Ask the Slot Expert: My slot machine malfunctioned! 593w2k

2u3w2o

When Station Casinos sold the Palms casino, two of the restaurants from Palms moved to Red Rock. The pizza outlet in the food court greatly improved when Side Piece opened there. The coffee shop also underwent a name and menu change, going from The Grand Cafe to The Lucky Penny, which used to be at Palms. Red Rock's Lucky Penny had many of the dishes I knew from Palms' Lucky Penny. I don't see any of the unusual dishes, like brick chicken, on the menu today.

One current menu item, which may or may not have been on Grand Cafe's menu, is Lucky Three-Way. As its name implies, you get three of three items: three eggs, three pancakes, and three sausages or slices of bacon. It's really too much food for one meal. I usually get it to go and spread it out over four breakfasts/lunches.

Many slot machines today have a bonus feature that can be called lucky three-way. The bonus can be triggered with one or more add-ons. Three color-coded (let's call them) accumulators appear above the reels. When the correspondingly colored symbol lands on the screen, it adds to the accumulator and the bonus may be triggered with the add-on.

I italicized "accumulator" because the display makes you think that the fuller it is, the closer you are to hitting the bonus. In truth, the accumulator display is meaningless on 99% of the machines that have them. You can read a statement like "display is for entertainment purposes only" in the help. The help will also say that landing one of the bonus-triggering symbols may trigger the bonus. The message banner that some machines have above the reels will also say that the green diamond may trigger the extra spins bonus add-on, or something similar.

(The only machine with a real accumulator I can think of right now is Magic of the Nile. Every symbol that lands on the screen increments the appropriate accumulator and the bonus is triggered when its accumulator is filled.)

You can win one, two, or all three add-ons on a bonus round, depending on how many bonus symbols land on the screen. I have the impression that every time I've won the bonus with two or three different symbols on the screen, my bonus has always had every add-on whose symbol appeared on the screen.

I can't swear to it, because I didn't make an effort to note any exceptions. I'm pretty sure I did always get all the possible add-ons because of my reaction to a recent spin.

I liked playing Mo' Mummy in the past. I noticed a new version, Mo' Mo' Mo' Mummy last week and, being a sucker for Egyptian-themed slot themes, I had to give it a shot.

After playing for a while, I landed both the green and purple diamonds on the screen. Then the machine went into bonus game.

I expected to have both the Mo' Rows (purple) and Mo' Spins (green) add-ons for my bonus, but I got only Mo' Spins.

Maybe I was mistaken about how many symbols were on the screen. When the bonus was over and the base game screen reappeared, both symbols were there. I was convinced there was a malfunction that caused the machine to not include the Mo' Rows add-on in my bonus. I took a picture of the screen for evidence.

Whenever players say that their machines malfunctioned, my first though is that the machines didn't. The players just don't know how the machine is supposed to work. Gaming labs test the machines thoroughly and jurisdictions ensure that messages on the screens are accurate. Although a malfunction is possible, the chances of one happening are slim.

The banner messages say that a diamond may trigger the bonus with the corresponding add-on. The help screen also says that a diamond may randomly trigger its bonus feature. The help screen then rather wordily goes on to say that if only one add-on is triggered, then you get only that one add-on. If only two add-ons are triggered, then you get only those two. If all three add-ons are triggered, then you get all three. In summary, you can have the bonus triggered with two different symbols on the screen and get only one add-on.

My machine did not malfunction. The only malfunction was between the slot chair and the machine. I didn't know exactly how this machine worked.

I have had one machine genuinely malfunction while I was playing it. It didn't say that I had won some ridiculous amount of money that was impossible to win on that machine. It just seemed to get tired of rendering symbols during the bonus.

I won the free games bonus on a Quick Hit slot. As the free games were playing, blank spaces replaced more and more symbols on the bonus reels. The reels were eventually all blank. The machine was still crediting me with whatever I had won. You just couldn't tell what symbols caused the winnings.

I hit the Service button. Two slot supervisors arrived before the bonus was over and saw what was happening. "We have to reboot the machine," one said.

We waited until the bonus was over and then one of them initiated a reboot. A minute later the other fellow said, "Oh, shit!" and checked the other Quick Hit machines that were on the other side of the bank.

"It's okay," he said. "There's no one playing them."

The machines had linked progressives on five or more Quick Hit symbols and my machine was the controller for the link. When my machine went offline, the machine next to mine said it had lost with the progressive controller. The one supervisor saw the message and then checked whether anyone was playing the other machines on the link. Had players been on them, he would have asked them to wait until my machine was back up.

My machine was fine after the reboot.

If you would like to see more non-smoking areas on slot floors in Las Vegas, please sign my petition on change.org.

Send your slot and video poker questions to John Robison, Slot Expert™, at [email protected].

Copyright © John Robison. Slot Expert and Ask the Slot Expert are trademarks of John Robison.