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Ask the Slot Expert: A video poker bug. In the machine or in the player?17 May 2023
Emerson, Lake and Palmer had an instrumental song called Changing States on their 1992 comeback album Black Moon. I thought of that song when a problem I had with Cashless Gaming on a machine might not have been due to a bug in the software like I thought at first, but due to my missing what state my video poker machine was in. Location: Red Rock Casino. A bank of four machines with NSU. One of my video poker acquaintances is playing the machine at one end. I was going to play the machine at the other end, but it was in an out-of-paper tilt. I was going to walk back to the machines near the east parking garage entry so I wouldn’t have to play an interior machine, but no one could play the end machine as long as it was disabled, so I sat down at the one next to it. I used the STN Cash app to Cardless Connect with the machine. After the connection was established, the slot club panel opened up on the left side of the monitor. (Instead of having a dedicated slot club display, most (all?) of the video poker machines at Red Rock scale the video poker game screen and steal some space at the bottom and left side of the monitor as needed to display slot club info and menus.) I transferred some money from my STN Cash account to the machine. The slot club menu was still stealing the left side of the screen, so I tried touching the Close button to close the panel. Nothing happened. No problem. The panel will close as soon as I start playing. After I played a few hands, I realized that this machine was not displaying the points I’d earned at the bottom of the monitor. I'll open the slot club panel and check the points earned value on the main status screen. I tried touching the button at the bottom of the screen that opens the panel, but nothing happened. I tried touching all around the button in case the touchscreen was out of alignment, but I could not get the panel to open. The bezel around the card slot was still green, so the machine still considered my card to be in the machine and I should be earning points, even if I can’t see them racking up. I hadn’t been playing long when I hit a set of deuces. Okay, I thought. This could be a long session. I don’t want to play for a couple of hours just to find out that I didn’t earn any points. We’re getting close to the end of the re-qualification period and I still have a ways to go. I can use the Station Casino app to check my points. I needed to do a card out first, though, to get the session points added to my account. I disconnected from the machine using the STN Cash app and acknowledged the message that my credits would be transferred back to my account. But they weren’t. They stayed on the machine. I tried hitting the Cash Out button, but nothing happened. It looks like my money is trapped in this machine. I hit the Service button and thought about what I should try while waiting. Let me try another Cardless Connect to the machine. It worked. And when the club panel opened up again, it showed the number of points I had earned so far. That was unexpected. It usually goes back to 0 after you remove your card. Let me recap the clues:
Can you figure out what state the video poker machine was in that would have caused these actions? I admit that this is like the worst mystery ever written in which the detective reveals whodunnit using a clue that was never shared with the reader. I didn’t tell you one other thing that happened, though I have no idea how it happened.Have you ever noticed how different buttons are lit on a machine depending on what state it is in? (Before you write me to say that your machine’s buttons don’t light up this way, I acknowledge that machines may not act this exact way.) Before you play your first hand, the Deal button, which lets you repeat your last bet, may not be lit. The machine forces you to hit Bet Max and annoy the people playing near you when the machine beeps five times before it lets you switch to the Deal button. When you’re in the middle of a hand, the Bet One and Bet Max buttons may be dark. Pressing them doesn’t make sense now. When you have no credits, the Cash Out button may be dark. There’s nothing to cash out. Finally, when you’re in the middle of a hand, the Cash Out button will be dark. You can’t cash out when the machine is in this state. (This is a trick Jean Scott taught me for when you want your friend to watch your machine while you take care of something else and you want to make it easy on your friend. The safest thing to do is to cash out. But you can also start a hand. Someone walking by won’t be able to just hit Cash Out and steal your credits. The thief will have to finish the hand first and your friend will have plenty of time to shoo them away.) Years ago, some video poker players would pull their slot club cards when they were dealt a hand that could lead to a large payout. Pulling the card caused the club software to end the club session with the current meter values, prevented the possible jackpot from being logged to their account, and might have made the players look like they won less money than they actually did. The programmers updated the slot club software to delay processing a card out until a play (hand or spin) was completed. After I reconnected to the machine, I hit the Deal button to play another hand. The machine dealt five cards and displayed Game Over. That’s funny. The machine must have been in the middle of a hand. I don’t know how that happened. I didn’t start a hand and then try to disconnect. I don’t know if I accidentally hit Deal (probably) or the machine started the hand on its own (not likely). However it happened, everything made sense now. Cash Out didn’t work. I didn’t notice at the time, but maybe the button wasn’t even lit. The session point count picked up from where it left off because the machine never processed my card out. I hadn't worked all this out at the time. My point total was increasing, though, so I decided to keep playing and deal with getting my money out later. The machine took back a chunk of my deuces ducats. When I had merely doubled my money, it was time to cash out. I was anxious about what was going to happen when I tried to disconnect. I disconnected in the app. The machine displayed the message that it was transferring my credits back to my account and the app reported the deposit. Everything worked. Phew. My friend had left a while ago. While we were playing, I mentioned that I was nervous about playing without being able to see the points adding up. I knew that everything should be okay because the bezel was green and the machine had my card registered for the session. But I sure wish I could see the points earned message at the bottom of the screen or open up the slot club panel. It eventually sunk in to me that the button at the bottom of the screen that should have said “Open” to open the panel had always said “Closed”, as if the panel was already open. My friend said that that machine has been like that for a while. There’s nothing you can do to get the panel to open up. But you will get your points. This has been like this for a while and no one has reported it? I almost always report problems with machines to the attendants. How are they supposed to know a machine has a problem if no one tells them about it? I almost always report problems. I had a pretzel with my name on it waiting for me at Auntie Anne’s and I didn’t feel like waiting for an attendant. But if the machine still has the problem the next time I play at that bank, I will call an attendant to fix it. Preliminary data from the CDC's National Health Interview Survey estimates that only 11.1% of adults report being current cigarette smokers. If you would like to see more non-smoking areas on slot floors in Las Vegas, please sign my petition on change.org. Click here for the latest Covid data. Send your slot and video poker questions to John Robison, Slot Expert™, at slotexpert@slotexpert.com. Because of the volume of mail I receive, I regret that I can't reply to every question.
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