Question for slot officials: Do your players know the slot rules?
Should they know them?
I ask after writing the story of Jan Flato, who told a lady friend to “push the button for good luck” at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Hollywood. Of course, the jackpot hit, for $100,000.
When casino managers checked the video, it showed the woman, 35-year-old Marina Medvedeva Navarro, had actually started the slot wheels rolling, making her the rightful winner.
This one ended uglier than normal, with Flato not only lost the cash, he has barely heard from his friend since she walked out that Jan. 31 night alone with a $50,000 check and another 50 grand in cash — after asking armed security to keep an eye on Flato as she left, as I reported in The Miami Herald Thursday.
This raised a question I didn’t know the answer to, and not many people did: That the money goes to the person who pushes the button.
Frank Legato, editor of Global Gaming Business magazine, said it makes sense that the Navarro would get the money.
“Pressing the spin button is really the act of making the wager,” Legato says. “If I put a chip on the hard 8 spot on a craps table, I’m the one paid if it hits. If I take the Raiders and the points at the sports book, I’m the one paid if they cover. Pressing the spin button is making the wager on a slot machine.”
Legato says it also makes sense with respect to how slot machines arrive at the results on the reels. Slot machines arrive at their results through a pseudo random number generator, or PRNG. The programmer of a slot machine assigns a number to each possible result on the reels.
The PRNG generates numbers from the set at random, at a rate of hundreds or even thousands of numbers per second, Legato says. The computer freezes the set of numbers generated at the instant the spin button is pushed.
“It is accurate to say that that same jackpot result would not have landed if Mr. Flato had pressed the button,” Legato says. “For that to happen, Flato would have had to press the button at the exact same nanosecond that the woman did, which is practically impossible.”
Because timing is everything, gambler’s arguments such as “that spin would have been my jackpot” or “the house knew it was going to hit” are rubbish, Legato adds.
Legato has testified as a legal expert in other slot cases, but not involving who pushed the button, because he says the rules are so clear.
Gambling experts cite instances in Las Vegas where a grandmother allowed a child to push a button. The jackpot hit, but the casino refused to play because the machine was operated by a minor. And slot jackpot ownership was the foundation for the 2008 movie “What Happens in Vegas.” Ashton Kutcher won a $3 million spin on Cameron Diaz’s quarter the day after the two wed during a drunken romp. (They then tried to trick each other into infidelity to lay claim to the jackpot, and, as is the movies, eventually fell in love.)
But another lawyer, who I had talked to in pursuit of the story said it was obvious that the jackpot belongs to the person who put in the money. I am not naming him here because he was trying to do me a solid – help me on a story – but after hearing Legato’s argument, I don’t think he is correct. So even those who we journalists sometimes quote as “experts” didn’t have this one nailed.
Which brings me back to the everyday player. Or, make that, the once-a-year player. How important should knowing the slot protocols be for them? How does a casino let players know? (I’m the first to acknowledge that having a sign up saying “Hey, push your own buttons” would be way heavy-handed and counterproductive to the party vibe of a slot floor.)
Fortunately, as I researched I have had some regular slot players say they have been quietly cautioned by their hosts, including some who played at the Seminole Hard Rock. And maybe even Mr. Flato himself had been cautioned.
We had a saying at one of my newspapers: “There are 20 ways a story can go wrong, and only one way it can go right.” I suppose there’s a corollary to this in the slot world, and the push-the-button protocols would be, what, No. 18?
