Ask the Slot Expert: Glitch or gaff

Sometimes people will only accept the answer they want to hear.

Natural gas bills in Las Vegas have skyrocketed over the past year. People on Nextdoor are reporting that their bills have doubled or tripled. Some people posted pictures of bills for many hundreds of dollars, even $800 and $900. They've written letters to Southwest Gas, got one of the investigative reporters in Las Vegas to investigate, and even protested in front of Southwest Gas' office.

(I'm on the equal payment plan, so my bill isn't subject to wide swings. My payment amount, though, has more than doubled. Still, I'm paying in a year what some of these people are paying in a month. I wonder what temperature they have their thermostats set at.)

In the news report, the investigative reporter read the utility's explanation, which she described as "lengthy and complicated," for the high gas prices to the man chosen to be the face of the issue for the piece. He called it "vague and evasive" and said it was nonsense. (Customers fuming over Southwest Gas rate hikes demand answers)

Someone on Nextdoor posted the email she received from the Public Utilities Commission of Nevada. Okay, it was lengthy and complicated, but only because there are many line items on a gas bill and many factors that affect the price of those items. The email explained in detail how the price for a line item is set and how often it can be changed. It said that most of your gas bill is for the cost of gas and that cost is 6 times what it was three years. Furthermore, the utility does not make a profit on the cost of gas.

Comments posted about the letter: "BS." "Total nonsense." "Jibberish bullshit."

In my past job, it sometimes fell to me to explain to users why a system problem occurred. Most of the incidents required some technical knowledge to understand why the incident occurred. I tried to explain how things are supposed to work so they could understand why they didn't work this time.

The show Air Disasters does a good job of explaining why something is critical to keeping an airplane in the air so viewers can understand why a failure caused an accident.

One person on Nextdoor took the time to read the utility commission's letter and posted in the thread: "Did you read it? It's actually a pretty well written explanation of how rates are determined in Nevada for those who don't understand the system."

Most of the people, though, will only accept the answer they want to hear. "That reply forgot to mention GREED!!!"

Some people may accept only the explanation they want in regards to a problem with a video poker progressive at the new Durango casino in Las Vegas. The casino has a bank of eight machines with quarter Triple Triple Bonus with progressives on both 4 Aces w/any 2,3,4 and 4 2s,3s,4s w/Ace. About two weeks ago, the Aces progressive was around $1200 and the other progressive (I'll call it the second progressive) was at nearly $6000. The second progressive being larger than the Aces progressive seems unexpected because there are three ranks that could trigger the second and only Aces can trigger the Aces progressive. Even IGT thinks the second progressive should usually be smaller. The box its value is displayed in on the top glass is smaller than the box for the value of the Aces progressive.

The second progressive has been climbing steadily since Durango opened. A player posted about it on the Wizard of Vegas site (Video poker progressive that cannot be hit).

The Wizard of Odds calculated the probability of the second progressive getting that high. "The probability of that is 1 in 920,655,462,590,263,000. To put that in perspective, if one purchased one Powerball and one Mega Millions lottery tickets, it would be 10.4 times more likely to win both of them than for the jackpot to rise this high without being hit."

Players have reported machine malfunctions when they hold cards that are one or two cards away from the second progressive. The hand shown after the machine is reset is not a second-progressive winning hand.

A poster on another website said, "That sounds like cheating to me. Put up a paytable that is false. Personally, I think they should lose their gaming license at that location."

There is speculation that there is a programming error that arises when a player hits the progressive. That error causes the machine to reset.

The player gets a winning hand. The machine tries to send a message to the progressive controller to tell it that the second progressive has been hit. The speculation is that the error is in either sending the message to the controller or in processing the acknowledgement that the controller sends back.

This reminds me of every machine-malfunction/denied-jackpot story. A player thinks he hit a jackpot but the casino refuses to pay because of a machine malfunction and we all know that a "malfunction voids all plays and pays."

Some people may never accept the answer that the problem was caused by an unintentional programming error. The person who started the thread on the Wizard of Vegas site posted some common sense: It is obviously an accident. Why would a huge casino like Stations intentionally do something so obvious like a progressive that cannot be hit?

If you would like to see more non-smoking areas on slot floors in Las Vegas, please sign my petition on change.org.