Originally published at: Woman buys claw machine and learns the secret about how they are rigged | Boing Boing
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So, settings for one type. Settings that are inside of a probably locked cabinet.
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It’s a robot carny. Have fun but don’t expect to win. You have better odds in Vegas
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I’ve literally never played one because “everyone knows they are rigged”. Perhaps if they did something slightly different that seemed a little fairer, though tricky, people might play them?
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While my Mum heads to the penny pusher, I enjoy the claw machine.
I’d like to give up, but the Claw is my Master.
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I’ve played them, it’s still fun but i would never try more than one or two times. There are other chance type cabinets and out of all of them the claw machine is probably the only one i would ever approach.
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Slot machines have a similar adjustment. The average payout of a slot machine is programmable and adjustable. Casinos will increase it when they want to bring more people into the casino.
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I’m honestly more offended by the misuse of a dip switch, there. SET YOUR VALUES IN BINARY. You have to provide an encoding table anyway, and you can use fewer lines if you have fewer switches.
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So the dip switch sets what exactly? The degree to which the claws close (or open)? Some tension-ing spring on how easily the claws can angle back open? Smoothness of the ride over to the chute? …
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Yes…
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When the system is rigged, you just have to cheat:
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Using that setting is illegal in most jurisdictions, despite every operator doing it.
It turns a skill game into a chance game, and that is considered gambling.
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That probably depends on this:
Clearly the dip switches can’t actually set the probability to 1 out of 10. This isn’t a random number generator. If you set the claw down on a place with nothing to grab, you’re going to keep getting nothing, no matter how those switches are set. So I assume that weakening the grip, for example, makes it so it’s much harder, but you still get it, on average, roughly one out of ten times.
So the operators would probably argue that this is still a game of skill, just skill set to a higher level.
Hmmm, actually, I take that back. I guess they could be set so that it actually becomes easier (e.g. strengthen the grip) exactly one out of ten times, and is essentially impossible the other nine times. That would also be a reasonable interpretation. I wish more reverse engineering had been done.
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I thought that this was common knowledge? While I gave in occasionally, I let my kid know claw games were a scam and most of the time they claws isn’t powerful enough to actually grip the item you want, even if your aim was on.
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she should be awarded some flair…
#officemovie
The word is “scam”. These are slot machines for kids and should be banned.
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