Ask the Slot Expert: Caught using someone else's free slot play

A friend of mine who lives out of state lets me use his slot free play when he's not in town. I was unaware he was coming into town and used his free slot play. He was unaware I had already used it and thought the casino just didn't give it to him.

Long story short, the casino found out I was using it with his permission and now has suspended all free slot play. He is a high roller who spends $500,000 a month and the free slot play was $1,000 three times a week.

Is there anything we can do about this? We were both were unaware this wasn't allowed.

The card that give the rules for the slot club usually state that the account is to be used by only one person. Only the account holder should use the card while playing and only the account holder can redeem the benefits earned on the card. The casino verifies that you are the account holder by asking for identification or a PIN. Of course, anything that can be redeemed with a PIN can be redeemed by anyone the account holder has told the PIN.

What do you mean by "spends"? Does your friend lose $500,000 per month at the casino? That's $6,000,000 per year and I would think that the casino would have let him off with a warning. Maybe that number is right. One thousand dollars in free play three times a week is a boatload -- no, shipload -- of free play.

I'm surprised you ever got away with this. With a player of this value, the slot system should have alerted your friend's host that he was in the casino when you used his card and the host should have come by to welcome him. You should have been caught the first time you used his card.

In any case, the bottom line is you and your friend broke the rules and I don't think there's anything you can do about it. The casino may eventually restore your friend's free play. If it does, don't try using the free play. The casino may check that your friend is the one using the free play.

Anyone who has played the slots can tell you it's no pRNG (pseudo-random number generator) when the same symbol comes up 3-4-5 times in a row just above the line or just below the line. How can that be RNG or pRNG?

If it happens once, OK, chance, but not when you go to a different machine and it's the same thing.

Why wouldn't those outcomes be random? The results just show that the stops above and below the symbol in question appear many times in the virtual reel table.

Slot designers do this frequently. The blanks above and below the jackpot symbol, for instance, may land on the payline three, four or even more times as frequently as the jackpot symbol itself. This technique is how the designers make near misses happen frequently.

Note that regulations may limit how much more frequently the stops above and below the jackpot symbol can land on the payline. The limit many regulators have settled on is six -- that is, if the jackpot symbol appears once on the virtual reel, the stops above and below it can only appear a maximum of six times on the virtual reel.