Link $43m slot machine win a 'mistake' says Colorado casino A US woman who thought she had won $43m (£28m) on a slot machine has been told it was a mistake. The Fortune Valley Casino in Central City, Colorado, told Louise Chavez from Denver the machine had "malfunctioned." It is now unlikely she will see a penny of the dream jackpot. When the lights and bells went off, Ms Chavez, who earns about $12,000 a year as a carer, thought she had hit the big time. "All of a sudden I saw the light come on on top of the machine," Ms Chavez told ABC's Good Morning America. "I'm like, 'Oh, my God! Oh, my God!' I'd never had this feeling before in my life, never." However, gaming officials investigating the incident reckon it was probably just an unfortunate computer glitch. Ms Chavez, who was celebrating her birthday, said all she ended up with was a free room for the night, some food and the original $20 she had put into the machine. "I put my money in there," she said. "Whatever I won, I should get. "There are dreams and there are things I'd like to do - helping my family, helping my kids. That's why I'm disappointed. "My emotions changed from excited, thrilled, to very upset." The casino said it was the first time they had had such a serious machine error in 15 years of business.
There are two possibilities here. 1) That the casino, as alleged in the thread title, is actually dead-beating on a legitimate win, or; 2) There was a legitimate malfunction of the machine, and there will be forensics to prove it. Either way, it's conceivably a public relations nightmare for the casino (perhaps even for the industry).
The way I see it is, unless she cheated she won it. Because the machines are meant to be random (or at least, seen to be). So if it randomly gives her that much money, even by accident, then she's won it. It's not like theres any skill in it. It sounds like they're saying "oh, but the machines aren't actually meant to ever give this amount of money out, despite the fact they're advertised to, so we're clawing it back". If they're advertised with the potential to give that amount, they need to have the potential to give that amount.
The error described is one in which a non-winning combo triggered the payout alarm. Hence, no actual win.
Unless she was playing progressive $25 slots (which would go through her yearly salary in less than a night's playing) it probably was a malfunction. According to every slot machine I've ever played, it is written on a placard that payoffs resulting from machine malfunctions are void. Nice to see someone who qualifies for government assistance blowing away cash on one arm bandits, though.
Hey, Zel and I lived on $12,000 a year, qualified for assistance and didn't take any. If she isn't on assistance, and saved up some change for awhile for a birthday treat, the more power to her. Not everyone poor is necessarily taking the handouts.
More info: http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/22994403/detail.html The woman is a fool, IMO. Instead of pushing for the impossible amount she couldn't possibly have won, she should instead be pushing for $215,000. She has a much better case for deserving the machine's stated Jackpot amount.
More power to you guys, and you could be right. I'm staying with my default assumption that people are generally scumbags, however. The hate keeps me warm at night.
I'm sorry but how the fuck do TWO adults manage to only earn $12,000 a year? I can't figure out how one could do it. That is $6 an hour x 40 hours a week x 50 weeks a year... so if you take 2 weeks off at $6 an hour you can still pull down 12k a year... and I think minimum wage is over $6/hr now. Even in the early 90's when minimum wage was 5.15 you could have just moved and found a better job. There is no excuse. Only retards make 12k a year.
And THIS, lady- and gentleman-slot machine programmers, is why your default should always be "return 0;" not "return UINT_MAX;" EDIT: it's also conceivable, they messed up and treated a signed int as an unsigned one. In fact, that makes even more sense, since -1 (signed) is 4.2 billion (cents, thus 42.9 million dollars). So she won -1, but for some reason it took a code path that caused the signed number to become unsigned... that's a strange one. Could even be a hardware malfunction.
My question would be: What were the state of the "reels" at the time of this supposed jackpot win? i.e. was it even a winning combination, let alone the very specific combination that would win the top prize of the machine? If not, then clearly it is a malfunction. And anyway, how can she possibly think that she won $42 million in the top prize at that machine is only 200K? In addition, she should never have accepted anything from the casino as it weakens her case, implying that she accepted their compromise as a settlement.
Besides, casinos abandoned all pretense of being "fair" the moment they banned people from counting cards (without using any artificial aids). THAT is far more telling/aggravating than this nonstory.
Here's the thing: Every slot machine (I don't care where in the world) has a warning -- usually near the coin slot or ticket dispenser -- that clearly says "malfunction voids all wins". So basically you're a fucking moron if you play slots, because computers will malfunction. Period. End of story. If you really want to gamble, stick to the tables.
Technically, I wouldn't say you're a moron for playing slots because the computer could malfunction. I would say you're a moron for playing slots because the rate of return is typically much worse than table games like blackjack or European Roulette. I say this as a person who plays the occasional slot machine (I know, I know).
She didn't say when this was or at what age or at what sort of job - but we do know her health keeps her from working so we know at least we are not speaking of two adults here. We are a one income family as well because my wife has other health issues (which I won't submit to the court of public opinion) and I've not made that little in a year in which I worked even half the time since we were married. But if I'd gotten married right out of high school then yeah, that could have happened then (in the 80's) And when I got laid off in 1999 and went back to college, I made under 12K a year every year until I got my first teaching job in 2006, simply because part-time minimum wage jobs were the only work I could get during that period.
They have always had the power to ban anyone for any reason at all. If you win too much, they're gonna kick you out. If you're counting cards and you show it, you're being stupid in any case.
Point of order: I know plenty of people who've been unemployed for over a year in this economy. I suppose there are a fair amount of retards for staying in Portland, but I'm just sayin'. As far as the article, in no particular order: -Slots are a sucker bet. The odds on them are terrible. Craps and a couple other games will actually give you close to even odds if you follow a couple simple rules. -I would argue that she get the max amount (the $215k). How many malfunctions have there been where the person won but the machine didn't pay out? It all evens out.
Sure they can, but my point is it seems pretty hypocritical to ban somebody because they "won too much" if they did so completely legitimately. There's nothing inherently "wrong" about counting cards, so long as you are not using any sort of device to cheat. I mean, they won't likely throw you out for losing too much.
I should have said "if you work the entire year." I assumed she was talking about the past, but I'm thinking it was in the last 20 years. If we go back into the 1980's, probably even the early 90's to be fair we should account for inflation some. That having been said, it wasn't hard to find a job in the 1990's and the minimum wage will get you over 12,000 in the 2000's. Not only that but Minimum wage is for teenagers, if an adult finds his or her self in a situation where they cannot get a job that pays over minimum wage, barring extraordinary circumstances they should have the brain power to figure out a way out of that situation (moving comes to mind). Volpone- Same thing applies, the 12k rule is for full time employment and if you can't get a job you move to where the jobs are unless you are an entrepreneur and can create a job yourself. By the time you're 30 you should have acquired enough skill and experience to be worth more than 6 or 7 dollars an hour.
I'm not so sure about that. I'm going strictly from memory here based on a thing about Vegas I saw on the History Channel; I recall something about state gaming officials running checks on the slot machines to see if that kind of thing happened. I don't remember what they said about the punishment but I'm sure the fine is bigger than the payout would have been.
Your opinion matters now, what it mattered then...absolutely nothing. As for this woman...she's a live-in caretaker, which means her room and board is taken care of. The $12,000 cited seems to be her cash pay not including the other.
Christ. It was 1991, we were just married and Zel was a dishwasher. I was searching for a job, but couldn't find one until 1992...and no I wasn't picky, that job was at a recycling center. I was 18 and he was 19, but had been at that job since he was 17. We couldn't move due to less than healthy relatives and the fact we had a mobile home and a loan to pay off.
They are programmed essentially to be skinner boxes, and the casino is guaranteed to make more money than you do because they program the odds of winning that way (they are not "random"). If you're going to a casino, the absolute LAST thing you should do is play slots, unless you like flashy lights, annoying loud noises, and losing money.
Tamar, you and Zel meet both of the exemptions listed in my 2nd post, teenagers and one person unemployed. You also benefit from the early 90's inflation clause. Congratulations, I hereby pronounce you not retarded.
