It was the Venetian that rigged the drawing in favor of a whale. They didn't rig it for themselves. They wanted the whale to win. They suffered a lot of bad publicity. If you suspect you were cheated in a poker game would you go back to that same game? Just the suspicion of cheating is bad for business. Ask Anthony Curtis.
There was the case of American Coin Co. gaffing chips in some of the locals bars. That was in 1990. There was the Gaming Control agent Ronald Harris, who was caught gaffing machines so he could hit jackpots. that was like 1998. So yes, anyone can say "hey, you don't believe cheating has gone on, you're a chump." But there are about 1,000,000 slots in the country. The number of cases compared to the number of machines is insignificant.
Now, Indian Casinos. I would have to guess that I've been in at least 200 Indian Casinos. Oklahoma alone has 140 and I've been in all of them. I wasn't playing video poker. I was playing advantage slots. I made a very healthy profit. Video poker is highly unpopular in the Indian Casinos. A casino can have 2000 machines but only maybe 2 dozen of them are video pokers.
Now let's talk about how Indian casinos can gaff machines. They are not going to re-program a 90% chip. They are simply going to remove the 90% chip and replace it with an 85% chip. So they are not gaffing anything at all.
But the Indian casinos are in competition with other Indian casinos, along with commercial casinos, so they have to give a competitive payback.
I myself can tell the difference between an 85% game and a 90% game just by playing them. And one has to give the ploppies at least a little bit of credit even though they have superstitions. I hear them all the time "I never won in that goddam casino so I quit going there." They weren't cheated they just ran rough.
The one thing ploppies understand is how fast their money is disappearing. Very bad payback is an action killer. So Indian casinos are not gaffing chips. They don't have to. They just put a lower payback chip in the machine if they want to. But like I said, ploppies notice how fast their money is disappearing.
It's the same for the commercial casinos.