Ask the Slot Expert: Why I sometimes don't report a problem with a slot machine

I used to have a blanket recommendation that players alert slot floor staff to problems with machines. I still recommend that players alert the casino when a machine malfunctions. If there's only a minor problem, like a sticky button or a poorly aligned touch screen, I'm more likely to work around the problem than tell the staff on some machines.

I used to play one of the two 3-coin $5 video poker machines that Red Rock had in one of its high limit rooms. These were old machines -- so old that if you inserted a ticket that had cents on it, the machine would immediate issue a ticket for the cents. The credit meter could only handle whole dollars. The machine might even have been more particular and printed a ticket for the excess over a multiple of 5. It could only handle a count of $5 tokens. I don't remember offhand.

There was problem with the machine in the corner, the one I liked to play. One of the Hold buttons was finicky and sometimes didn't register when you pressed it. I told one of the slot supervisors about the button.

The next time I played the machine, the button was working well and I hit a handpay -- 4 Aces on 8/5 Bonus Poker for $1200. The same supervisor who I had told about the button problem handled the handpay. I made some lame joke about the technician also setting up the machine to pay off for me.

Fast forward a year or so. I went to play one of the machines after not having played them for quite a while. The machines were gone. All of the machines in the bank of four against the wall had been replaced with newer machines. I took a quick tour of the room to see if they had just been moved, but I couldn't find them.

I asked the supervisor who had helped me before about the machines and whether they had been moved. He said that the machines were getting old and that it was difficult to get parts for older machines. As far as he knew, they were gone for good and not somewhere else on the slot floor.

Over the past few years, I've seen many casinos gradually lower the paybacks on their video poker machines. If the machines still have some life left in them, the paytables get demoted. I've seen 9/6 Jacks becomes 9/5 or 8/6 or even 8/5 Jacks; NSU becomes Airport (Illinois) Deuces.

If the machines are due for replacement, the replacement machines always have inferior paytables. I've yet to see a replacement machine have paytables as good as the ones on the machines they replaced.

Today if I have a minor problem on an older machine at a casino with a limited inventory of high-paying video poker machines, I just work around it. These machines are on borrowed time as it is. I don't want to give them another black mark.

Last week I had a bizarre problem on a Quick Hit Blitz machine. It took me forever to finally hit a bonus round.

That wasn't the problem. The problem was that the machine was not rendering all of the symbols on the reels during the bonus. The machine displayed a couple of the symbols on each reel and nothing in the other positions.

As Frank Scoblete wrote in Break the One-Armed Bandits, the reels on a modern slot machine are window dressing. Even on a machine with physical reels. The true outcome of a spin is determined by the numbers chosen by the RNG.

Even though the display was filled with mystery symbols (the blank spaces), I was getting paid for the symbols as if they had been displayed. Most important, the program could see the Blitz symbols that were on the virtual reels but not displayed on the screen. It was kinda amusing to hear the Blitz symbol sound and watch my Blitzes needed for a jackpot upgrade to go down, even though there were no Blitz symbols visible on the screen. I got a few Jackpot Upgrades.

There was a slot floorperson workstation near this machine. I was able to call over one of the floorpeople working there. I told her that something was wrong. There should be no blanks on the bonus reels. She said, "Okay," and walked away.

I expected her to call it in or make some sort of entry in the machine's logbook, but she just went about her business. In all fairness to her, I think she was in the middle of something.

I stopped playing the machine a little while later. Why did I continue? The problem didn't affect the base game. Plus, I thought that this was just a display problem. If there had been a serious problem that was affecting outcomes, the machine would have detected it and tilted itself.

I saw the floorperson again as I was walking around. I told her that I didn't know if I had explained the problem well. There are no blank spaces on any of the reels on the machine, I said.

She told me that she understood the problem and they would look into it.

When I played the machine a few days later, it took me a long time to get a bonus round -- again. But at least the machine displayed all of the symbols on all of the reels during the bonus.

The only mystery was why this machine, which had been generous to me in the past, was now stingy with the bonus rounds.

Here are the latest Covid data. There is a difference in the hospitalization data for US versus NV. The CDC reports total number of Covid hospital admissions. Nevada reports current hospitalizations, not admissions.

All data comes from the CDC (https://www.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#cases_totalcases, https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/covidview/index.html), except for Nevada current hospitalizations (https://nvhealthresponse.nv.gov/).