Unusual AP!

[johndoe]

An old friend of mine has become quite the "AP" on those "prize grab" claw-games in amusement parks and bowling alleys.

They're usually $1 a shot, and he's able to pick the expensive items out with unusual skill, usually after 10-15 tries. So for $15 he's getting decent ipods, PSP's, etc. He cruises around around and gets several in his metropolitan area each weekend.

I wonder if he'll eventually be the first guy in history to be barred from bowling alleys for being an AP!

 

[Lonesome Gambler]

Amazingly enough, many of those machines are beatable in the same way that progressive jackpots are beatable. Most of them have variable tension settings that work on a rotation basis. So you can actually watch them and take note of how many turns it takes before the cycle goes back to full tension (ie. the claw doesn't immediately slip off of each thing), and then once the civilian (*chuckle) leaves immediately before the new cycle begins, you swoop in and grab the prize with a decreased house edge (more tension) and increased player edge (actually skill).

There's also an easy way to crush many different types of skee-ball machines, but it's straight-up cheating, so I wouldn't condone it. I have done it as a kid and won my fair share of plastic rats and switchblade combs...

 

[Sucker]

When I was a kid I used to grind down pennies to the diameter of a dime, & use them in cigarette machines. That was when cigarettes were 30c a pack. I could get them for 3c. SO WHAT if it took me almost an hour to grind them to size - I saved 27 cents! :laugh:

 

[tensplitter]

"Sir, you are too good for us, you may play any of our other games (with only cheap toys as prizes) but you may not play this game"

There was an amusement park that had a video poker machine that only paid out tickets redeemable for toys. Based on its pay table, it would return over 100% if it could pay money. It played just like a VP machine at a casino.

 

[Jack_Black]

There's also an easy way to crush many different types of skee-ball machines, but it's straight-up cheating, so I wouldn't condone it. I have done it as a kid and won my fair share of plastic rats and switchblade combs...

Who claims that it's cheating, the Chuck e Cheese skee ball commission? I liken it to our AP techniques really. With the Chuck e Cheese managers pushing the propaganda around that it is cheating. Such as telling my little brother to walk up the skee ball alley right up to the target holes and just dump the balls directly into the 100 pt hole. I liken that to HCing. the chuck e cheese shoulve done a better job of protecting their games from the really little kids who can walk up the alleys. Some did when they finally put grills in front of the targets so that balls could only enter from the bottom.

Cheating might be when the ticket feedout started to spurt out tickets for your correct payout, sometimes the feeder didn't lock, and if you rocked it gently enough, you could get more tickets out of the feeder. I compare that move to past posting. Or convincing the dealer that the payout was wrong. The chuck e cheese should've done a better job of protecting the payout machine.

 

[Lonesome Gambler]

This was clearly cheating. The method I'm referring to involved throwing all but one ball, removing it, reaching into the chute and manipulating a small wire that would be hanging from the top. You could use it to manually adjust the score before throwing your last ball. As long as you accounted for the last throw, you could max out the score.