Question of the Day - 02 March 2020

I've seen casino employees do this to the machines after a tournament and I just thought they were switching the machines off since they weren't going to be needed for a while. Those machines are only used for tournaments, which don't go on 24/7, so I figured they switched off the machines to keep someone from wandering over and trying to play one by mistake, plus it saves electricity and burned out bulbs, etc. But maybe there is a more specific reason, perhaps they are preserving the score from the last tournament round in case there is a question or disagreement with the player about what his tournament score was when the tournament results get posted on the board later. 

Dedicated machines.  Set for jackpot symbols to come up frequently.  Have observed them moving banks of tourney machines in and out of the casino.  On the Strip, at least.  You can't play them, not turned on except for tournament play.  And mostly unlike your familiar reel slots like Red White Blue.

So-called random assignment of persons to machines each round.  Machine ABC may hit great one round, lousy the next round when XYZ will be the winner. 

Can't understand why the answers would be so mysterious.

I have taken many cruises. It appears that the tournament slot machines are controlled by switch inside the slot machine or somehow controlled from a central computer. Similar to lottery controlled slot machines which you see in racinos in Ohio. 

played in one at Excal. last fall, they were in tournament mode, showed your name and score on display.  Once tournament was over they were opened up for anyone and played like any other slot.

I actually saw them reprogram video slot machines in Vegas last year.  Not going to mention which casino.  They simply went into the main menu, selected revenue mode, or something like that, and reset the machine.  Done.  In reverse for tournaments.  It was explained to me that the RNG is not touched.  In tournament mode, the coin in is not monitored, only points out.  The same key slot used to reset from a jackpot is used to reset the machine to zero points for the next round.  When done, they simply place it back to regular mode for normal play.  No rules are broken.  I was told that he machines are set for 150% to 300% so the scores will be high.  The RNG is not touched, and still used in the tournament.  The output of the RNG is used for the tournament pay table.  I do not know how it works for VP tournaments.  Harrahs Laughlin, for instance, has dedicated machines that are in the back, and only used for tournaments.  They are powered off when not being used.

The Fiesta Henderson slot tournament uses regular machines that get locked into a single game that changes every few weeks. You get to play for 5 minutes and they write down your score if high enough. They have to reset the machine to 5 minutes after each play.

Tournament machines are turned WAY up on payouts. This is done by changing a computer chip or by flipping a switch. ALL the machines in a casino can change the payouts by flipping a switch.
Weather this is done or not, I don't know. Many people believe it is. It IS possible. One should know how ALL slot machine work. Go to this link from "How Stuff Works":
https://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/slot-machine.htm

You can assume that the $200.00 free slot value can be taken with the world's SMALLEST grain of salt, not the biggest.

for you youngsters out there this ? was answered i believe honestly. this woul be mid 90’s.  yes there is a switch on some machines for tournament play. at end of tournament they were switched back to normal play. that was then. you therefore cannot answer for sure. if you have a group of machines reserved exclusively for tournament play and they have big payoffs yes they are probably turned on and off or else had rng chip changed for big payoffs. there are so many variations now that on many machines is irrelevant. ex. Orleans and the balloons you have to pop. at Fremont you plays slots on blazing 7’s and they hit  as usual. their vpoker machines are not changed for tournaments. it doesn’t really matter as it is pure luck which machine you pick. downtown you cannot play free play on the coin droppers. it is available on most machines i play. answer is prob some still have on/off switch some don’t. this switch has definetly been used in past. 

I once was invited to a tournament on a cruise ship.  The tournament used a bank of machines which were available for normal play, but for the duration of the tournament were clearly set to hit on almost every spin.  I suspect they used something like the TournEvent platform you mentioned.

I would think Nevada Gaming Control Board would have to know and approve of such a switch on a machine if it actually exists. I've played only on dedicated machines in tournaments, from the $10 daily tournaments the California Hotel used to run decades ago to MGM's multi-property tournaments run today.

All state gaming control boards set a minimum payout for ALL machines and it is extremely low, somewhere around 75%.The average payout on the strip is around 90%

The Tuscany uses the red devil slots by Marilyn's Cafe for their slot senior slot tourney on Thursdays.  Every other day you can play on them like a regular slot machine, but on Thursday's they have them set for like 3 to 5 minutes of tourney play per round.  It looks like they go through a computer to set all of this up.

At the casino where I work, we have a bank of machines that can be turned into tournament machines. It is controlled by the kiosk which is near the bank. And by the way, slot machine payouts can not be changed with the flip of a switch. There is nothing like this in a slot machine. The payout of a machine can be changed, but it's quite a process, which involves gaming employees, and having access to the software.