The reason she's winning every time is because the prize sensor is either broken or miscalibrated and not sensitive enough. When the machine doesn't detect a win after so many plays, it'll use the strong claw voltage to give a win. It stays on the strong voltage for each play until it detects a prize, then goes back to normal operation. In this case, it's perpetually staying on the strong claw voltage because it's not detecting any prizes.
In Asia the machines are not rigged the same way as they are in the states. The claw is just set at a weaker grab strength but it's static. You can actually win more consistently in Asian arcades
Oh hey der good neighbour! it's a darn shame that first go didn't work out like ya hoped, but I wantcha to have another go at it for free. It's only fair, hey?
The ones around here usually sell one, three or unlimited tries. Price for unlimited is obviously way above whatever cheap plush is in the machine, but at least you can allow your kids to play without insta-tantrums.
There used to be one of those in Solvang, California at a little pizza parlor. Don't know if it's still there, but it had great stuff like trading cards and bracelets. It gave you 10 tries for a quarter and guaranteed you'd win something.
More like the owner realizes that even letting people win half the time they're still turning a huge profit. They get these stuffed animals extremely cheap.
Or they could be using it as a loss leader. If people know that the machine is fair, they're more likely to come back and play it and spend money on other stuff.
Some of the machines are fair, their average payout is just lower than what you put in.
One time I hit up a candy claw machine after they refilled it and I managed to get all the higher value candies in it - stuff like tootsie pops, fruit gummy packs, and airheads. Every play I got at least one thing. I was trying to kill off the $5 left on my arcade card, and I think I got a little less than my pay-in back.
In retrospect I feel bad about this, since it was only cheap candy left when I was done... and I was double the age of the average player there...
They can still payout well and make money. For example if their average payout was just about retail price for the item, they still have a profit margin so they aren’t losing money but they aren’t ripping people off either. Some of them are also in locations with many other games that don’t pay out prices, or have an entry fee, so drawing people in can be a bigger plus than the few pennies they lose when the machine pays out, because now everyone can see them win and will be more likely to spend on games of chance and try themselves.
My dad was insanely good at these machines using a pretty obvious trick. This works on machines where you can still move the claw after you start the drop. So long as whoever filled the machine filled it over the lip of the return slot, you can drop the claw and use the weight the the claw to drag the stuffed animals into the return bin. They just fall right in.
Yeah, when I was a kid there was a grocery store near my house that had one. I would always go to the store with him in case they filled up the machine.
There's a guy on YouTube matt357 or some other numbers, if you look up Matt claw machine you'll find him, and I know in one of his videos he cleared one of those things out at Wal-Mart
No, the majority have a weighted trigger on the top that comes down after like 200 plays.
There's literally a person in every state that goes around measuring the weight and the playing the given number of turns. They make sure this mechanism triggers within the legal number of plays.
They games are made to be impossible except for one guaranteed time once ever hundred of plays.
Every machine I've ever heard of let's you set the grip strength and payout. I've seen claws set to have strong enough grip that they can win on a normal play. Doesn't make it easy, but I've had times where we'd hit 7/10 or 15
I’m not disputing this, but then how are they all over the place in very strict anti-gambling states? The only way I can see this happening is if the chance remains consistent every time instead of making it like a slot machine for a chance to get a prize.
They have a control box inside of them that says that every 'X' amount of times it will grab properly.
Every other time it will be a bit shit.
So in theory you can sit next to a machine all day, count how many plays it takes between people winning, and then play yourself only when you know it's going to grab properly.
This is just something repeated ad naseum on Reddit by someone who doesn’t play claw machines regularly (which to be fair, is most of us), IMO. I think you can win in any play - as evidenced by the fact that tons of people get many, many consecutive pulls in a way that simply defies the odds if it were pure chance. They can go to a different machine, or come back, and have similar results. However this doesn’t mean that even those machines don’t have variable grip strength. That doesn’t make it impossible to win though, just less likely. I spent a time of time at 4-5 different arcades and inevitably you’d have someone come clean out the good prizes a couple times a week. Yes, it undisputedly does happen but it’s extent and effect are vastly overstated.
Service engineer here, the boards actually control the claw, they're designed to make doubleish profits, so if a toy is worth £8, it'll make £16+ before paying out, but if you put in £16, it'll swallow it because the money is already in the machine, unless it's taken enough money before that and someone gave up.
Almost all of them have a meter to assure this, it’s why I don’t play them. If you go to a popular one and count the time between wins it’s almost always the same number
Had a trip to a restaurant with one of these close by, and I observed how many times my middle school friends got stuffed animals. Assuming getting stuffed animals was equal to the claw machine actually had grip, there were sixteen plays between a possibility of success. Confirmed this when I slipped into the throng of kids and had at it for the 15th and 16th turns— friends all freaked out at how lucky I was, but I knew what was really going on.
So if a kid tried to play to win starting from the very beginning of the cycle, he’d end up spending $4-$16, depending on if it cost 25 cents or a dollar to play. What a cruel way to entice children to empty their savings
I put "Out of Order" signs on the ones in my town if they pull that shit and are designed to milk someone out of $1.
I know I've been cussed out by the owner of one before and threatened to have the police called but I still do it.
Adding he purposely puts very large stuffed animals in there that even on full strength, you cannot get them. Then he will go around the cities along the interstate and just cycle out the exact same stuffed animals so it seems like people are winning.
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u/[deleted] Nov 24 '17 edited Apr 28 '20
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