You could be forgiven for planning to cheat slot machines, after all they are big buckets of money sitting right in front of you. But it will take a whole lot more than simply shaking them to get the money out.

Teams and highly intelligent individuals have created tools to cheat machines out of their money over the years, adapting their art as the manufacturers close the flaws within their programs or cabinets. In Britain, these tools can fetch around £10,000 when new and unused. Often the creator will not use the tool themselves in the real world, rather they will sell it on to more brazen individuals who will take maximum advantage of it. The creator will often own a single machine to design and test their device on, then sell it to a few people at various locations across the country. Once the fruit machine manufacturers cotton on to the exploit, and begin with their security updates, the tools will be sold on for less and less money to people lower down the ‘exploit’ chain, until eventually the tool becomes worthless, it will then likely end up on eBay or for sale online somewhere.

The punishments for these crimes are a lot more lenient in Britain then they are in America, but such devices are also created for gaming machines all over the world. The printing of tickets instead of winnings paid by coin was not only done as a customer convenience, it was also to prevent such frauds.

It will take some big balls to use those illegal devices, so let’s move on to legal fruit machine cheats…

These are the type of cheats that you will hear from the pub drunk, or ‘I know a friend of a friend who can empty fruit machines’ type person. The truth is, they do actually exist, and has been going on for nearly two decades in Britain.

It is far easier to develop cheats and methods for machines that are not random, that instead rely on paying cycles to reach their target percentage. In America all slot machines are random, but a few countries such as Great Britain have both fixed rate percentages and random machines. Although cheats have and do exist for random machines, it is far easier to create cheats for machines that are trying to reach a target percentage.

Think of cheating a gaming machine in the same way you might develop a really good playing strategy for a video game, they are both computer programs attempting to lead the player in a certain direction, a direction that has erratic human behavior to contend with.

Fruit machine cheats work by taking advantage of the pre-programed behavior of the gaming machine. This can range from many things, such as been able to read when a machine is ready to pay out, or to extreme lengths of taking advantage of certain features so they pay more. The methods that effectively ruin the playability of the machine for future players is often updated reasonably quickly by the fruit machine manufacturer, giving the person who worked out, or heard about the cheat a small window of opportunity before the gaming program is corrected.

Random machine have cheats too, sometimes intentionally inserted by the original programmer. Rogue computer code can tell the machine to do anything that a competent programmer could ask of it, such as using a certain combination of coins, or pressing a combination of buttons to trigger a future action. Such code would have to be kept to just a few lines to remain hidden as companies such as IGT and Bell Fruit use advanced programs to scan for ‘rogue’ code before the machine is released. The knowledge of this scan and the fact that such modifications are illegal prevents the majority of programmers from exploring such avenues, but the program modifications probably do exist, and certainly have existed, and possibly are been exploited out there right now.

This would be the most tricky to get away with, as the winnings are held in your online casino account. It is the most likely that the reverse is true, with rogue casinos attempting to cheat the player, rather than the player cheating the casino.

To avoid rogue casinos, choose a brand that you recognize, or check several review sources. Brands that are advertised on Gamblingjoe have been checked beforehand for fairness, with names such as Sky or Betfred been familiar to many.

Many people attempt to cheat a casino using the casinos sign-up bonuses, this has resulted in terms and conditions been added for the use of the bonus before any winnings can be paid. For example, many (probably all) casinos that offer a deposit bonus will not allow you to bet the bonus on the outside of the roulette wheel i.e. $500 bonus, $250 on red, $250 on black. Or you may have to play a certain number of hands at blackjack before you are able to withdraw the bonus funds as cash.

These type of terms are not uncommon, and are there to prevent the casino from been exploited whilst still remaining fair to the player.