What if you accidentally won $12,000?
If you choose to play at only one land-based casino in your lifetime, I recommend Hollywood Gaming in Dayton Ohio. On Saturday, September 6th, the casino held a special promotion that ran from 6pm to 10pm and the results were absolutely ridiculous.
Promotions are nothing out of the ordinary. We hold tons of promos at Palace of Chance all the time – even more than most land-based casinos. But it’s what transpired as casino players took advantage of the promotion that makes things really interesting.
Anyone with a player’s card was supposed to receive an entry into a draw for a free play. But a technical glitch meant the promo accidentally kicked off at 12:01am. And to make matters worse (or better for the players), instead of registering players for the draw, each and every player earned a free play automatically – no draw required.
Players seemed baffled, but the error didn’t catch management’s eye until two or three hours after the fact.
This free play was a huge deal. Essentially, every single player who put cash into a slot machine along with their rewards card scored free play cash. The amount each player won varied, but the casino likely lost thousands of dollars.
There are reports that one player accidentally won as much as $12,000.
The casino management were good sports about it, letting players who won big coin keep there money – at least until the error was corrected.
It could have been worse, though. There have been countless stories of land-based casinos not paying out slots winners due to payout errors.
In 2011, Behar Merlaku was enjoying casino games at an Austrian casino when he hit a $58 million jackpot. Needless to say, he couldn’t believe his luck. As it turns out, neither could the casino management. They denied Behar his winnings, instead offering him $100 and a free meal, citing a casino error.
The same thing happened two years earlier in Canada when a player won $42.9 million playing the slots. In that case, casino malfunction was cited and the player didn’t receive his winnings.
I wonder if the same thing would have happened to players at the Ohio casino if winners had popped million-dollar jackpot after million-dollar jackpot. I suppose we’ll never know, but the fact that players won tens of thousands of dollars and got to keep it is a great thing in my books.
