What bandit to restore?

[brianh]

Sorry to give you brain-ache coppinpr. . The 3 bells just paid out 10 coins with 5 slides activating, which is good, so rather than waste any more of your time for the moment perhaps I should log in the next 20 or so payouts, what symbols, how many coins and how many slides activate. The Lemon, Cherry, Lemon combination paid out 4 a few days ago then 6 next time it came up, then 2 but I wasn't checking slides on the earlier payouts so will do so and see if some sort of pattern emerges. Could slides be part of the problem? Either way, it's a lovely machine despite its childish jokes it's playing on me, so I'm sticking with it.

[coppinpr]

Oh your machine is a loooong way from being a big problem machine, it's most likley the fact there is more than one problem that is confusing the issue. Do the stop fan thing and list what happens when you line up each and every winner. The slides could well be a problem, especially if what BP says is true and they are running the wrong coins, are dirty, or both. A good first lesson on bandit maintenance is removing the slides and cleaning them. A detailed description of how to do it exists in the hints and tips section. It can and will get fixed... it just might take some time.

[brianh]

OK so I don't need to give it a damn good thrashing then Will do as you suggest, starting with the slides. Thanks for your help and patience and as Arnie once said, I'll be back

[brianh]

Ref Jubilee Rivierra Collossus payout anomolies I've got back to looking at it after being sidetracked by the festive season, and a trial logging of payouts has solved the problem.

Bear in mind it's my first bandit so I was on virgin territory. The machine was now paying out correctly on all runs but in addition was incorrectly paying out 2 coins when first reel came up with a lemon. This seemed odd as it appeared that the lemon on first reel was masquerading as a cherry and this was proved further as when first was lemon and second was cherry it paid out 4 coins, i.e. for 2 cherries.

A close examination of the reel showed an almost invisible join line at the edges of the lemon symbol and lo and behold a careful prising up of the lemon revealed the original cherry one beneath !

Why anyone would want to do this I can't quite work out (anyone got any clues on this?) as it wouldn't cut down the number of wins, just confuse the operator (and I'm easily confused) but it was a very professional looking job as the lemon was a perfect copy of the lemons on the other reels and not readily visible. I ,thought I'd share this as it just goes to show that it pays to examine the reels closely for a simple solution before taking the machine to bits

[13rebel]

At some time in its life it probably had a blank on the payout disc preventing the finger from entering the hole thus not paying out as you would expect with a lemon so the player would not suspect anything amiss. In this way, the arcade operator can increase his profits (sneaky!) The blank must have since been removed but not the lemon symbol. The bandit boys will probably be along soon to tell you of other dastardly tricks like 'bugs'.

[coppinpr]

Sometimes the blanks were just clipped into the payout disc gaps and constant hammering on the first reel could eventually pop it out. Nice to return the machine to its correct payouts.

[brigham]

I removed FIVE extra Lemons, AND two bugs from a Buckley Criss-Cross recently!

[brianh]

Ah - now it makes sense - thanks for enlightening innocent me! And there was I thinking the arcade operators were an honourable bunch

[badpenny]

It's possible the lemon was added without the bug being clipped over the pay out gap.
By allowing it to pay out (the smallest win) it entices the player into thinking it's mis-paying and they're cheating the machine.
Mills & Sega commonly did this and proudly proclaimed "Mystery Wins" on the Award Card.

BP

[13rebel]

I like the bit about Mills and Sega 'Mystery Wins', not such a mystery any more.