Ask the Slot Expert: Pulling your card won't keep that jackpot off your permanent record

Last week I asked when pulling your players card does not end your session on a slot machine and send your data for the session to the slot club database.

The only time -- at least the only time I know of -- that pulling your card does not immediately end your session on a machine is when you're in the middle of a game.

Twenty plus years ago, some video poker players would attempt to game the slot club system by pulling their cards when they were dealt a hand, like a 4-card royal, that had a good chance of leading to a big payout. Pulling the card before the hand was played out would cause the slot club subsystem to capture the values of various meters before you got your big payout. The goal was to have your possible jackpot not included in your win/loss total.

Once slot manufacturers found out that players were pulling their cards, they enhanced the communications between the machine and the slot club subsystem to thwart the practice. Now the machine sends a message to the subsystem that a game has been started when you press the Play or Deal button or otherwise start a game. When the game is over, the machine sends a message that the game is over and all of the meters have been updated.

If the club subsystem detects that you have pulled your card after the "Start Game" message but before the "End Game" message, it will wait until it gets the "End Game" message to read the meters and send their values to the slot club database.

I was lucky enough to hit a royal flush a few days ago. If I believed that one can be overdue to hit a hand -- which I don't -- I would say that I was long overdue for a royal. I estimate that I had played over 68,000 hands since my last royal.

Instead of using a player card, I connected to the machine using an app on my phone. This was my first W-2G with Cardless Connect, so I wasn't sure what the procedure was. There was no player card for the attendant to remove from the reader.

I had my card ready when the attendant came and said, "Here's my card."

He asked me if I had the card in the reader when I hit the royal.

I said, "No. Cardless connect."

He said that he would take my card anyway when he left to get my money and tax form.

I wonder now whether he might have thought that I had pulled my card in an attempt to keep the royal off of my win/loss record. I had been dealt only three cards to the royal, so it wasn't that likely that I would get the jackpot.

In any case, he could have seen that the bezel on the card reader was green, indicating that I was still "logged in" to the machine. My phone was still connected to the machine.

That was a good day all around. My movie theater finally loaded the week's schedule so I could see Becoming Led Zeppelin when I wanted instead of having to go to one of the three showings (late afternoon and evening) that were in the system. There was no line at the Costco Gas station, plus the nitrogen pumps were open early so I could bring my tires up to the proper pressure. And, the coffee shop gave me extra bacon on my to-go breakfast order.

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

Send your slot and video poker questions to John Robison, Slot Expert™, at slotexpert@slotexpert.com.

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