Is it possible to cheat fruit machines?
It’s a common misconception that a machine is “due” to pay out after a period of not paying. This is wrong – a fruit machine has exactly the same chance to pay out a jackpot on every single spin. A machine that is built any other way is illegal in most jurisdictions. There are ways to cheat fruit machines with magnets, but only the old type of machines with spinning reels. I’m not sure of the exact details, but when I was a kid, one of my friend’s brothers got 3 years jail in the UK for doing exactly that. There was a recent case of a casino in the UK that had its automatic roulette machines sabotaged with the assistance of one of the technicians, but I’ve no idea how it worked – apparently some kind of magnet gizmo.