72-year-old woman claims Bally's Atlantic City cheated her out of $2.56m slot machine win

[Dan Druff]

Here's the NY Post article about it: https://nypost.com/2024/05/18/us-new...t-machine-win/

The machine claimed "TILT" after she hit a $2.56m progressive jackpot, and she was told she was not eligible to win due to the machine's unspecified malfunction. Here's a picture of the machine:




The progressive jackpot of $1.28m shown above was actually $2.56m because she had a 2x multiplier.

According to the article, Bally's blames manufacturer IGT for this, and claims her gripe is with them. Kinda sounds like bullshit to me.


All machines in casinos have a disclaimer, "Malfunction voids all plays and pays", but they need to show how the machine actually malfunctioned, and how that malfunction caused the jackpot to occur. If the malfunction occurred after the jackpot was hit, or if it had nothing to do with the jackpot, then Bally's should owe the money.

She's suing both Bally's and IGT.

[DGenBen]

There was a very similar case back in the early 2000s where IGT was sued and had to award the jackpot. Also on a wheel of fortune machine, the plaintiffs successfully argued that any reel tilt or malfunction occurred AFTER the jackpot was hit.

https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/la...l/1080167.html

I doubt the 2X multiplier would apply either way. The rules likely state that multipliers don’t apply to the jackpot. Never heard of a 7 figure (or 6 figure) wide area progressive jackpot that you could get a multiplier on.

[Don Perignom]

I doubt the 2X multiplier would apply either way.

I think slot players enjoy being tormented.

The potential multiplier can go as high as 12 afaik. Each wild can be 2x and the bet multiplier can be 3.

The SPIN symbol can have up to 3 pointers. Here's an example similar to the OP with 2x on the reels and one pointer:



The wheel lands one off the jackpot. Imagine my shock. But in this case the player bet 3 coins per line:



It strikes me as dishonest in the extreme to have one wedge astronomically more difficult than the others. In their design, they set themselves up for this type of problem to occur.

[DGenBen]

I doubt the 2X multiplier would apply either way.

I think slot players enjoy being tormented.

The potential multiplier can go as high as 12 afaik. Each wild can be 2x and the bet multiplier can be 3.

The SPIN symbol can have up to 3 pointers. Here's an example similar to the OP with 2x on the reels and one pointer:



The wheel lands one off the jackpot. Imagine my shock. But in this case the player bet 3 coins per line:



It strikes me as dishonest in the extreme to have one wedge astronomically more difficult than the others. In their design, they set themselves up for this type of problem to occur.

That’s a good point. All manufactures have near misses but IGT always takes it to a ridiculous extreme.

When these cases happen I always feel like the manufacturers are basically admitting that the whole thing is a hustle.

The machines are designed to look like you have a much better chance of winning than you actually do to entice people to play. Then when they think they won are told nah, you weren’t even close.

What you see on the screen don’t actually matter at all. That’s just how we hustle you to play an 80% game.

[smurgerburger]

So what do we think actually happened here? Seems pretty remarkable the machine would tilt right after hitting the top progressive.

[DGenBen]

So what do we think actually happened here? Seems pretty remarkable the machine would tilt right after hitting the top progressive.

Why so? After hitting the top progressive, the machine is likely programmed to do more actions than at any other time.

That would make a tilt more likely than after a normal spin.

[smurgerburger]

So what do we think actually happened here? Seems pretty remarkable the machine would tilt right after hitting the top progressive.

Why so? After hitting the top progressive, the machine is likely programmed to do more actions than at any other time.

That would make a tilt more likely than after a normal spin.

I assumed a tilt is actually a physical disruption in the manner of pinball machines.

But regardless unless it's actually misprogrammed in such a way that hitting the top progressive necessarily triggers a bug (as in the case of the Stations VP someone posted about), it would be a remarkable coincidence if just randomly glitched then.

But actually it seems likely it was the same kind of problem as at Stations and nobody knew about it because the top progressive so rarely hits.

[DGenBen]

So what do we think actually happened here? Seems pretty remarkable the machine would tilt right after hitting the top progressive.

Why so? After hitting the top progressive, the machine is likely programmed to do more actions than at any other time.

That would make a tilt more likely than after a normal spin.

I assumed a tilt is actually a physical disruption in the manner of pinball machines.

But regardless unless it's actually misprogrammed in such a way that hitting the top progressive necessarily triggers a bug (as in the case of the Stations VP someone posted about), it would be a remarkable coincidence if just randomly glitched then.

But actually it seems likely it was the same kind of problem as at Stations and nobody knew about it because the top progressive so rarely hits.

Agreed. Plus this seems to happen frequently enough that they should design these games better with a fail safe that if the game fails it does not fail into appearing that the top progressive is hit.

I’m no engineer but this should not be too difficult to do.

If courts got more aggressive on making them pay these out, that would give a stronger incentive to make them design these games so that if it is a legitimate failure they do not appear to be giving the top win.

This does not seem to be a high priority for game manufacturers now & it really should be.

[accountinquestion]

The physical spinning wheel could be a victim of physical force so it makes sense that 'tilt' would be part of this machine - at least versus other slots.

Surely the wheel isn't what decides and it is the randomness instead.

The screwed up part is that you don't know if she fairly won the first win.

I don't get the mechanics of it all but it seems to me she could have won the first one fairly then it messed up subsequently.

Anyway - I posted this in the main forum because there is a youtube lawyer guy (steve leto?) who talked about it.

[accountinquestion]

Why so? After hitting the top progressive, the machine is likely programmed to do more actions than at any other time.

That would make a tilt more likely than after a normal spin.

I assumed a tilt is actually a physical disruption in the manner of pinball machines.

But regardless unless it's actually misprogrammed in such a way that hitting the top progressive necessarily triggers a bug (as in the case of the Stations VP someone posted about), it would be a remarkable coincidence if just randomly glitched then.

But actually it seems likely it was the same kind of problem as at Stations and nobody knew about it because the top progressive so rarely hits.

Agreed. Plus this seems to happen frequently enough that they should design these games better with a fail safe that if the game fails it does not fail into appearing that the top progressive is hit.

I’m no engineer but this should not be too difficult to do.

If courts got more aggressive on making them pay these out, that would give a stronger incentive to make them design these games so that if it is a legitimate failure they do not appear to be giving the top win.

This does not seem to be a high priority for game manufacturers now & it really should be.

They could also add in little glitches to prevent these large payouts but I guess that wouldn't be so great given how it would impact their brand.

[DGenBen]

I assumed a tilt is actually a physical disruption in the manner of pinball machines.

But regardless unless it's actually misprogrammed in such a way that hitting the top progressive necessarily triggers a bug (as in the case of the Stations VP someone posted about), it would be a remarkable coincidence if just randomly glitched then.

But actually it seems likely it was the same kind of problem as at Stations and nobody knew about it because the top progressive so rarely hits.

Agreed. Plus this seems to happen frequently enough that they should design these games better with a fail safe that if the game fails it does not fail into appearing that the top progressive is hit.

I’m no engineer but this should not be too difficult to do.

If courts got more aggressive on making them pay these out, that would give a stronger incentive to make them design these games so that if it is a legitimate failure they do not appear to be giving the top win.

This does not seem to be a high priority for game manufacturers now & it really should be.

They could also add in little glitches to prevent these large payouts but I guess that wouldn't be so great given how it would impact their brand.

Yeah I doubt they would do it on purpose, although interesting thought.

These big progressives get hit all the time, you see them constantly reseting at the casinos & if you follow game manufacturers & casinos on twitter they announce where it was hit & sometimes even pictures of the winners.

They don’t care if they have to pay them legitimately because the returns on these machines is bad & these types of progressives usually have odds of hitting in the millions, not to mention these are usually paid in 20 year installments, so every time they pay one out its already been paid for many times over.

[accountinquestion]

The 20 year thing is such bullshit. Probably doesn't transfer to an estate. Inflation means you don't get the full amount even if everything is fair.

[DGenBen]

The 20 year thing is such bullshit. Probably doesn't transfer to an estate. Inflation means you don't get the full amount even if everything is fair.

Agreed! Total bullshit and its usually buried deep in the rules

[Don Perignom]

I assumed a tilt is actually a physical disruption in the manner of pinball machines.

Anyone still on this? I haven't looked at all the media and forum coverage, but Gamble Smart did a video that seemed reasonable. He's the former slot tech who isn't a cowboy.

This was the error message, apparently:



It's a 3-reel slot, but I'm speculating that the bonus spin is considered a separate event on a 1-reel slot. The wheel, aka reel 1, got stuck or was unable to continue for some reason. The attendant then rolled back or replayed the game, and the wheel stopped on the originally intended wedge which paid 65x2 credits for a total win of 350 including the base game:



That's from Gamble Smart's video #2. I think he lost the plot because he reacted to the jackpot wedge stopping on the left pointer which is irrelevant. In video #2 he was adamant that the casino would prevail, but then in the latest video, #3, he sides with the player. I can't keep up.

Incidentally, here's the confirmation that jackpots aren't multiplied (bottom line on the page):

[smurgerburger]

I hadn't paid close attention to the story.

Now it looks like it really was just a cosmetic malfunction - there's a physical wheel and it didn't stop at the value that corresponded to her actual RNG determined outcome.

If that's correct seems like she should not prevail, and it makes sense that things like this would happen with some frequency with extremely rare progressives, because as uncommon as it is for the wheel to get mechanically stuck on that one wedge, it's probably even rarer to actually win the jackpot.