Why Do I See People Walking Around Noting Progressive Jackpots?

The other day I was playing slots early in the morning and noticed someone walking around noting the various progressives on machines. I’ve seen this before and wondered: Who are these people, who do they work for, what do they do with the information, and why does this have to be done manually?

This could be a couple of different scenarios.

The less likely one is a slot advantage player, checking payouts of what are known as “variable state,” “accumulator,” or “persistence” machines, in which the games are abandoned by unknowledgeable players while they’re in a “state” to return more than 100%. We've written about this at some length recently, since we're publishing a book -- and launching a companion website -- on the subject.

The reason we say it's the less likely scenario is slot APs, a.k.a. "grinders" or "vultures," aren't interested, generally, in the big progressive jackpots. They're more concerned with smaller bonuses and what you'll see them doing is pressing buttons on the machines quickly to check the variable states of the bonuses at different betting denominations.

Those people you see checking and recording the big progressives are, most likely, members of a slot team. These players focus on progressive slots, seeking jackpots that have grown large enough to offset the house edge, making the game theoretically profitable. By pooling resources, teams can afford to play high-denomination or max-bet machines, gunning for the elusive big progressives.

So that's the who they are (team members) and who they work for (themselves). As for what they do with the information, after observing and noting jackpot patterns over time, they try to estimate "must-hit-by" thresholds or identify machines with unusually high jackpots. This has to be done manually, since the progressive meters change minute by minute, there's no central database for these jackpots, and trying to call the casino to access this info is a fool's errand.

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Comments

Gregory May-09-2025

Nope

I'm an early riser. I've seen managers (employees) of the casino with clipboards going machine to machine jotting down the progressive numbers.  At least that is what assume they are doing. The look at the number, write it down then go to the next machine. I don't know if they do this every day, but I've seen it more than once.  I'm assuming that it's done for some sort of bookkeeping or maybe its a regulatory requirement.

Donzack May-10-2025

Gregory

I agree. The casinos I play at regularly I get to know the office workers that walk around with clipboards about 6a.m. I always ask how are the progressives doing. They always respond that they are doing good. Slots only, never video poker.

Jeremy Gray May-10-2025

Author of question

As the author of the question, both of the commenters so far are right. These are casino employees (or slot manufacturer employees) who are logging the progressives early in the morning. I know what slot hustlers look like, and these people are badged and identifiable

David Miller May-10-2025

Why Do They Do This?

 When playing video poker- whether on a progressive and/or a regular video poker machine, I often times see casino employees taking a slot card and inserting the card into the machine, and then removing it. Why and what are they doing? Are they "resetting" the computer? There must be a reason, otherwise, why are they doing this?

Anthony Curtis May-10-2025

Reasonable

Casino employees sounds reasonable. I'd think that in most cases this information could be accessed from automated reports, but that's probably not always the case.

sunny78 May-10-2025

odd

If they are truly noting numeric values off of progressive machines, seems odd and useless given that information and tons more data has to be available on a server in real time where all these machines are linked. And has to be stored off and backed up for a long time to slice, dice, and create any and every report on one could think of with this trove of data collected.

Gregory May-10-2025

RE: David Miller

I've seen this too. Most slots are connected to a backend system that reports machine status. Back in the day, when a machine hit a jackpot, you had to either hit the call attendant button or flag someone down. These days you don't have to do anything. The floor people all carry gismos that alert them whenever a machine needs attention. This could be a jackpot, but it could also be to clear an alert on the machine because it's low on tito paper, or has an internal error (i.e. a cooling fan has failed) or maybe that the bill accepter is getting full. Could be any number of things.  I think the attendant is just logging into the system to clear the alert.  I never give it much thought. I don't think the slot attendants have any ability to alter machine play.

Jeremy Gray May-10-2025

Re: All Comments

This is why I asked the question!  I’m so confused why anyone would need to physically log the jackpots at the beginning of the day. I’ve seen this at multiple casinos and cannot figure it out!!!

David Miller May-10-2025

Gregory

 I can/could see the veracity of your possible reasons, but I have also seen the employee insert their card into ALL machines in the bank of machines that were not in play. Why is my question...

Question of the Day - 10 May 2025

Comments