Recent thread here about a dropped hold. Well, it happened to me.
I was at the Westgate in LV for the pool world championship. Playing some deuces wild in my off time. Hold on card 5 dropped when I hit the "draw" button.
Was it my fault? Sometimes when you play too fast you think you hit a hold, and you didn't. Few hours later it happened again. Next day I paid attention. Dealt three treys and a deuce for card #5. Held, using the buttons (not the finger swiping). Hit the "draw" button. Hold on the deuce dropped.
I summoned the authorities. Explained what happened. Explained that it was just my word, and I wasn't asking for my money payout. But told them they really should shut the machine down and have their tech look at it.
They diddled their buttons and recalled the dealt hand and the drawn hand. No hold on card 5.
Nothing happened! I got into a short conversation with a fellow later, telling him what happened. He said, "They don't care."
How can they not care? Somebody is going to raise a real stink, sooner or later.
As any technician knows, it is tough to analyze an occasional intermittent fault. How does a thing like this happen?
The drop seems to be simultaneous with hitting the draw button. I've done digital circuit design for years. I doesn't "feel like" an electronic misfiring to me, flipping a one to a zero somewhere in the guts. It feels "mechanical."
"Switch bounce" is a known problem with mechanical switches and buttons. Especially when a single device is used to toggle between two states. You think you hit it once, but the contacts bounce and toggles again (and possibly yet again). The cure is routine: You catch the first action with a "latch": an integrated chip that locks to the first switch action for an appropriate period of time, milliseconds or seconds.
The best guess I can offer is that hold button #5 is wearing out, and the vibration from hitting the "draw" button causes button 5 to actuate. It is the closest hold button to the draw button.
But how come this never happens in reverse? Has anyone ever seen a non-held card jump to "hold" when "draw" button is hit?
And I remain surprised that the machine wasn't shut down for repair.
- - Norma
Posted by: normagirl9@yahoo.com
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