You Always Win When You Play This ATM Slot Machine

It’s hardly a secret that the house always wins in the end. Every single game that you play against the casino always has odds that are slightly in their favor. They’re usually close enough to make you feel like you can come out ahead—and you, as an individual, might. But, over time, the casino will always make money. Everyone who visits a casino knows that, but people are still driven to play by the euphoria of a win. The bright lights and cheery sounds of a slot machine are especially enticing, and this ATM slot machine ensures that you always walk away a winner.

This project was completed on the Strange Parts YouTube channel, with help from Matt of Small Change Arcade. The idea was to modify a slot machine so that the player always wins every time they play. That would be simple enough if the machine were filled with fake money, but is obviously fiscally-irresponsible to do with real money. The solution was to combine a slot machine and an ATM machine. Yes, I said “ATM machine” to make pedantic readers’ eyes twitch. With this setup, players are simply withdrawing money from their banks, but they’re doing so with the excitement of a slot machine!

They started by modifying an old slot machine to fit into a new cabinet. A new controller was used, which was programmed to always win. If you weren’t aware, modern slot machines are controlled digitally with preset odds. In this case, the wheels are driven by a stepper motor which can be set to go to only winning positions. They then integrated the ATM, so that the withdrawn money is deposited into the slot machine, which will then spin to a “jackpot” of that amount. They did find that it was difficult to actually obtain enough coins to fill the machine, and it’s unclear how legal this machine actually is. But this was built for DEF CON, where bending the rules is to be expected. Strange Parts has only posted the first part of the build log, so be sure to subscribe to the channel to see how it all turned out.

UPDATE: Strange Parts has uploaded the second half of the project, which can be seen below.