December 28 – While glitches on online slot machine software are practically unheard of, it seems that some land based slot machines can play tricks – sometimes cruel ones! – on players.
A New Zealand player who fed a regular slot machine last week was absolutely stunned to learn that she had won millions of dollars – only to have it confirmed a few weeks later that a slots glitch in the machine had triggered the wrong light and she had in fact only won a few hundred dollars.
The story began when Verna Brown, a mental health worker who hails from Otago, entered the Law Courts Hotel in the South Island town of Dunedin with the express purpose of having some slots fun and perhaps winning some extra cash to make her Christmas budget go further.
After feeding NZ$14 into the machine, Brown ‘hit the jackpot’ and learned that she had won the equivalent of A$36 million. “For a brief, wonderful moment”, Brown saw herself as an instant millionaire and even allowed herself to imagine the way her life would look from now on.
However, the slot machine was also showing a malfunction light, which caused the hotel’s management to suspect that the win wasn’t what everyone believed it to be and hurried to call technicians.
One of the co-owners of the Law Courts Hotel said half-jokingly, “When I saw it, I thought I would have to sell the hotel and mortgage myself for 200 years!”
Management’s suspicions were confirmed over a fortnight later when the faulty parts were returned to their Japanese manufacturers who officially stated that the multi million dollar win had turned into a mere NZ$500 due to a slots glitch.
To her credit, Verna Brown was not half as disappointed as many would expect her to be. She insisted that she was quite happy with her NZ$500 win and didn’t require millions to satisfy her life.
