Hi there guys

[vankancisco]

Have been using Bet Angel for the last six weeks or so now and thought it was about time I joined the forum. I'm finding it interesting and enjoyable learning the various aspects of the software and hopefully I will continue to learn and improve.

I don't have a trading background, I was a professional fruit machine player for the last fifteen years. I've always had a keen interest in horse racing though, so I'm using the specific knowledge I have built up to provide me with an entry point into trading. It's going well so far, the only difficult part is getting used to sitting in front of a computer rather than being outdoors travelling to different towns & cities.

Anyway, hopefully some of subjects on here can aid in my development and I can provide some contributions too.

Cheers guys.

[convoysur-2]

Hi Vancansisco ..welcome
please tell me more about being a full time fruit machine player.
i never knew such a thing existed ,how did you manage to profit from this for 15 years? ,i dont ask you your secrets but please tell me something about it.
Thanks
Marc

[vankancisco]

Well...it stemmed from just casually playing them whilst I was at college and university. After some time and the inevitable outcome of losing money, I realised there was certain things you could do to influence the chance of showing a profit. In essence, it was just a case of exploiting machines on a fixed percentage, that had elements of coding which were not that sophisticated and prone to manipulation.

It was initially just a stop gap really, I thought it was a fun thing to do whilst working out what I really wanted to do. What I thought would maybe keep me busy for the next 1-2 years, ended up being my daily life for the next 15 odd years. The whole thing just evolved and evolved, so much to the point that I probably ended up thinking I was doing something important.

In short, the enjoyable aspects apart from making good money were the freedom involved, and visiting different places that I wouldn't of otherwise. The downside was that it's the type of thing that pretty much takes over your life, and it isn't the best thing to build your life around. Not that it caused any major problems, more so that it's maybe a barrier to self development.

[Euler]

When I was young I found an exploit on a JPM fruit machine in my local Chinese takeaway. But the owners were suspicious and called the police, so I had to show them that resetting the fruit machine and waiting for a certain window was the only thing I was doing to get a positive expectancy So I got a slap on the wrists for that, but quiet acknowledgement for being a bit clever. The trick was to wait for the machine to reboot or be turned on or you could invoke it by switching it on or off at the power socket, but it turns out the latter was not considered acceptable.

I spent some time travelling around towns with a friend looking for the same machine, but it turned out to be an old model and difficult to find. Later models didn't exhibit the same characteristics. I concluded it was a dodgy random seed generator in that model.

To my knowledge the systems on modern machines are much better to the point where a lot of models report back to the owners and makers of the machines. It would be surprising if a non physical exploit existed. I'm aware that people in Vegas try to get machines to offer unpaid credits to get an edge. But that definitely is illegal, rather than exploiting errors in the machine logic.

[LeTiss]

In the 90's I used to drink in a New Forest pub in Emery Down. There was a guy I remember meeting whose job was travelling around pubs playing the quiz machines. There was a Monopoly quiz machine at the time, and there was a £20 jackpot for winning the Mayfair & Park Lane questions. He played this machine so much, he could tell immediately from the questions being posed whether the machine was due to pay out - I saw him win the £20 jackpot on a number of occasions.

In true bookmaker style though, the landlord banned him, as he only ever bought a coke!

[Euler]

I guessing quiz machines were made redundant by the internet!

[bennyboy351]

I remember way back, some mates and I used to play Snooker at a local hall which had a fruit machine.
We used to put a couple of quid in while waiting for our drinks/sandwiches etc.

Then one night, I'd just put a couple of quid in and was awaiting my drinks, when a young lad came along, bunged in 50p or so and 'bingo!' dropped the £100 jackpot!

Never been a fan of the bl**dy things since! LOL

[marksmeets302]

Holland Casinos had these sega royal ascott machines where you could bet on simulated horse races. Apparently the earlier versions had this bug where every time after a reset the outsider won. Management became suspicious because the machines needed a lot of resets and the customers didn't seem to mind

That was a fun game though, even without the bug. You could play the entire evening and not lose a lot. The MGM Grand at las vegas still has one.

[marko236]

I found a bug in one of Ladbrooks fantasy football games, i realised that no team ever went a whole season without drawing a game so i would wait about 10 games into the season and start betting the draw on any team that hadn't had a draw yet.

This worked for at least four months and then it suddenly stoped, always wondered if Ladbrooks caught on or was i just a lucky bastard??

[vankancisco]

There are still software glitches in most of the modern machines, but critical updates generally appear much sooner than they used to. Since the late 90s upon till the last couple of years, it wasn't uncommon for flaws in software not to be noticed for a couple of years. Obviously it depended on how many people were taking advantage of a particular glitch and how responsible it was managed.

Even the FOBTs have had plenty of issues. Apart from serious faults in the software, there is some of the content you can profit from on a day to day basis. The problem is you have to spend a lot of time searching for units that meet a certain criteria. The time spent doing this means it isn't that much of a profitable enterprise.

[steven1976]

I use to remember one machine when you had won the jack pot, I use to put in 10p credit (20p play), press collect to take my 10p out and keep repeating until the hold buttons flashed. Then I put in the full credit and hey presto, it would hold and pay the jackpot again. You could keep repeating this over and over until the security man roughs you up

Misspent youth.

[scottydog]

loving this thread. I dont have any fruit machine storys