Software Engineer for a major slot machine company. AMA

Software Engineer for a major slot machine company. AMA

Common questions:

- Are they rigged?
> No. Every spin is completely random, but the payback over all combinations is less than the number of combinations, so the casino always makes a profit

- How are the random numbers generated?
> Internal hardware.

- How does it know when to pay/not pay?
> It doesn't. There's no such thing as a hot or cold machine. Because it's random, you could theoretically hit the jackpot on back to back spins. It's not likely, but it's possible.

- Does the machine know how much money I have in?
> No. The actual game logic doesn't know whether you put in a $100 bill or a $20 bill (A separate part of the software tracks the bill history for audit purposes). It doesn't know how long you've been playing. It doesn't know whether you have a player's card in or not.

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Edit for clarity:

- Does the machine know how much money I have in?
> The game logic only checks whether you have enough credits to make the wager you're attempting to make when you press the button

Never saw the point of these things.

Basically all it does is exploit a mental illness to rake in money from addicts who can't help themselves?
Ought to be illegal tbh.

...

How about these bingo based slot machines that are all over Oklahoma? They are all networked... Can they adjust odds on the fly?

Are the Helix versions vulnerable to, or susceptible to what happened with the Mk 6's?

Funny enough I've never really cared for slot machines, even prior to working with them. To each their own I suppose. One could make the same argument against any casino game.

Have you ever masturbated at work? Did you do it at your desk, or in the bathroom

I have a lot of fun with them

Are there hidden cameras inside hotel rooms?

I really wish you guys would make skill-based games where high scores are used in combination with event randomization.

Think it will ever happen?

>tbh no longer wordfilters to desu

Gay af smh fam.

Do you sleep in the nude?

"On the fly" - no

Adjust the odds remotely - Yes. It requires all machines to have $0 on them and sit idle for a certain amount of time prior to any changes, plus the screen will display something like "Update in progress".

The Class II (Bingo based) machines aren't my strong suit, as I don't work with them much

Which exploit are you referring to?

It's called sports.
The random element is provided by opposing teams.

Not that I'll openly admit

I fucking clean up on the cunts. I never put money in expecting to win money back, to do so is a fools idea, but I have won far more that what the machines or pubs/clubs have taken back. Well, if I added the pre-cash out coin from small wins it would probably be a 1:1 win/loss but I manage to crack major jackpots above the $500 mark every time I throw a $50 in.

Already been done. Some casinos already have them. Check out Gamblit machines

Anything you would like to share that is not coming knowledge? Exploits etc

Congrats. For every you there's 1000+ losers

Pachinko machines are far superior to slots

Old mate in Russia figured out a way to fuck with the Aristocrat Mk 6's, he had a few crews going round sending video to base, which was then fed into an algorithm which predicted the best time for max bet.

Can the newer Helix based OS be gamed in favour of the player?

Exploits are tough to come by. I will give one pointer though. If you play a machine which lets you pick from a set of icons for hidden prizes (Free games, multipliers, etc) always look for a machine which shows you ALL the prizes once you pick yours. More likely to be a truly random prize pick as opposed to a weighted probability.

>what is wall street

>what is blackjack

Do you consider posting on an anonymous image board "openly admitting" to doing something.

There is no evidence to prove you are who you claim to be, and would be no evidence to verify your honesty if you did confirm/deny masturbating at the office.

Are those videos on YouTube fake where they electricute the machine for credits

Thank you for that one sir user.

You should get into claw machines. That's where the money is, you stupid faggot.

Not anything I've heard about, but the company would have to be complete morons to even mention that internally beyond a handful of very trusted people. I question the "best time to max bet" portion though, since we're dealing with a millisecond increments on the RNG. No human could properly time the button press that precisely

IGT?
G-Tech?

>are they rigged
>no, but it is literally impossible to make a profit from them over time
that means they're rigged, dipshit
not that this is surprising
i guess you don't deserve to be called a dipshit, it's the people who play slots that are the dipshits

If you want to be a smartass, that's plenty more than just sports.
Will do!

Point taken. No I haven't

Unless it's a REALLY old machine, yes. Any Class III game in the US is built to prevent this.

Aristocrat

I'm pretty sure you aren't trying to get the highest score in blackjack... LOL

Are the odds different when you pull the lever vs push the spin button?

I was expecting a response like this at some point. 99% of the people who want to know if it's "rigged" want to know if the machine/casino picks and chooses when the machine pays out

I made that same comment, but apparently it was possible. I figured if you were in the game you would be aware of this guy wired. com/ 2017/02/ russians-engineer-brilliant-slot-machine-cheat-casinos-no-fix/

Apparently it is way possible.

You are, to a point.

The odds are the same. The extra fraction of a second it takes to pull the handle affects what the RNG gives the machine, but you'll never know the difference.

ah i see, well in that case, anyone who thinks that is even more of a retarded dipshit than the dipshits who play slots and are completely ignorant to any of it

How come it seems like some making just take take and don't pay? Is there a take cycle after a larger payout to make up for the loss?

aaaand he shows up, right on queue

Exactly MY point.

> wired. com/ 2017/02/ russians-engineer-brilliant-slot-machine-cheat-casinos-no-fix/

Interesting read. One glaring flaw though; it's not a PRNG

...

Theoretically, I wonder if the RNG isn't as random as one would think?

I have recently moved, and the local has 4 lightning link, and 4 dragon link, and I have won the major on all dragon links, and 3/4 of the lightning link machines in under 4 weeks.

The staff there have taken to calling me "lucky", and one regular bloke thinks i'm a hacker because I have a hit button, wait 4 seconds, hit, 9 seconds, hit, hit, hit, hit, 4 seconds, 2 seconds, etc etc formula. I know it isn;t why I get the jackpots, but I wonder if continual random max bet plays could instigate some sort of software variation on when to trigger the rng linked to the particular jackpot?

I'm going to skip this question because you didn't fucking bother to read the previous responses before chiming in

I won't say it's impossible, but the chances of it just being your perception and short term luck are > 99.9%

Your mom is a slot!

Are you a nigger?

These are me from the start, two different lines of questioning albeit ones that are relevant to my interests.

True PRNG? I thought Aristocrat were the baseline for truly random number generator software algorithms, obviously the Helix is a true PRNG given your indication that the Mark 6's weren't. I wonder whether this is the case across all pre helix variants then?

Fuck off faggot

Yes, short term luck would be correct. I have been playing pokies for quite some time then. I think it's more right machine right time 95% of the time. I suit gamble as well, which I believe is the only way to make money from the machines.

Is the gamble function also true RNG? or is there predictable qualities? I find that a diamond precedes a spade, and a club follows a heart in well over 70% of my gambles.

...

No thanks. I'll wait for OP to continue if YOU don't mind, cunt.

Unfortunately you're getting outside my area. For the engineers, the RNG is essentially a black box. All I know is it's hardware-based and one outside company is responsible for almost all of them in the US

It's basically the same thing with dice luck superstition. It's just that: superstition. Random patterns give rise to strange results sometimes, it's never obvious.

So if you have friends who play D&D, sometimes they get perform these superstitious rituals to make their dice "lucky" again after a bad streak, or the most superstitious might even get rid of bad dice entirely and get new ones.

I joke around with the idea of forces either guiding or ruining my die rolls, but I know that it's either random or my own rolling technique fucks me up from time to time too. Slight imbalances in the mold might effect it too but it generally wouldn't be noticed. At the very least I know no one I play with is a cheating bastard using loaded die because bad "luck" comes frequently for everyone.

Either way it works the same way for anything that's random.

Again, no right or wrong machine, aside from possible different payback percentages.

Not quite sure what you're asking on your second part. Are you talking about the Double Up option in VP?

Then technically you don't know whether or not these machines are rigged.

Ok, I made the mistake of assuming you were involved in the base coding for the RNG. Are you a graphics/audio specialist?

Yeah that's the way I look at it as well, as I said I don't play with the intention of winning money, I just happen to win money more than I lose money. As you said, 1:1000, I like those odds, and I'm not foolish enough to think it will last, but it has, so I keep going.

>Random patterns give rise to strange results sometimes, it's never obvious.

This. Patterns only exist in hindsight. In roulette, a strict red/black bettor has the exact same chances of seeing a streak of RRRRRRRRRR as they do a streak of RRRRRRRRRB. But "I saw ten reds in a row!" is a more exciting story to tell than "I saw nine reds then a black!". Mathematically, there's no difference.

Yeah Gamble+Double up. Red/Black x 2 Suit x 4. Or x3 if it's an Ainsworth/IGN etc.

Nevada Gaming inspects the hardware devices from the manufacturer to certify them. If you don't trust Nevada Gaming, I suppose it's possible. As an engineer, I can't say anything is impossible.

But, as with all casino games, there's no incentive for anything to be rigged, since people will play anyway. And a discovered cheating establishment will lose everything

>>Patterns only exist in hindsight

Why do I often win from a diamond/spade suit gamble then? I'm talking 7/10 times winning without bullshit. Typically I'll leave the biggest gamble for that combination of suits, and I'll pull good coin the 7 of 10 times I make it happen.

I just wonder if the double up software runs on a separate RNG from the Primary game RNG?

I do game programming and machine management software (Remote servers for jackpot tracking and machine communication). The actual RNG is out of my hands though. I only handle the values once they've been generated

Double Up is also random. As a side fact, it has zero casino edge, because the cards are random and the game always chooses the same position.

>IGT

I worked for IGT about 20 years ago. First in the progressive gaming department in Reno then in the player's club department in Las Vegas. Pay was shit, but it was a pretty cool company to work for, and they actually invested in their employees with massive amounts of training. The cheap cocksuckers who run my current Big Pharma company want you to come in the door with all your certifications.

Oh rly? So if I Wire shark the shit out of my local could I "theoretically" intercept the RNG base to "predict" the next grand jackpot? The lightning link is 24K atm, would be a great one to jag.

It takes a LOT of games to get close to a normal distribution. Perception is reality over a small number of games. Small, as in less than 10k

>>The game always chooses the same position.

Could you expand on that particular comment please.

How hard is the math when majoring in software engineering?

If you can get the traffic, might be worth trying to feed it specific numbers directly

>completely random
>controlled by hardware and software
Pick one

Yeah ok, I'm probably 2-3k below that realm. Interesting though. Great thread btw.

Just as an aside, how do you rationalise creating machines that exploit human weakness? I guess for a lot of people, an income is an income, but I wonder what the incentive is for software engineers, other than a really good wage + bonuses?

My only Double Up experience is on IGT VP machines. The game deals five random cards, automatically selects the leftmost one for itself, then lets the player pick from the remaining four. It always chooses the leftmost card though

Filed and noted.

Cheerio.

There isn't a fucking packet that goes out and tells a certain machine to hit or anything like that. When MegaBucks would get too high when I worked there, the Gaming Board would make us push looser pay tables out to the machines, but that just made the odds better rather than tell a random machine to hit.

My degree is Comp Sci. Had to take quite a bit of math courses for it. Calc I & II, Set Theory, Combinatorics, Linear Algebra, Stats for Enigeers

Oh ok.

I think I have come across a few of them in my time, but the majority of pokies in Australia are Aristocrat, with a sprinkling of IGN/IGT (whichever they are) Ainsworth and a few other smaller mobs.

No calc III or diff EQ? Pretty weak, faggot.

Not OP, but, you mean, like pop music or television or MMORPGs?

That sounds like hell, fuck that.

Honestly, that's something I've thought about plenty of times. Among the doctors, nurses, counselors, and others doing necessary professions, I make machines to separate people from their money.

I have no illusions that I'm a saint. I have to trust that the majority of people take it as entertainment and the fraction who truly have a problem recognize it and seek help. I don't think people should be barred from entertainment simply because of the potential for abuse. I just think they should know that it's meant to be entertainment. The casinos in Vegas have actually stepped up the information and resources they offer, which I think is good.

I didn't ask if there was a packet that went in/out, I asked if I sniffed the traffic whether I could ascertain the base RNG for that particular jackpot. Given there is only 4 jackpot triggers, (Mini Bonus, Minor Bonus, Major Jackpot, Grand Jackpot) it wouldn't be particularly hard to figure the triggers once each one had been tripped and reset.

Or maybe I'm dreaming.

YES I DO. How the fuck can people look at themselves in the mirror in the mornings?

All that aside, I'm sure OP is a really nice faggot who enjoys his job.

This is exactly it. Video Poker is a shining example of this. The casino can't change the probability that you'll hit a certain hand, but they CAN change how much you get paid for that hand, thus affected the overall payback percentage. That's why searching for the best paytables in VP is so important for the non-casual gambler

Back in 1997, we communicated with machines via 2400 baud modems. Had a huge rack filled with USR modems that I drove from my DEC VAX.

Bravo guy, you qualify as human.

My University gave a choice between Calc III and advanced combinatorics/graph theory. I chose the latter.

Back in 89 I did the same thing, except I was asking guys like you how I could make a similar game like AstroSperm in C++ on my 286x. My parents wigged out when they saw some of the shit on the BBS, especially the Sierra Games BBS. Wow.

Video poker was the shit. I hit so many $500-$1,500 jackpots on those things, and most of the time, it was when I stopped at 7-11 for gas on the way home from work or something like that. Good times.

That's actually the rule for being a Vegas local. Make fun of the tourists who play at the airport, but then play at 7-11 like a hypocrite

That's ambitious. I like it. There would probably be other hurdles though. Making sure none of the internal tampering sensors are tripped, finding a way to spoof the jackpot trigger in the machine's audit log.

There are a lot of failsafes in place, both hardware and software. Plus the usual "malfunctions voids all pays" provision.

Definitely an interesting idea though.

I can't speak for the normal games, but on the MegaJackpots ones, the ones at the airport were set a lot looser (for non-jackpots, which depended on the master RNG) than any of the ones in casinos.

That's actually surprising. I've found that less competition = tighter paytables in most circumstances.

You're more likely to win Australian slots (pokies), than american ones. I read that somewhere. suck it yankees

Payback percentage is a game setting. All depends on what the operator sets it at.

Also, "read that somewhere" is a source only faggots use