A "must hit by" progressive fails to hit

An interesting thing happened at Green Valley Ranch Station Casino Thursday night.

That casino has a slot progressive called the Fortunato, which is a bit unusual in two ways. First, most slot and video poker progressives accumulate a pot that can grow (theoretically, at least) without limit. The Fortunato has four meters, all of which have upper limits. The big pot starts at $5,000 and must hit by $10,000 -- or so the sign says. Second, it is what's called a system progressive. The pot does not grow on the machines and a player need not hit the top-paying combination on a machine to win it. The way it works is that a signal is sent out when the meter reaches a randomly predetermined amount. The player at the first machine it hits with a player's card inserted wins the jackpot.

This type of progressive becomes more valuable the closer the jackpot amount gets to the maximum. I was at the Ranch late Thursday afternoon and noticed that the meter was over $9,600. I saw a total of maybe three or four people playing on the 16 machines. I decided to do a few other things on my list and return to the Ranch on my way home, hoping to get on the progressive as it got closer to its maximum -- and knowing that it could be hit before I got there.

I arrived a little after 9 p.m. The meter read $10,018! I had grossly misjudged when the meter would reach $10,000, All the machines were taken, and a few people were still playing. Apparently some slot attendant told them they could still win.

I hung around for a while, talking to some players and other observers. The big question was what the casino should do for the 16 people who were playing when the meter reached what should have been its maximum. Gaming Control was called to make this determination . The names and player's card numbers of all who were playing were taken down, and the machines were all shut down.

One man thought all 16 people who were playing when the meter hit should get $10,000. All of them, he argued, had a chance to win that amount, and the malfunction cost them all that opportunity.

No way that's going to happen, in my opinion. Only one person was going to hit the jackpot. There is no way of knowing who that was going to be. The other 15 people would get nothing. The average of $10,000 plus 15 x 0 is 10,000 divided by 16, or $625. My guess is that gaming will order the Ranch to pay each player that amount. (This assumes all 16 people had a player's card active. Anyone not playing with a card was not eligible to win. If anyone was playing without a card, that share should be divided among the other players.)

This would be a practical solution, but it is not perfect. It doesn't do anything for all the people who played with a card from the time the meter started at $5,000 until it reached $10,000. This took a number of weeks. Everyone who played the progressive with a card during that time had a chance to hit the jackpot, but that chance was very small. I doubt there's enough information available to calculate what the failure to hit actually cost these people, but my guess is for most of them it is a matter of cents, not dollars. Anyone who put in a lot of play in the last day or two might reasonably claim a bigger loss. (How much anyone actually lost is irrelevant, because that loss would have been the same if the jackpot had been hit by $10,000. What we're talking about here is the loss of the chance to hit the progressive, not any loss on the machines.)

If I were the boss of the Ranch, I would add some slot club points or free play to the accounts of those who had played the Fortunato before it should have hit but who were not playing when it reached $10,000. I would give a little more to those who played it more and to those who played it the last day or two, because they had a better chance of hitting it and therefore "lost" more.

There is precedent for this. A few weeks ago at Fiesta Henderson, another Station property, a drawing scheduled for 4:15 p.m.was delayed for about an hour and half due to technical problems before it was rescheduled for 8;15, when a second drawing was held. We were surprised to get a letter of apology and points added to our accounts -- a very nice gesture. (Incidentally, I'm surprised at how often computerized drawings are delayed because of technical problems. That never happened with drums full of paper tickets.)

One last point: How could the Fortunato screw-up have happened? I'm sure it had something to do with a change made after the last time it was hit. The big meter used to start at $10,000 and run to a maximum of $30,000. Apparently someone screwed up in reprogramming the system to accommodate the new $10,000 limit.

If I can find out what Gaming orders the Ranch to do, I'll let you know.