Awsum!

Yes, that's my fear.

I'll be honest, I'd take any advantage available to me, and I'd exploit any weaknesses or bugs if possible. But no one else would ever know (until if/when I get caught then you read about me like those dudes in the Wired article).

I understand and totally agree with your viewpoint. I've stumbled upon a few atypical weaknesses in vp myself--one was my favorite gambling experience ever even though it was short lived and another ranks in my top five even though it wasn't terribly lucrative.

I was referring to the more common (at least in the past) and obvious methods of gaining an advantage at vp.

My best glitch-find was a VP machine that doubled your freeplay/pointplay. Hit it for close to a year before they rebooted the machine, and it went away

Also had the civil forfeiture thought; my friend's brother got his cash taken at the airport, and it was far less than what Leon's packing.

Leon, you doing the slot tournament next month? I just reserved it... haven't done one at Wynn in forever, kind of surprised I got the invite.

My second best (most fun--not most ev) was a vp machine that paid either 11X or 12X points (IIRC). Problem was that this was before the TITO/kiosk days and points were redeemed at the cage. Not ordinarily a problem, but this place had a daily allocation for total cash to be paid per shift as well as per player. My buddy and I had to time our play and point redemptions to coincide with shift change so as not to exceed their allocation and arouse suspicion. Lasted quite a while until some dumbass civilian didn't carefully budget his cash outs and exposed the glitch.

I'd love to hear more stories like this. I believe it was in Sklansky's poker, gaming and life?, his stories about finding edges etc were the best part of that whole book. Something has always appealed to me about using your brain, finding an edge few others notice, then profiting.

Is the Wynn slot tourney next month free? I didn't see any other paid buy in ones on my calendar for the year. I hate the free ones- too many runners. I know I should take every free roll opportunity I can get, but the reality is I go to Vegas enough and I'm tired of making trips trying to bink a 50k slot tourney, get absolutely nothing for my efforts and end up dumping 5 figures into the machines.

My glitch story is weak...many years ago I sat down at a $1 coin dropper at Palace Station and all winning hands were paid on the credit meter but this one would drop roughly half the credit amount in coins. So a ten coin payout got me ten credits and about five coins dropped.

I played it fast for about 4-5 minutes and two suits came up and told me they had to shut the machine off. I think there was a change lady in a carousel behind me who saw what was happening and called it in but not sure.

They did let me cash out my credits and keep the bucket of dollars. Made a couple hundred in that short time.

Here's my best vp glitch story from my very early vp days. I was playing 25c single-line on a bank of five machines which was adjacent to another bank of five machines--same manufacturer but different game. While I was playing I overheard a comment from a player on the second bank that aroused my curiosity. The paytable was a mishmash of the two different games with the best of both worlds--the most obvious being a huge overpayment for quads. Since someone was playing the machine at the time, I couldn't get on it so I went home and plugged the values into my vp software. Result: hourly expectation--$360 (IIRC)--on 25c single-line!

That was on a Friday so I asked my gf if she wanted to make an early morning trip to the casino the next day. Sure! So off we went. Luckily the machine was open. As I said, early days, so TITO had not yet made an appearance. Coin-dropper. We took turns playing, took turns toting buckets of quarters to different cashier windows, and tipping the slot attendants to minimize our down time when the machine needed a fill.

About the 2nd time my gf hit quads that emptied the machine, I leaned over and whispered, "Just like stealing, isn't it?" She blushed a bright red and gave me the loudest "Shh!" I'd heard since elementary school. LOL!

After that day the biggest issue I had was getting back on the machine as even a total knucklehead could win on it. I am almost certain that a person with $100 in their pocket could not have had a losing session. I suppose the only reason that anyone (other than me) left that machine was because they wanted to lock in a huge (for them) win. One of the saddest days of my gambling life was when a slot tech tapped me on the shoulder to tell me that he was going to have to shut the machine down. Some idiot player had brought the discrepancy to his attention the day before, but he didn't have time to deal with it then. I packed up my quarters, held back my tears, and went on my way.

It's free. IME you need consistent high-volume to get into the buyin tournaments, which I don't have there. Anyway, I have nothing else going on that weekend, and if there aren't too many entries it could have decent EV.

If I were up 70, I'd think real hard about hiring a charter to fly home.

But I drive, so I don't have to worry about TSA.

I'd be more worried about Barney Fife, in that case.

That's like an additional +50% payback, that's monstrous.

Seriously what is up with some people. This guy undoubtedly was a snitch in school growing up, probably would report his own mother for a minor infraction.

Yeah, play for sure. It's a freeroll. Hope you bink it- I just stopped basing trips around the free ones.

Yep. The slot tech said the guy pointed out to him that the SF on that machine was set to pay $500 rather than $62.50 (ie, 250 quarters) as all the other machines did. It sounded as if someone had hit the SF while this turd was playing a nearby machine. Most people would have simply waited their turn to play the machine, but apparently one person couldn't stand it even being there. Incredible.

Wait, how exactly do VP paytables work? Can slot techs literally put in any number they want for any made hand? I would think that there are just a preset selection of paytables that you can choose from, so that casinos can rest assured that nothing like this could actually happen.

That is my understanding as well--or was. This was 20+ years ago, and I still don't know how it happened. But I know it did happen. It was not a complete mishmash as I stated but more like orderly chaos.

The game for the one machine on Bank 2 remained the same as the game on the Bank 1 machines--or at least the payouts for all hands except the 2nd & 3rd best hands were the same. The correct payouts for the lower paying hands on the two banks were very different. The top three hands on each bank were progressives (not even sure if that mattered). The top hand on each bank was a RF of course--and reset at the same amount. The 2nd & 3rd top hands differed significantly--and the reset (base) values for them was very different between the two banks.

In essence the machine with the glitch on Bank 2 became the same game as on Bank 1 but with huge boosts for the payouts on the #2 & #3 hands.

My guess is that since they were the same manufacturer and design, they used the same program and some minimum wage employee selected Game 1 rather than Game 2 on that machine. Or they had different but interchangeable program cards and someone put the wrong one into that machine--for a while.

Nah, I'm on AZ highways the whole time. They might shoot you for no reason, but they won't rob you.

Not anymore. It is heavily regulated, both live and online. Everything has to go through incredibly tough testing, certification, retesting. Then once released it has to be tested and certified by the live or online site as well. I work in the industry, and it would be 100% impossible today.

I currently know of an ultimate X machine on the regular floor (not high limit) with a max play of 10 hands and a max of 25 cent credit that doesn’t shut down if you hit 1200 or above. It’s been like that for over a month now. Watched my friend hit 3 jackpots last week and nothing happens. He just prints the ticket each time and uses the kiosk to get the cash. Biggest ticket so far was 4500. It’s in Louisiana. What is the biggest amount the kiosk will pay you?


I should probably add it doesn’t flash jackpot or anything. It just adds the credits to his total balance. It doesn’t spit the the ticket out on its own either, he does it.

Basically infinite amount. Lazy people who installed it in the first place and super surprised it wasn´t maintained properly. You have to manually set the trigger for jackpot limits on each machine (usually it does come pre-set as it is a regulation so only needs to be double-checked).

This varies by casino. I've had $1K tickets rejected, and $4K tickets paid out.

Is Leon still with us? Over a month with no posts in this thread.

RIP, Leon

Most likely just the lack of motivation for posting losing/break even runs. Or a break from playing aka post-reinforcement pause.

Pretty much this, I've been to the local at my usual ~ 1/week rate and it's been generally cold since I got back from Vegas. I think I'm stuck 30k in the last couple of months. I have some nice hits that I was going to post as a block, since I haven't gotten enough in any one trip to make it worthwhile. However, as I said I can post the hits but end result is -30k since my Sept Vegas trip.

Leon it's safe to say you've shown me the light and now I'm a big fan of (small stakes) DDB- havent learned TDB yet but I'm sure I'll get there. I have a question for you, at the end of the post.

I was dealt this today and am pretty stoked since it's pretty cool to get them all on the deal like that.


So my next hand (the 2x) after was QJT5cccc with a blank.

Do you hold 3 to a royal or do you hold 4 to a flush and hope to bink the flush on one or more to change the next bunch of multipliers so you have five 12x deals in a row? I know what basical strategy says but am wondering how much Ultimate X situations like this cause you to deviate from the rule book.

Thanks and hope you're getting good use out of your piano!