Players really get worried about the casino bogeyman. Here’s a recent example:
I understand regular chips and tournament chips but can they change payouts while you are playing the machine, controlling the computer?
Jim C.
No, they can’t. There are a variety of reasons for this.
Most Casinos Don’t Have Server Controls
The concept of server-based gaming has been talked about for decades, but when we discuss with manufacturers, the concept of it has largely been overblown. Attempts to implement it at casinos haven’t proven very successful, and the benefits of it (such as being able to decide which denominations are active at different times of day ot week) haven’t proven necessary.
Regulations Don’t Allow It
Regulations rarely keep up with the industry, meaning innovation requires waiting until regulations catch up, if they ever do.
Nevada is among the states that created regulations around slots and being able to change them remotely, and often other states will follow Nevada’s lead (some even adopt their regulations nearly completely, and focus on crafting the exceptions they wish to implement). For a casino in Nevada to be able to change the payback on a machine, you’d have to have no credit in the machine and it needs to sit idle for a minimum of four minutes.
That wouldn’t be particularly helpful if your goal was to try to change a payout because of who was playing, as four idle minutes usually means that player’s gotten up and moved on already.
Even If a Casino Could Change Payouts, They Wouldn’t
We’re not sure why players are so fearful that casinos would do this, when slots already are so much more profitable for the casino than most other games on the floor. Trying to wring money out of our pockets a bit faster may not work out.
A slot on its lowest payback setting can still award a jackpot to a player, whereas a slot on the highest payback setting can still have losing streaks, thanks to the randomness of slots, and another regulation found in Nevada and many other locations: Any outcome a slot is capable of needs to be possible on any spin of a slot.
So that $10,000 grand still needs to be a possibility regardless of the payback percentage – if it’s advertised, it has to be possible to win it, and third-party testing of a game will verify this possibility before a game can be released to the public on casino floors.
Takeaway
The casinos don’t have control over who gets paid what – that’d be a very big loophole that could be abused. Instead, they can set the payback of a machine based on what they want or need to make from it over time. Players can have lucky or unlucky runs on the way to that long term outcome, but casinos aren’t targeting specific players to accomplish that.
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