Alan Mendelson Going For The Jugular

[Bob21]

First of all, the machine I found it on had the DU option enabled--as many machines did back then and some do today. I never "asked for" it to be enabled.

Rob, I'm not taking my marching orders from anybody, and if I did, Kj would be the last person I'd listen to.

I'm getting my information from the wired article. It claims almost no casinos back then had the DU option activated. I'm quoting from the article:

"This wasn't bad news at all. It was the missing link. It explained why the bug had failed them everywhere but at the Fremont. Most casinos don't enable Double Up because it's unpopular with players. But that could easily be changed. High rollers and slot aficionados often have favorite game variants or features that aren't available by default but can be enabled by any passing slot attendant."

There had to be the perfect storm for Kane and Nester to find it. Kane happened to find it at the Fremont, which by chance had the DU option activated. When Nester flew down to visit Kane, they went from casino to casino and nothing worked that was working at the Fremont. At that time, they didn't know it was the DU option that activated it, so Nester flew back to Penn.

Then when the Freemont turned off the DU option, and Kane couldn't press the same buttons sequence to increase his jackpot, he put two and two together and figured out it was the DU option that made this play work.

And the steps he had to press to make it work were complex. Again, after reading the wired article several times, I can see why this bug went undetected for so long. You had to have the perfect storm and someone like Kane for it to all come together. It's surprising they weren't a little smarter in trying to exploit it. I guess this is what greed does to someone.

[Rob.Singer]

The fact that he found it(I can't even remember how he claims he figured it out at this point)

Axel, for me this is the most critical part of Rob’s story. How did he find the bug? It seems like you give him a pass on this point.

All the rest of Rob’s story makes total sense, and wouldn’t be that hard to pull off by anybody with just a little common sense. I mean it goes without saying if you go into a casino and win 8 jackpots on one slot machine totaling $30,000 in one evening (which is what Kane did), it’s going to raise a casino’s suspicions, and you aren’t going to last long.

Here’s how Rob said he found it. Rob claims he was actively looking for a “bug.” To me this is where Rob’s story falls apart. If you know anything about bugs in a computer program, you don’t actively look for them. You’re more likely to find them by random chance, like Kane and Nester did.

And remember two main - unrelated - things had to happen for someone to find this bug: 1) the double up had to be turned on and 2) the right sequence of buttons had to be pressed.

In hindsight it’s easy to see why nobody happened on this bug before Kane and Nester. As the article pointed out, the majority of casinos didn’t have the DU activated since most players didn’t like it. So if someone was looking for a bug without DU activated, they would have never found it. And there is no reason someone would think they’d have to tell the casino to activate the DU to start looking for bugs.

So without knowing the double up feature activitated this bug (which then took several complicated steps), it’s hard to see how someone would have figured this out if they were looking for “bugs”.

The article said the steps to activate this bug once the DU was on were very “complex”, quoting the article. It took the IGT computer engineer several days to figure it out and this was after he was armed with surveillance footage of Kane activating it.

As for me, I don’t care if Rob exploited the DU bug or not. I’ve been following this story because I find it fascinating. Everybody seems to question the part of Rob’s story that to me makes the most sense. Nobody seems to question my concern: How would somebody ever find a bug like this by actively searching for it? What if the bug didn’t exist? That means Rob would’ve been spending hours each evening pushing buttons randomly for no reason. At some point most reasonable people would quit looking for a bug.

This is why I think it is highly unlikely Rob found it or exploited it. It’s based on how he said he found it. His explanation just didn’t add up in my book. If it did in yours, I’m okay with that.

Again, once the bug is discovered, everything else made sense. I think most reasonable commonsense people could’ve easily exploited it for five years or longer and never got caught. The key is just don’t get greedy, even with how much you move up in denomination to win your jackpot. Someone could play it at one dollar and move it to two dollars and you would have a huge advantage, and still stay under the casino’s radar. Kane and Nester were moving it up from $1 to $10 and staying at a machine to claim multiple large jackpots in an evening. It’s easy to see why they didn’t last long.

Anyway, it’s a very interesting story and I still think the Kane and Nestor version could make it to the big screen someday. If it does, I’m going to try to be one of the principal screen writers. Lol

Bob between hands the bill acceptor light is on telling you that you can put money in the machine. In the middle of the hand the bill acceptor light is off telling you that you can't put money in the machine. Rob noticed that when you hit the button to activate the double up the bill acceptor light came on even though you are still in the middle of the hand. That was the starting point to finding the bug.

And the light came on only after the DU yes/no screen appeared. It's important to note that quite a few machines that worked had lights that did not ever turn on in the bill feeder, because those bulbs apparently easily burnt out.

[AxelWolf]

The fact that he found it(I can't even remember how he claims he figured it out at this point)

Axel, for me this is the most critical part of Rob’s story. How did he find the bug? It seems like you give him a pass on this point.

All the rest of Rob’s story makes total sense, and wouldn’t be that hard to pull off by anybody with just a little common sense. I mean it goes without saying if you go into a casino and win 8 jackpots on one slot machine totaling $30,000 in one evening (which is what Kane did), it’s going to raise a casino’s suspicions, and you aren’t going to last long.

Here’s how Rob said he found it. Rob claims he was actively looking for a “bug.” To me this is where Rob’s story falls apart. If you know anything about bugs in a computer program, you don’t actively look for them. You’re more likely to find them by random chance, like Kane and Nester did.

And remember two main - unrelated - things had to happen for someone to find this bug: 1) the double up had to be turned on and 2) the right sequence of buttons had to be pressed.

In hindsight it’s easy to see why nobody happened on this bug before Kane and Nester. As the article pointed out, the majority of casinos didn’t have the DU activated since most players didn’t like it. So if someone was looking for a bug without DU activated, they would have never found it. And there is no reason someone would think they’d have to tell the casino to activate the DU to start looking for bugs.

So without knowing the double up feature activitated this bug (which then took several complicated steps), it’s hard to see how someone would have figured this out if they were looking for “bugs”.

The article said the steps to activate this bug once the DU was on were very “complex”, quoting the article. It took the IGT computer engineer several days to figure it out and this was after he was armed with surveillance footage of Kane activating it.

As for me, I don’t care if Rob exploited the DU bug or not. I’ve been following this story because I find it fascinating. Everybody seems to question the part of Rob’s story that to me makes the most sense. Nobody seems to question my concern: How would somebody ever find a bug like this by actively searching for it? What if the bug didn’t exist? That means Rob would’ve been spending hours each evening pushing buttons randomly for no reason. At some point most reasonable people would quit looking for a bug.

This is why I think it is highly unlikely Rob found it or exploited it. It’s based on how he said he found it. His explanation just didn’t add up in my book. If it did in yours, I’m okay with that.

Again, once the bug is discovered, everything else made sense. I think most reasonable commonsense people could’ve easily exploited it for five years or longer and never got caught. The key is just don’t get greedy, even with how much you move up in denomination to win your jackpot. Someone could play it at one dollar and move it to two dollars and you would have a huge advantage, and still stay under the casino’s radar. Kane and Nester were moving it up from $1 to $10 and staying at a machine to claim multiple large jackpots in an evening. It’s easy to see why they didn’t last long.

Anyway, it’s a very interesting story and I still think the Kane and Nestor version could make it to the big screen someday. If it does, I’m going to try to be one of the principal screen writers. Lol

Bob between hands the bill acceptor light is on telling you that you can put money in the machine. In the middle of the hand the bill acceptor light is off telling you that you can't put money in the machine. Rob noticed that when you hit the button to activate the double up the bill acceptor light came on even though you are still in the middle of the hand. That was the starting point to finding the bug.

Finding a machine that's certainly a big key. How one figured out the entire process in the first is my question. I know Rob said something about this I just can't remember what it was. I believe he said this is the type of stuff he was looking for or something like that. I think I remember that he didn't claim it to be just random luck.

[AxelWolf]

First of all, the machine I found it on had the DU option enabled--as many machines did back then and some do today. I never "asked for" it to be enabled.

Rob, I'm not taking my marching orders from anybody, and if I did, Kj would be the last person I'd listen to.

I'm getting my information from the wired article. It claims almost no casinos back then had the DU option activated. I'm quoting from the article:

"This wasn't bad news at all. It was the missing link. It explained why the bug had failed them everywhere but at the Fremont. Most casinos don't enable Double Up because it's unpopular with players. But that could easily be changed. High rollers and slot aficionados often have favorite game variants or features that aren't available by default but can be enabled by any passing slot attendant."

There had to be the perfect storm for Kane and Nester to find it. Kane happened to find it at the Fremont, which by chance had the DU option activated. When Nester flew down to visit Kane, they went from casino to casino and nothing worked that was working at the Fremont. At that time, they didn't know it was the DU option that activated it, so Nester flew back to Penn.

Then when the Freemont turned off the DU option, and Kane couldn't press the same buttons sequence to increase his jackpot, he put two and two together and figured out it was the DU option that made this play work.

And the steps he had to press to make it work were complex. Again, after reading the wired article several times, I can see why this bug went undetected for so long. You had to have the perfect storm and someone like Kane for it to all come together. It's surprising they weren't a little smarter in trying to exploit it. I guess this is what greed does to someone.

I don't know about there not being too many double up machines around, I mean, it wasn't on all the machines, but it was certainly fairly common in many casinos to find a few machines that had double up enabled. You can still find them as a matter fact, you can find them on those specific games even, it just doesn't work for the bug.

You didn't need to be some super high roller to get them to activate a double up on a machine either. Some of the casinos had a policy against it but there were many that didn't have a policy just asked a tech or a slot person and tell him/her that you really like double up.
I had many machines turned onto double up.

FYI. I'm not giving anyone a pass on anything.

[Rob.Singer]

First of all, the machine I found it on had the DU option enabled--as many machines did back then and some do today. I never "asked for" it to be enabled.

Rob, I'm not taking my marching orders from anybody, and if I did, Kj would be the last person I'd listen to.

I'm getting my information from the wired article. It claims almost no casinos back then had the DU option activated. I'm quoting from the article:

"This wasn't bad news at all. It was the missing link. It explained why the bug had failed them everywhere but at the Fremont. Most casinos don't enable Double Up because it's unpopular with players. But that could easily be changed. High rollers and slot aficionados often have favorite game variants or features that aren't available by default but can be enabled by any passing slot attendant."

There had to be the perfect storm for Kane and Nester to find it. Kane happened to find it at the Fremont, which by chance had the DU option activated. When Nester flew down to visit Kane, they went from casino to casino and nothing worked that was working at the Fremont. At that time, they didn't know it was the DU option that activated it, so Nester flew back to Penn.

Then when the Freemont turned off the DU option, and Kane couldn't press the same buttons sequence to increase his jackpot, he put two and two together and figured out it was the DU option that made this play work.

And the steps he had to press to make it work were complex. Again, after reading the wired article several times, I can see why this bug went undetected for so long. You had to have the perfect storm and someone like Kane for it to all come together. It's surprising they weren't a little smarter in trying to exploit it. I guess this is what greed does to someone.

That may be the case, but the fact is there were more machines back then that already had the DU option enabled than there are today.

In any case, the point is that I did not ask for the DU option to be turned on because at that point I had zero idea it would or could be associated with some kind of bug. The machine already had it turned on.

[Bob21]

Rob noticed that when you hit the button to activate the double up the bill acceptor light came on even though you are still in the middle of the hand. That was the starting point to finding the bug.

Now I'm confused. The wired article clearly says the DU option has to be activated by an attendant at the casino. It's not something a player can activate. Now you're telling me Rob activated it, while he was playing? This doesn't line up with the wired article

[coach belly]

Now I'm confused. The wired article clearly says the DU option has to be activated by an attendant at the casino. It's not something a player can activate. Now you're telling me Rob activated it, while he was playing? This doesn't line up with the wired article

Have you ever played VP with the DU feature activated?

[Bob21]

Now I'm confused. The wired article clearly says the DU option has to be activated by an attendant at the casino. It's not something a player can activate. Now you're telling me Rob activated it, while he was playing? This doesn't line up with the wired article

Have you ever played VP with the DU feature activated?

Nope, know know nothing about it, other than what I've read in the wired and other articles about it.

[coach belly]

Have you ever played VP with the DU feature activated?

Nope, know know nothing about it, other than what I've read in the wired and other articles about it.

I didn't read in the article where it said "the DU option has to be activated by an attendant at the casino".

Technically I suppose that's true, the feature has to be activated, but I've played VP with the DU feature activated many times, and never asked to have it activated by an attendant...it was always already activated when I sat down.

There may be some machines that did not have the DU feature activated. Kane & Nestor may have played these machines, and asked for the feature to be activated...after Kane initially discovered the glitch, on a machine where it was already activated without him asking.

I can see how a player could initially stumble upon the glitch, they wouldn't have had to ask for the feature to be activated when they found the bug.

[Bob21]

Here is what the wired article says about the DU option:

"They could even piggyback on other players' wins. No longer confined to four low-limit slots at a single casino, they prowled the floor at Harrah's looking for empty machines still showing a player's jackpot. Once they got an attendant to turn on Double Up, it took only seconds to replay the hand at up to 10 times the original value."

It said when Kane was winning too much money, the Freemont turned it off.

"Unsurprisingly, the Fremont noticed."

"On May 25, a slot manager approached Kane after one of his wins and announced that he was disabling the Double Up feature on all of the Game Kings—he was aware that Kane used the option copiously, and he figured it must have something to do with his run of luck."

The wired article indicated the casinos could turn the DU option on and off. And if it was off, there was nothing a player could do to turn it on.

Are you saying this part of the article is incorrect?

[MaxPen]

Here is what the wired article says about the DU option:

"They could even piggyback on other players' wins. No longer confined to four low-limit slots at a single casino, they prowled the floor at Harrah's looking for empty machines still showing a player's jackpot. Once they got an attendant to turn on Double Up, it took only seconds to replay the hand at up to 10 times the original value."

It said when Kane was winning too much money, the Freemont turned it off.

"Unsurprisingly, the Fremont noticed."

"On May 25, a slot manager approached Kane after one of his wins and announced that he was disabling the Double Up feature on all of the Game Kings—he was aware that Kane used the option copiously, and he figured it must have something to do with his run of luck."

The wired article indicated the casinos could turn the DU option on and off. And if it was off, there was nothing a player could do to turn it on.

Are you saying this part of the article is incorrect?

Even when the feature is activated the player still has to activate each hand they want to play.
Otherwise, you would never be able to stop doubling. Hope that makes sense to you. Basically you hit a button saying yes to double instead of hitting a no button.
I think you not ever playing double up is why you're confused.

[Puckerbutt]

Rob noticed that when you hit the button to activate the double up the bill acceptor light came on even though you are still in the middle of the hand. That was the starting point to finding the bug.

Now I'm confused. The wired article clearly says the DU option has to be activated by an attendant at the casino. It's not something a player can activate. Now you're telling me Rob activated it, while he was playing? This doesn't line up with the wired article

Your confusion is interesting to me. Did you make any effort at all to work yourself out of your state of confusion?

Suppose Mickey had started his reply by saying "Rob noticed that when you hit the button to choose the double up feature, the bill acceptor ..." - would that have alleviated your confusion?

For example, have you ever played a machine where when you hit a bonus it displays a screen that gives you a choice between x amount of spins at 2x - y amount of spins at 3x - and z amount of spins at 4x? You "choose" one of those options and that action "actlvates" the bonus.

[coach belly]

Are you saying this part of the article is incorrect?

The casino turns the DU feature on and off, but the player doesn't necessarily need to ask for it to be turned on.

Like I wrote above, I've played VP with the DU feature activated many times, but I never asked for it to be activated by an attendant or anyone else...as far as I could tell it was a permanent feature of the games that I played, unless the casino at some point decides to de-activate it.

Kane likely stumbled upon the glitch when he played on a machine that already had the DU feature activated. I doubt he asked for it to be activated that time when he first found the glitch, and possibly didn't ask for the feature to be turned on until he started playing the high-limit games.

A casino may not want the exposure of the DU option on the high-denomination games...not sure, but my understanding is that there is no house edge on the DU play.

[Bob21]

Here is what the wired article says about the DU option:

"They could even piggyback on other players' wins. No longer confined to four low-limit slots at a single casino, they prowled the floor at Harrah's looking for empty machines still showing a player's jackpot. Once they got an attendant to turn on Double Up, it took only seconds to replay the hand at up to 10 times the original value."

It said when Kane was winning too much money, the Freemont turned it off.

"Unsurprisingly, the Fremont noticed."

"On May 25, a slot manager approached Kane after one of his wins and announced that he was disabling the Double Up feature on all of the Game Kings—he was aware that Kane used the option copiously, and he figured it must have something to do with his run of luck."

The wired article indicated the casinos could turn the DU option on and off. And if it was off, there was nothing a player could do to turn it on.

Are you saying this part of the article is incorrect?

Even when the feature is activated the player still has to activate each hand they want to play.
Otherwise, you would never be able to stop doubling. Hope that makes sense to you. Basically you hit a button saying yes to double instead of hitting a no button.
I think you not ever playing double up us why you're confused.

Okay, that makes sense. Thanks for explaining that to me MaxPen.

But regardless of this, what is most suprising to me is Rob finding this "bug" seems to be the easiest thing for people like Axel and Mickey to believe. This is, by far, the hardest thing for me to believe, after reading the wired article.

If Rod found it, all the other things he did makes total sense. Personally, I would think any semi-intelligent person who wasn't greedy and understood what they found with this bug would have been able to get away with exploiting it forever. I mean all you really needed to do is win a jackpot, and then move on to a new casino. That isn't very hard to do. This would have kept anybody who found this bug under the radar forever.

Why does everybody think it's so hard to get away with something like this for 5 years? The better question is how could anybody be so stupid to get caught after only 3 months?

I mean when I read the wired article, I couldn't believe what Kane and Nester were doing. They would many times win a $4,000 jackpot, and then win the same jackpot again a little while later with the SAME hand. Anybody with half a brain should know this will set off alarm bells.

Again, it's not a big deal to me if Rob found it or not, because it doesn't impact my life one way or the other. But if I was trying to get to the bottom of it, the question I'd ask myself is if it's reasonable that someone found it, claiming that he was looking for "bugs". Remember, Kane did not find it looking for "bugs". The way Kane found it made sense to me. Finding it by saying you are actively looking for "bugs" doesn't make sense.

For me, Rob's story doesn't pass the "sniff test", at least not my "sniff test". Obviously, others probably have a much lower threshold when it comes to their "sniff test".

[coach belly]

the player still has to activate each hand they want to play. Basically you hit a button saying yes to double instead of hitting a no button.

When you hit a winning hand, pop-up windows appear on the screen, one asks "Double-Up?"

The answer choices I've see are "Yes" , "No" & "No, and don't ask me again"

If you select "don't ask me again" the feature is de-activated until you change games (if playing a multi-game machine).

You select your answer by touching your answer on the screen, or using the corresponding "hold" button.

While there are 3 answer choices, there are 5 hold buttons.

I could see a player hitting one of the 2 outside buttons by mistake, and that triggering a sequence where he could discover the glitch.

If looking for a bug, Rob could have pressed the "drone" buttons just to see what happens. If he noticed the bill acceptor light up during the DU feature, that could have triggered further investigation.

[Rob.Singer]

As I read the latest posts here I could write a long post nobody would want to read so I'll keep it short and simple.

There were two different methods of the DU feature during my 5.5 years playing it, and each required something different in order to be able to feed a bill, which is what you want to do in order to wipe the question/return to the menu screen.

Bob, the night Kane stumbled upon this was not at all well-explained by the article. It tells of him hitting the cashout button as he was getting up, when suddenly the jackpot sign came on. This tells me the DU option was already turned on. He could have innocently asked for it to be turned on but that's unlikely. He had to have just fed a bill in also. But he was leaving? Not at all clear.

Final point: you seem to have an issue over somebody looking for something and finally finding something. It's unclear why. But you find it more probable that a drunken player would stumble upon it? I'll tell you what: get 100 drunk vp players on one team and 100 operationally familiar engineers on the other. Let 'em loose in a casino with only working DU machines. Who finds the glitch first?

[Rob.Singer]

the player still has to activate each hand they want to play. Basically you hit a button saying yes to double instead of hitting a no button.

When you hit a winning hand, pop-up windows appear on the screen, one asks "Double-Up?"

The answer choices I've see are "Yes" , "No" & "No, and don't ask me again"

If you select "don't ask me again" the feature is de-activated until you change games (if playing a multi-game machine).

You select your answer by touching your answer on the screen, or using the corresponding "hold" button.

While there are 3 answer choices, there are 5 hold buttons.

I could see a player hitting one of the 2 outside buttons by mistake, and that triggering a sequence where he could discover the glitch.

If looking for a bug, Rob could have pressed the "drone" buttons just to see what happens. If he noticed the bill acceptor light up during the DU feature, that could have triggered further investigation.

One comment: if you press "No, and don't ask again" and when you're done playing you cash out, if you then insert a bill or ticket to play the same game again (lots of people do this for some reason) then the question will pop up onto the screen after a winning hand again.

[Bob21]

If looking for a bug, Rob could have pressed the "drone" buttons just to see what happens. If he noticed the bill acceptor light up during the DU feature, that could have triggered further investigation.

Anything is obviously possible. In an earlier post, I said Rob's story lined up too perfectly with the wired article. I misspoke about him finding it the year it appeared. Going back and rereading the article, it appeared in 2002 during a major upgrade, and Rob claimed he found it in 2004.

I remember now what I was thinking when this was being discussed last year. I was thinking if I was going to make up a story when I found it, I'd have said I found it about 2 to 3 years after the article said it was in the game. Rob said he found it in 2004, which is 2 years after the article said it was in the game, and then Rob exploited it until 2009, when Kane and Nester got taken down.

Again, all this is in the article. But since Game King VP has been around a long time, why would someone start looking for a bug during the 2002 to 2004 time frame? How would they know a bug got put in Game King during those years? Prior to 2002, this game had no bugs anybody knows about.

Since Rob said he looks for "bugs" in video games and has been playing VP since the 90s, this means he was looking for bugs for a long time, spending time randomly pressing buttons after a win, for at least 15 years before a bug appeared. I find it hard to believe someone looks for "bugs" for 15 years or so without finding one, and then continues to look for one. Again, the act of actively looking for "bugs" just doesn't ring true to me.

And the timing seems too convenient and fits the timeline of the article too perfectly. And again, it wasn't easy to find this bug. An IGT computer engineer armed with surveillance video of Kane exploiting it, still took several days to figure it out.

Please reread the wired article. Once Kane stumbled on it, it still took Kane and Nester 7 hours to reproduce it, and this was after Kane kind of knew what he had done when he stumbled on it the first time. This wasn't just about hitting one or two buttons to activate it.

Anyway, I've got way more into this debate than I wanted too. I care about it more from my interest in the Kane and Nester's story, than I do with Rob's. The Kane and Nester story is truly an interesting story and I think could be made into a top flight comedy, if done right. This type of casino true story movie hasn't been done before. I hope someone picks it up and runs with it.

[coach belly]

why would someone start looking for a bug during the 2002 to 2004 time frame?

When was the DU feature introduced?

[Cookie Monster]

I read this entire thread and the one thing that stuck out to me the most as weirdest was Posters asking the Member for proof of research that he repeatedly said he didn't have as he only looked up that research once and didn't print it out or anything like that.