VEGAS MYTHS BUSTED: He Who Feeds the Slot Wins the Pot

• Many people assume that the person who funds a slot machine spin gets to collect any resulting jackpot 
• Those people are wrong
• According to the Nevada Gaming Control Board, the winner is the person who presses the button or pulls the lever

If you put money into a Las Vegas slot machine and let a friend take a spin, this decision could cost you the friendship. That’s because if your friend happens to hit a big jackpot, every dollar of it belongs to him or her. Whether you get any of it at all is entirely their call.

To the Nevada Gaming Control Board (NGCB), the defining moment of a slot machine wager is the act of spinning. That’s because this is when the machine’s random number generator (RNG) determines the outcome.

The RNG cycles through thousands of number combinations per second — or even millions, depending on a rate tied to the machine’s internal clock — even when it’s not being played.

Hitting the spin button doesn’t start the RNG, it stops it, instantaneously determining all the symbols that will appear. (The symbols spinning and stopping on the video screen are just a show the slot puts on for you, to make it feel more dramatic.)

Spinner is the Winner

This policy isn’t spelled out in Nevada law. It’s a de facto rule, not a de jure one, baked into how Nevada’s gaming industry has functioned for decades.

If a dispute is brought to the NGCB, they’ll review surveillance and rule based on who initiated the play, not who funded it. (If the spinner isn’t of legal age, the funder still doesn’t win the jackpot. It gets forfeited.)

The NGCB doesn’t publish the outcomes of patron dispute hearings unless they’re appealed to court. However, in 2021, multiple Las Vegas online forums reported a case in which a player funded slot play, the casino awarded the resulting $50K jackpot to the friend who spun, and the NGCB declined to intervene.

A more public (and verifiable) case, based on a similar incident in 2017 at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Florida, saw Jan Flato feed $400 into a Double Top Dollar slot and ask his friend, Marina Navarro, to “push the button for good luck.”

Navarro was awarded the $100K by the casino and Flato had no viable recourse. (And we only know about it because he shared his story with the Miami Herald.)

Let’s Be Civil

If the size of the jackpot you funded seems sufficient to sue the friend you let have a spin, there’s always civil court — though the lack of relevant case law suggests that your odds of winning another jackpot might actually be better. (Flato told the Herald that “no lawyer would take the case.”)

In any case, Flato and Navarro are no longer friends. And that’s why friends shouldn’t let friends spin.

Look for “Vegas Myths Busted” every Monday on Casino.org. Visit VegasMythsBusted.com to read previously busted Vegas myths. Got a suggestion for a Vegas myth that needs busting? Email corey@casino.org.