Fascinating Casino Hacks on How to Cheat Slot Machines

Many casino players think of inventive ways to beat the house. Card players typically resort to reading blackjack strategy guides or card counting practices that they believe will give them an edge over the casino. Games like poker, Baccarat, and blackjack favor mathematically inclined players. If you can tweak your card-playing strategies to perfection, it is theoretically possible to mitigate the effect of the house edge. But what about the most popular casino games of all – slots? Are there cheat codes for slot machines? Are there effective casino cheats for slot games?

We are about to take you on an unbelievable journey to cheat central. Casino cheats know that slots are the most profitable games at the casino, so they routinely conjure up inventive ways to cheat slot machines. Be advised: Any manipulation of gambling machines is a criminal offense. This post simply details some of the things that unscrupulous players have done when trying to learn how to cheat slot machines. Buckle up; it’s going to be a bumpy ride!

How to Hack Slot Machines 101

We won’t give you the tools or the resources to perform anything illegal. We are simply reporting on what slot cheaters have done over the years. Believe it or not, cheating at slots is just as prolific as cheating at card and table games. Slot machines account for 60%+ of all the games in the casino. They are the ‘Reel Deal,’ and casino management always looks for slot machine cheats. What happens if the cheaters are shielded from view? Let’s find out in our first amazing slot scam.

Imagine manipulating the outcome of a progressive jackpot slot machine game. You could walk away a multimillionaire. Random Number Generators govern today’s slot machines. These RNGs are computer programs created by software engineers. They are designed to randomize all gaming outcomes to ensure the fairest results on every spin. Therein lies the Achilles Heel: Anything that can be programmed (coded) can be hacked.

Regulated casinos ensure that all game outcomes are independently tested and audited by the authorities. However, that didn’t stop an engineer from trying to rig the outcomes of slot machine codes in his favor. One of the world’s most notorious slot cheats, Ronald Dale Harris, had the cheat codes for slot machines. He worked for the NGC (Nevada Gaming Commission), and his casino tricks worked for many years before one of his friends scooped up a $100,000 jackpot playing keno.

It was only then – in 1998 that he was unmasked as a cheat. Programmer sabotage can take many forms, including implementing viral code with a backdoor entry for programmers. Once these scammers activate slot cheat codes, they know which buttons activate payouts. The casino would be none the wiser.

The Ultimate Slots Cheat–Shaved Coins

Back in the good old days, slot machines in Atlantic City and Las Vegas casinos allowed players to deposit actual coins into the designated slot spaces. This challenged cheaters: How could coins be deposited, registered as credits, and then returned to the player? To answer this question, it’s important to understand how the technology works. When coins are shaved, they can register credits on the slot machine game, yet they get returned to players through the dispenser tray. Of course, the shaved coin would need to be the precise dimensions of the required betting coin. Today, the physical comparator and optic light sensors work together – nullifying this possibility.

Besides shaved coins, many other nefarious techniques are used to sabotage slot machine games. These include:

Coins Attached to a String – this is the real deal since the slot machine believes that coins are being deposited while the player is yanking the coin back and forth to register credits. Coins and strings go by different names, such as the Yo-Yo. Simply picture the coin going up and down through the slots mechanism as it registers credits for real money play.

Tommy Carmichael’s Monkey Paw – this device was popularized by the eponymous Tommy Carmichael, and he scooped up hundreds of thousands of dollars from Las Vegas casinos over the years. It comprises a piece of flexible material with a claw at the end. Slot machines tend to pay out more when this device is inserted through the chute.

Coat Hangers and Wires – these rudimentary devices are used by the simplest cheats, but they are far too conspicuous to be effective.

Counterfeit Coins – counterfeit coins are fake coins. They are produced at less than the value of the denominated coin and allow players to win money for a fraction of the real bet size.

Optical Mechanisms – these interfere with the optics in a slot machine game and may confuse the machine and force it to overpay. This is one of the most effective ways of cheating a slot machine. Enter none other than Tommy Carmichael once again.

Carmichael’s optical device was known as the Light Wand, and it made magic for slot machine players. By blinding the optical sensors in machines, slot machine computers didn’t know how much had been deposited. This meant that the machines didn’t know when to stop paying out. Small deposits translated into massive wins.

Slot Machine Hacks That Landed Cheaters in the Slammer

Nefarious actors have crafted many inventive techniques to cheat slot machines. One of them is the piano wire technique. In the early 1980s, a group of guys working at Caesar’s Boardwalk Regency Casino in Atlantic City stumbled upon the piano wire trick. They figured out that if they could open the slot machine and jam in a 20-inch-long piece of piano wire, they could manipulate the game's mechanics. By causing interference with the wheel rotations, they could win an estimated $50,000 before the scam was discovered. Unfortunately, the casino had them on camera, and the winning player was arrested shortly after he left the establishment.

If we wind the clocks back to the 1970s, an even more ingenious slot machine cheat was figured out. This was known as the top-bottom joints. It comprised two parts: a metal rod with a Q-shaped end and a long piece of wire on the bottom. Once again, the purpose of this was simply to jam up the inner mechanics of the machine so that it would just spill its guts, i.e., all the coins, into the tray. This worked as long as casino employees couldn’t be seen anywhere and cameras weren’t focused on the action.

How to Cheat on Slot Machines with Fake Money?

Cheaters realized that their #1 problem was no money. So, why not use fake money to play slot machines with and win real money? This scam is as old as the hills, and it worked when slot machines weren’t sophisticated at spotting fake money scams. Other methods used to con the machines included wrapping devices around bills to make machines think it was accepting a $100 bill when it was just a $1 bill. If you can get away with making $100 wagers for just $1, you can enjoy 100 times more action and possible wins.

Slot machine manufacturers soon woke up to the fake money scam, and that’s when the era of computer chip manipulation came to pass. One individual who devised an ingenious method of cheating slot machines was Dennis Nikrasch. He figured out slot machines could be pre-programmed by inserting doctored computer chips into their mainframes. This is precisely what he did, and he hired multiple scam artists to put his cheating plan into action.

This brings us to another computer-related slot machine hack. Have you ever heard the term software glitch? In 2015, Pauline McKee won a $41 million jackpot when she landed the right combinations on the Isle Casino Hotel Waterloo reels. Software glitches are all too common, and slot cheats exploit them to trigger jackpots that should not be paid out. Today, it’s less likely that you will receive your payment with a software glitch. And there you have it, folks – the most inventive, daring, and crooked ways to win at slot machine games.