Near Misses ??????

[Chicagoan]

During a recent visit to a casino that I frequent, the TITO printer on my machine malfunctioned. No big deal. I moved to a nearby machine and notified an attendant. The attendant could not fix it, so a technician was called.

While the technician worked on the machine, I talked with him. I do this some in casinos to obtain a better understanding of VP machines. Mostly technicians either offer very general, non-specific answers or they humor me, and I don't really pick up much.

But the technician working on the TITO printer told me something very interesting. He said that when my players card is inserted, the casino can keep track not only of my playing time, my wins and losses, but also of my NEAR MISSES. This is the first time I have ever heard of this. I have long clearly understood that near misses are an important element of the attraction to a VP machine, but I have never even once heard that a casino tracks this data on a player-by-player basis.

I am assuming that if a casino correlates the near misses with actual playing time, they can better determine which players are positively (casino point of view) affected by near misses.

Which leads me to the very suspicious (and wrong, I hope!) thought that maybe the perfectly fair VP games that we play actually have a programmed "near miss" factor, to keep the player playing.

Anyone have any thoughts or info on this?

[paco13]

Always wondered this myself. They often happen just before you run out of credits. Almost as if to convince you to put in another bill. I seem to remember reading on this form or somewhere else in the past that near misses being programmed into games were illegal in some jurisdictions.

[case]

I don't believe this for a moment. Why would the casino care who has near misses?

If you believe this then you think the game is not fair. That the cards are programmed to come out in a specific order. This would be the same as a rigged game. I don't think so.

[Tedlark]

I'm with case, I don't buy it.

[onemoretry]

   I'm with case, I don't buy it. Nor do I.

[Vman96]

I don't buy it either, but it's possible if IGT would program it...but I hope they have more integrity than that.

As for the employee making this claim (they often seem to be the biggest exaggerators), I would have said, "Well, Show Me." I am from Missouri after all...haha

[felix]

"Near Misses" are programmed into almost all slot machines but I have never heard of them being programmed into VP machines. I don't think that would pass regs.

[felix]

Near misses suck, always.