As it is known, slot machines were born more than a century ago.
Since they appeared, their fame has been crowned by false myths and a bad reputation. Their particular structure indeed has exposed the machines to a series of attempts of manipulation.
Fortunately, not all those attempts hit the target. Actually, most of them were just sterile attempts to cheat the system for the simple pleasure to fool it. During the years, the entire structure of slots has changed and evolved, from the simple mechanical engine to a definitively most complicated electromechanically one. Some popular slots at Easyslots.com were already entertaining players as we speak.
In a few years also their distribution increased so like their notoriety, up to become one of the most famous games in the world.
How was it possible to cheat a slot?
As mentioned above, the first machines were entirely mechanical. There was neither electricity nor other power suppliers, the mechanism got activated by the single lever placed on the side of the cabinet. Since the first prototype to the late 60s, they have remained substantially the same.
One of the most common cheating attempts was the coin tied with a thin wire. The physical machines were armed with electromechanical coins counter. Basically, a magnet which got activated by the metal of the coin, which triggered a switch. This switch sent a signal to the mainboard to assign the credit any time a coin passed through the coin counter. The “trick” was that to tie the coin using a wire so to retrieve the token and reuse it several times. This simple but effective trick worked for a long time until manufacturers changed the way coins counter were built. Those change made impossible to re-use this trick again.
Another trick, which has worked for a while, was the use of fake coins. Basically, the crafty player used coins or token made up with different materials, like plastic or poor metal to mimic the real coins and then fool the coin counter. In the past, “token machines” were, most of the time, triggered by mechanical switches. Simply putting a fake coin through the slits, the player was able to get credit.
If you think that cheaters come only from one side, I’m afraid to inform you that you are wrong. A not long time ago, a very bad practice got diffused among casinos’ employees. Slot machines use hoppers to give the payment, and those hoppers have to be refilled with hundreds of coins to ensure that all players could collect their payments. Some employees used to pick up a few coins from the refill bug, and considering that this operation could be repeated dozens of times, here it is, the booty is served.
Final thoughts
Nowadays slots are literally impossible to cheat. Either they are physical games or just software, today technology has made impossible even thinking of cheating the system.
If a cheater thinks to make a fool of such complex systems, he probably wouldn’t make it for the money but just for the taste of challenging other engineers and try to beat them.