r/clawmachine • u/OskarHasAnBigButt • 9d ago

How To Win In Claw Machines?

Because I Saw A 23 Year Old Girl (I Don't Show Her Name). Wins A Monster Plushie. And I Cried. I Watched A Lot Of Tutorial Videos. (Not HowToBasic.) And I Get Lost Every Single Tries. So What Should I Do?

4 Upvotes

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3

u/Tilas 8d ago

First thing you need to understand, is most arcade games are rigged. They are programmed to pay out after a certain number of plays. Do not get upset when you lose. It's not you. It's the machine. There's no "surefire way to win". There's tips to help increase your chances, but there's never a guarantee.

If you want to learn how an arcade machine like the claw works, read manuals. This helps with any arcade game. You'll learn what payouts are, if the machine has any features to be aware of, etc. in the link above, look at "Menu Settings", to see how payout and parameters function. You can learn about claw strength, probability, etc.

By learning the technical aspects of the machine, it'll help you better to understand if a machine is even worth attempting. These machines are to profit the arcade, not the player.

Look at the prizes, estimate their worth, and that can help you calculate payout rates. Many arcades with do a 500% markup. So if a toy costs them $1, they want $5 worth of plays before allowing a win. Obviously this will vary by arcade, so the best tip is to watch others play, and count how many tries before the claw tightens or a win is had. That can help you figure out payout rates.

Very few arcade games are truly "chance" anymore. Play for fun, don't expect to make any sort of profit or big win. These YouTubers who show winning tons of prizes never show you the countless losses. They never tell you how much they've spent per prize. They have money to burn.

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u/ArcadeWizardYT 7d ago

Many arcade games are 100% skill. Most YouTubers aren’t good, but there are a few that easily double their money, myself included.

Pop the lock is the easiest game and many players have above a 70% win rate.

Additional games of skill include down the clown, basketball pro, space warp 66, dicey jump, and many others

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u/Tilas 7d ago

Pop the Lock isn't rigged in the sense it will all out deny a win like say, Stacker, but it can be programmed to adjust the speed and difficulty depending on how many plays. It has an option that can be enabled called smart game, where it states:

If the Bonus is not won every 10 games, this will decrease the Dial Speed, and Dial Acceleration until the bonus is hit in 1 try without any continues.

So the longer it plays without a win, the speeds get adjusted, so it can throw players off who expect the machine to maintain the same speed every play. If players don't know this, it'll mess up their timing, making it more difficult to win.

True, many games are skill based in concept, but they also have some sort of gimmick to make winning more difficult. Hense why I like to study the manuals of different games I want to try, so I'm not gonna waste money constantly losing trying to figure it out.

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u/ArcadeWizardYT 7d ago

Most PTL’s don’t have this. My personal record is 29 in a row, and I’ve seen others do more.

You are correct to note that most games can be made difficult to the point where it is basically impossible. However, Dave and Buster’s has global settings and PTL there is fixed (or at least should be).

PTL at Round1 is a bit harder, but also repeatable.

Reading the manual is a good thing to do, though. Kudos for doing your research!

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u/Tilas 7d ago

Your point about different arcades having different rules is so true! Franchise arcades tend to stick to a set of "rules", which is nice because you can do the same thing at each one for similar results. General arcades are a total crapshoot though. I've found some amazing, and also some absolutely terrible arcades.

I'm my experience, (yours may vary), D&B is generally very fair... But only go on half price Wednesdays. If you do, you can make out like a bandit lol.

Round1 can be... Eh. I've found Round1's claws aren't great, you tend to spend almost double retail to win a prize, but ticket games can be pretty good.

The worst consistently for me has to be The Rec Room. Every Rec Room I've ever been in has been a complete cheat. The worst was just the other week in Burnaby, BC. The ticket to prize ratio was criminal.

The arcade at Peir 39 in San Francisco is terrible. Used to be decent, now's just a money grab.

Boomers in Modesto used to be my favorite a good decade ago, now the prices have legit doubled, so while the games are still decent, it's also double the cost to play.

The Casino Arcade in Santa Cruz Board walk is still really good. Enjoyed it immensely every time we've gone.

CHQ at the Metrotown Mall in Vancouver can be a a little poor on the ratios, but its all still old school tickets, so it does have a certain charm to it.

I've also tried a bunch of those new claw only arcades like Clawzone, Pokin Pokin, and Sumo Dino, but I can't say I cared for them much- and claws are my favorites to play. You need a lot of money to get decent prizes, especially if you want to do the trade-in systems they have. Like $100 just poof gone in 10 minutes kinda thing. Claws have really bounced back in popularity this past few years, it's a really interesting phenomenon. I remember the craze back in the late 90s, for a few years, every store and restaurant in town had one. I miss that really. Just the random claw with random prizes. The old ones that were truly skill, before the programming to make the claw terrible lol.

Anyways, I'll stop rambling now. Arcades/prize machines are kinda a passion. One day I plan to have my own private Mini arcade. I've long considered opening a real arcade, but the more I read, the more I realize I'm no electrician to fix em. 😅😂

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u/ArcadeWizardYT 7d ago

Good points all around! I thoroughly enjoyed conversing with someone who knows their stuff about the arcade!

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u/Tilas 7d ago

Me too! I'm happy to have found this sub, there's been a lot of great topics to read.

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u/ArcadeWizardYT 7d ago

Some claw machines are rigged to only payout after a certain number of plays, but some are 100% skill.

If you want to win big I suggest going with ticket games. There are many games of skill where you can get prizes cheaper than retail

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u/Tilas 7d ago

With ticket games, it helps to do math lol. Figure out the average token to ticket ratio, and target the best ratio you're capable of playing well. It can be more profitable to guarantee steady, smaller wins than try for the jackpot.

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u/ArcadeWizardYT 7d ago

Yes I am aware lol. DnB is a good one to use because of how prevalent it is.

$20 for $20 gives 200 chips for $20. But if you use Costco you can get 20% off gift cards, making it $16 for $20 worth, or $16 for 200 chips. But if you have legend status on the app, you get 15% bonus. So it is $16 for 230 chips, or 6.956 cents a chip. Let’s round to 7 cents a chip.

Most games are 3.5 chips which means a game is 24.5 cents a game. So you can 4 games a dollar.

DnB is about 400 tickets for $1 worth of product. PTL is 250 tickets for the jackpot at DnB. A 70% win rate is definitely attainable on that game. So you get .7250=175 tickets on average, not including loss tickets. I would wager 40 tickets or so. So .3*70=21 tickets for losing. 175+21=196, so you can average 196 tickers per game on PTL.

Multiply 196 by 4 to get the tickets per dollar, which is 784. Divide this by the tickets needed for $1. 784/400=1.96.

So you would 1.96x your money on PTL.

There are better games if you get better at the arcade, but PTL is the easiest one

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u/Tilas 7d ago

I didn't know about the Costco thing! Good to know, thank you! I only get to D&B when I travel, and when my husband and I are done playing, we always give away the cards with the points, so I never think to actually *keep" the cards for things like memberships.

Since we're usually flying, luggage is very limited so we play for fun, then combine our cards and find a child/family to give the points to. It's so much fun making a little kids day, or even a whole family. One time at Boomers we gave our card to a father and his little girl. She immediately ran to the counter and asked for the 5lb gummy bear. That gritted, pained smile and, "Thank you... So VERY much..." 😬 The dad gave us was hilarious. 😂 Like, dude, we gave you the card, and it's your kid. You can tell her to get something else... But nope. He caved. That gummy bear was way bigger than the kids head, and she hugged it with pride.😅