore always look for loose slot machines with the highest payback. Most casinos advertise the slots payback percentages. However, if you cannot figure out the payback statistics remember that as a rule $5 (or higher) slot machines provide the highest paybacks of up to 99%. Carmichael was in the slot machine cheating business for over 20 years. 30 years ago, when Carmichael got started, the state-of-the-art slot machine cheating tool was a 'top-bottom joint', which is just a piece of metal that slides into the coin release slot. This triggers un-earned payouts in massive amounts—or at least it did in 1980.
There is something of an ongoing battle between the manufacturers and designers of slot machines and those people who make a career out of cheating them, and in a change from our usual slot playing guides and slot playing articles we are going to take a look at how people have, over the years, managed to cheat, defraud and scam slot machines found on casino floors across the globe.
We would like to point out that the following information and ways of cheating slot machines is provided for information purposes only and we do not condone cheating slot machines, in fact if you try and cheat a slot you are likely to be spotted more or less instantly by the security systems in place in all land based casinos and will find yourself on the wrong side of the law.
Coin Based Slot Cheats
There have been many coin based slot cheating methods over the years, some of them quite basic methods such as using counterfeit coins, in fact when the older styled coin mechanisms were attached to slot machines it was quite common for people to make lead based coins which due to them being non magnetic would simply glide through the coin mechanism and register credits.
There were also a few people who actually made counterfeit coins using ice moulds of the coins and would place the ice based coins into the coin mechanisms, get credits awarded, play off those credits and they would collect any winnings that spun in.
The beauty of this method of cheating slot machines was that by the time the casino staff emptied the cash boxes of the slot machines the ice would have melted and the water would have evaporated therefore leaving no trace of the counterfeit coins.
Another coin based slot cheating method was to attach a coin to a piece of wire, the most commonly used wire was the type that is used by a grass strimming machine which is a non magnetic plastic type of wire, with some skill a cheat could insert the coin past the coin mechanism security features, register credits, then pout the coin back out and repeat the process, this method of cheating the coin mechanism could and did register a lot of credits in a very short amount of time.
However, over the years casino operators and the slot machine designers have now designed some of the most advanced coin mechanisms ever seen, and all of the above ways of cheating the coin mechanisms are now obsolete.
Hopper and Coin Tube Cheats
Inside a slot machine you will find either a set of payout tubes or something known as a coin hopper. The older styles gaming machines have a set of coin tubes, and as coins are fed into the coin slot they first pass over the coin tube and fill it up, any surplus coins then pass over the top of the filled coin tube and go straight into the coin box.
As the base of these coin tubes is a solenoid type of mechanism, and when a player wins the slot machines CPU will send a number of signals to the solenoid which are turned into pulses, the solenoid is connected to small plungers and for each pulse sent the plunger pushes one coin at a time out of the tube to pay the player his or her winnings.
This was a fairly fool proof system for paying winners, however it didn't take long for slot cheats to devise a way of defrauding these coin tubes, and how they would do it was by drilling a small hole in the wooden casing of the slot machine, with a small cordless drill or some other such device and then by inserting a small screwdriver into the hole they could manually manipulate the solenoid and plunger therefore emptying the slot machine of all its coins in a few second.
After this scam was discovered the slot machine manufacturers designed a new way of paying out winners, and this was by using a hopper system. A hopper is basically a bucket type of device which spins around much like a cement mixer does.
As the hopper rotates, a coin chute which is attached at the side of the hopper will allow one coin at a time to move down the chute, and at the top of this chute is a censor, if a player wins the hopper would rotate and the required number of coins would be paid out via the chute with the censor counting each coin paid out and the hopper would then stop rotating once the required number of coins to pay the winner had passed through the sensor.
This system of paying out coins from a hopper worked seamlessly for many years, but a scam was soon discovered which cost the slot machine industry millions, and this was something known as a light wand.
This was a ingenuous device which was basically a small LED light attached to a piece of wire, which was fed up through the coin payout chute and with a bit of skill a slot machine cheat could get the LED to the position on the hoppers coin chute so that when a winning payout was being paid out that cheat could then illumine the LED which was connected via the wire to a small battery and that would then blind the censor.
This had the effect of rendering the hoppers coin censor useless and the hopper would simply spin and spin thinking it was not dispensing coins due to the LED following the coin censor, in a very short period of time the coin hopper could be completely emptied by a slot machine cheat and he or she would leave no physical signs that the machine has been defrauded.
This cheat was eventually eradicated by a new design of the hopper and coin senor, however there are always people prepared to spend as much time as is necessary devising ways to cheat slot machines and as such the list of ways to cheats slots is always going to get bigger and bigger.
Offer valid as of date published. T&Cs apply.
Of course gambling is not a good habbit but cheating is the worst! But in history, many people have figured out a good couple of ways how to cheat slots. Below you will find 10 of them. Be aware, none of these methods will work online gaming sites like Slots Heaven!
10 – Cheat Code
Ronald Dale Harris was a talented software engineer who was working for the Nevada Gaming Commission. His job was to programming computer chips for slot machines. Since he was the programmer, he did left a cheat code like a signature of him. The code was activated by a specific combination of coins something like ‘'5 coins, wait, 2 coin, wait, 6 coins, etc.'' and the machine would automatically pay out. Brilliant!
09 – Light Wand
Golden Nugget
Back in the day, when slot machines started using the optical sensor technology, Tommy Glenn Carmichael invented a light wand that could blind these small, magical sensors. It was something like battery-powered mini light attached to a wire.
08 – Fake Coins
As simple as counterfeiting. Using advanced machinery, cheaters pressed counterfeit slot machine coins out of hardened metal dies.
07 – Software Glitch
How To Cheat On Slot Machines
Las Vegas
Sometimes the cheat comes with the slot machine built in. The most known slot machine with its glitch was ‘'The Game King''. To exploit the glitch, the gambler would put more money into the machine after the 'double up' prompt and then switch back to the original game they were playing for $1.00. Then player would then up their stakes to the highest allotted amount and cash out.
06 –Top-bottom Joint
The top-bottom joint was a trick created by Tommy Carmichael and Ray Ming. The duo created a slider, which was made of a guitar wire and a piece of spring steel. They would snake the payout chute using the top-bottom joint until tripping the switch. Once the switch was tripped, the slot machine would empty out its payload.
05 – Computer Chip Replacement
Computer Chips
Dennis Nikrasch bought a computerized slot machine and played with it in his garage till he found a method to manipulate the computer chip inside to give him a jackpot whenever he wanted. For this purpose, he ordered the standard chips from a real manufacturer. Then he team up to obtain keys on the black market that opened slot machines. After that he would be able to open the machine to replace the chip under three minutes!
04 – Shaved Coins
As slot machine technology advanced, machine manufacturers changed optic verification sensors to prevent scams. Improved mechanisms use a beam of light to register payment as the coin dropped in. Ironically, this innovation was used against itself to perform a cheat. Shaved coins are registered by the machine but once it gets to its comparitor new mechanism which is the piece of equipment that measures the size and weight of the coin, it will be immediately kicked out because of the coins minute size discrepancy. Of course then you can use it again…
03 – Piano Wire
Piano wires
This method dates back to 1982. At the Caesars Boardwalk Regency in Atlantic City, a group of cheaters surrounded a slot machine. Each of them had a job. One of the cheaters dubbed the mechanic, pried open the front and inserted 20-inch piano wires into the slot machine's whirring guts. The group used the piano wires to jam the clock that timed each wheel's rotation. With the help of this method, he was able to manipulate and spin the wheels till he wins.
02 – Monkey Paw
The monkey's paw was one of the early devices used by slot cheats. The mechanism was essentially a guitar or piano string attached to a bent metal rod. Cheater would jam it into the machine through an air vent and fish around for the switch that released the coin hopper.
01 – YO-YO
Chips
How To Cheat On Slot Machines
The cheater ties a thin cord around a coin and then places it in the slot until it registers a payment. Then yank out the coin and do the whole process over and over again. That simple!