A man became embroiled in a dispute with Florida’s Hard Rock Hotel and Casino Hollywood after a 0,000 jackpot on the slot machine he was playing was awarded to his friend, because video surveillance showed that it was she who actually pressed the spin button to trigger the jackpot.
Jan Flato and Medvedeva Navarro frequently gambled together, and were seated together at a $100 slot machine at the Hard Rock. As the pair had done in the past, Flato had Navarro press the spin button on his machine “for luck.” After the machine locked up for the $100,000 payoff, slot personnel viewed surveillance video to find that Navarro had pressed the button, and awarded her the jackpot.
Further details depend on which of the two players is asked—each gave interviews to the Miami Herald. Flato said they were playing with his money; Navarro said she had inserted $400 into the machine. Navarro said she offered a portion of the jackpot to Flato but that he just “went ballistic.” The two have not spoken since the incident.
Hard Rock officials declined to comment for the newspaper story, but the players said they were told the casino was following a predetermined jackpot procedure in awarding the jackpot to the person who pressed the button.
Frank Legato, editor of Global Gaming Business and GGB News, said the policy of paying the person who presses the spin button goes to the principle that pressing the spin button on a slot machine “is really the act of making the wager.”
“If I put a chip on the hard 8 spot on a craps table, I’m the one paid if it hits,” Legato said. “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.”
Similarly says Legato state lotteries only pay the holders of the winning tickets with no regard who actually paid for the tickets.
Legato, who is recognized as an expert on slot machines, added that the policy 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,” Legato explained. “The programmer of a slot machine assigns a number to each possible result on the reels. Duplicate numbers are then assigned.
“Low-paying symbol and blanks spaces between symbols are assigned many numbers; jackpot symbols are assigned few or one number. The PRNG generates numbers from the set at random, at a rate of hundreds or even thousands of numbers per second, and 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 instead of his friend. 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.”
