How could tickets be matched with their owners?

In your September 14 column you discuss "finders keepers" in regard to finding money or TITO slips in casinos. You made this statement: "Unlike coins, today's tickets could conceivably be matched with their true owners."

Could you expound on this? Is there information on that slip (hidden in the bar code) that indicates who it belongs to, or would it just be a situation where the person who left it behind could identify the amount, the machine, the time of day, etc. and the casino puts 2 and 2 together?

Thank you.

Joe

Dear Joe,

Conceivably, when a player presses the Cash Out button, the program running the slot machine could query the slot club card reader to get information (e.g., account number, name) about the player playing the machine and provide that information to the ticket system to print on the ticket. I don't know of any machines that do this now, but it could conceivably be done.

Best of luck in and out of the casinos,
John

Send your slot and video poker questions to John Robison, Slot Expert, at slotexpert@comcast.net. Because of the volume of mail I receive, I regret that I can't reply to every question.