How to cheat a slot machine
❝ the operatives use their phones to record about two dozen spins on a game they aim to cheat. They upload that footage to a technical staff in St. Petersburg, who analyze the video and calculate the machine’s pattern based on what they know about the model’s pseudorandom number generator. Finally, the St. Petersburg team transmits a list of timing markers to a custom app on the operative’s phone; those markers cause the handset to vibrate roughly 0.25 seconds before the operative should press the spin button.
“The normal reaction time for a human is about a quarter of a second, which is why they do that,” says Allison, who is also the founder of the annual World Game Protection Conference. The timed spins are not always successful, but they result in far more payouts than a machine normally awards: Individual scammers typically win more than $10,000 per day. ❞
That was then. Now apparently they live stream the spin to the central computers.
Originally shared by Andreas Holzer
There is no random.
I’m Kee Hinckley (he/his). That’s my wife 
“they have no fix” isn’t precisely accurate; obviously any fix would have to involve true random number generators. They’ve just made the cost benefit decision that the current rate of losses doesn’t justify swapping out all of the machines.
Jim Douglas or no devices inside the casino
Sordatos Cáceres That would be another cost/benefit decision that they would discard. If you tell a bunch of Americans that they can’t enter your premises carrying smartphones, they won’t enter your premises.
Also…. I don’t find myself feeling that empathetic towards casinos
Jim Douglas I do think they will comply.
Sordatos Cáceres You think who will comply with what?
Valdis Klētnieks with the casinos requested of no mobile or computers devices in the premises
Sordatos Cáceres OK.. You’re walking down the street, and you have your celphone with you, Casino A and C will let you in with your cell, but Casino B won’t.
Question 1: If you do go into B, what do you do with your phone? Are you going to hike all the way back to your hotel? Or check your $400 to $700 phone at the front desk? Remember – this isn’t a coat check where everybody has a different coat and the chances you get the wrong coat back are slim. If I check a Northern Face jacket, black/blue, size 2XL, it’s likely to be the only one there. Phones? Not so much – 80% or more will be either a Samsung or an iPhone.
Question 2: How likely are you to go to A or C instead, just so you know your phone is secure in your pocket rather than sitting in a pile of 118 other Samsung Galaxys that all look identical?
Valdis Klētnieks Free shielded cell phone lockers. Insert phone in numbered slot, close door, take key.
My question is, how can they be arrested for fraud? In what way is it fraudulent? Every person playing those slot machines has the intention of winning more money than they lose. Every person playing believes they have a system to enable them to do that. Every person is wrong, except these guys. From that perspective, these guys who do have a system are the only ones not engaging in fraud!
Brian Holt Hawthorne Because the system is not real in the other cases, this is, it takes away the quasirandomness…
As I understand it, this isn’t fraud. They’re using publicly-available information and realtime data to exploit a flaw in the design. And further, the casinos are aware of the flaw and choose to keep the machines in operation. So this is not unlike card-counting, or this case involving non-fraudulent but flaw-exploiting Baccarat play (https://www.pokernews.com/news/2016/10/court-opinion-split-on-phil-ivey-9.6m-baccarat-win-26141.htm). It’s not illegal. The casinos just don’t want you to do it, and can refuse service and payouts.
The problem is that the courts will side with the casinos in disputes that reach a courtroom. THAT is a little pathetic.
Brian Holt Hawthorne I had the same thought.
Apparently something similar came up with this one. Where someone took advantage of a bug. I don’t know what the conclusion was though. https://www.wired.com/2013/05/game-king/
They got away with it. https://www.wired.com/2014/10/cheating-video-poker/
John Jainschigg Counting card is not fraud but you still gonna get kicked out. It can be argued that you take away the “luck” element with this analysis of patterns.
Although they had to play Prisoner’s Dilemma for the feds first. Fortunately they both declined to turn on the other, and the feds had no case.
My guess is that there’s some law against using technology to win in a casino. Something since those folks used a computer to beat roulette.
Sordatos Cáceres Right. The fact that they have a real system means it isn’t fraud. Also, what they are doing does not at all affect the pseudo-randomness of the machines. Sure, casinos have the right to kick them out, but I’m still trying to figure out how they could be arrested. Unless they were here on tourist visas, in which case it is visa fraud if they were actually here on a job.
It does affect it, they are using analysis to get better chances of something that is supposed to be fully random…. Of course that is not is the fault of the machine but that would be the rationale.. I don’t think the police would get involved though.
1. The law is whatever the person who paid for the politician says it is. Ask Bannon.
2. Casinos traditionally don’t shy away from rubber hose correction and the like.
3. Exploiting a flaw doesn’t imply legality. Ask a jailed hacker, or the person who lifted your credit card info.
Cryptographically secure random number generators are not true random number generators, are deterministic, but if seeded with true randomness, would work just fine.
Bennet Yee
Little radium and a detector in each machine?
Kee Hinckley Zombie Madam Curie recommends it…
Bennet Yee Not necessarily. I suspect that the two dozen initial trials are analyzed to figure out where in the pseudorandom sequence they are and to reconstruct the original seed, based on the previously reverse engineered algorithm. Old-style mechanical slot machines were closer to true randomness, based on the vagaries of physical friction and such.
Kee Hinckley No. There’s a lot of classic research in cryptography on secure random number generators, where there are proofs about their security — so that an algorithm that can predict future output based on past output with greater success rate than pure chance could be used as a subroutine to break another hard problem, such as factoring.
For physical randomness, there is no need for radioactivity. A technique that was used decades ago was to amplify the junction noise from a reverse-biased zener diode, which is quantum mechanical in nature.
Brian Holt Hawthorne Non-cryptographic pseudorandom number generators may be vulnerable to an attack where past output leaks information that allow seed reconstruction (though seed reconstruction may not be necessary), but the whole point of cryptographically secure pseudorandom number generators is that such inference is impossible.
Thermal noise random generators aren’t that expensive. A slot machine operator who can’t be arsed to use proper random numbers deserves all the attacks of pseudorandomness prediction that advantage gamblers can unleash on him or her.
Bennet Yee Right. I missed that you said “cryptographically secure.” That’s not what we are talking about in this case, which is old machines with a known flawed algorithm that are nonetheless still being used because it is cheaper to intimidate people than replace machines or code.
As I understand it, casinos are set up to disorient you from outer time and space: no windows, no clocks, etc. I’m surprised they let phones in in the first place. Seems to me they’d put the whole works in a Faraday cage.
Jym Dyer: Slot machines are routinely installed not in specialised casinos but wherever their operators can get away with it — bus stations in jurisdictions where it’s not prohibited, international passenger ferries, even random shopping areas.
Andres Soolo As I recall, the Las Vegas airport had plenty of them.
Brian Holt Hawthorne: Even in Las Vegas, they can’t make TSA take all passengers’ cellphones.