Two comments; Back around the turn of the century when electronic gaming machines were taking off I did a lot of due diligence on the rules and regulations for building a gaming machine. They didn't have regulated payouts, they have regulated games. A game license was two part, one the set of rules and the mathematics behind the probabilities they set; and an audit/dump of the mechanism/code to implement those rules such that the game was run as described. It was very clear that if a machine violated the rules of the game they were presenting, it was the makers fault, not the casinos. So liability could only be pushed back on the casinos if the player was able to "modify or affect" the machine outside of specifications.
So if a player brings in a magnet or a custom EPROM or a wire that they stick through the coin slot to make a short circuit - Casino is liable.
If the Player using the game in the way the game allows and it pays out more or otherwise fails to implement the rules of the game correctly - Manufacturer is liable.
The only 'out' on that last bit is if the manufacturer knows of a bug and they tell the casino how to prevent it, and the casino fails to do so, then the casino is liable again.
Anyway, it was a land mine of liability as far as I could see and starting a company in that space was going to require as many lawyers as it did engineers it seemed to me so I passed.
Second comment, so when the MGM Grand opened for the "first" time it had a Jai Lai court and people could bet on the games. That system allowed for people to walk up to terminals and enter their bets. Basically you entered the game, either the spread or score, and the bet amount. Someone figured out that the keyboard was just a X/Y scanning matrix (like nearly every keyboard in existence) and if you held down the right three keys all at once the keyboard controller would get a scan code for '-' (even though there was no minus sign on the keyboard). You could bet "to win" on a game where the odds were against, and enter a negative score. The bet would pay out when the player lost because their score was negative relative to the other player. I do not remember the exact mechanism in the logic but as a budding computer programmer at the time I found it an interesting exploit (a minus injection bug :-). They of course fixed it right away but they didn't take back money from people who had been payed out.
So if a player brings in a magnet or a custom EPROM or a wire that they stick through the coin slot to make a short circuit - Casino is liable.
If the Player using the game in the way the game allows and it pays out more or otherwise fails to implement the rules of the game correctly - Manufacturer is liable.
The only 'out' on that last bit is if the manufacturer knows of a bug and they tell the casino how to prevent it, and the casino fails to do so, then the casino is liable again.
Anyway, it was a land mine of liability as far as I could see and starting a company in that space was going to require as many lawyers as it did engineers it seemed to me so I passed.
Second comment, so when the MGM Grand opened for the "first" time it had a Jai Lai court and people could bet on the games. That system allowed for people to walk up to terminals and enter their bets. Basically you entered the game, either the spread or score, and the bet amount. Someone figured out that the keyboard was just a X/Y scanning matrix (like nearly every keyboard in existence) and if you held down the right three keys all at once the keyboard controller would get a scan code for '-' (even though there was no minus sign on the keyboard). You could bet "to win" on a game where the odds were against, and enter a negative score. The bet would pay out when the player lost because their score was negative relative to the other player. I do not remember the exact mechanism in the logic but as a budding computer programmer at the time I found it an interesting exploit (a minus injection bug :-). They of course fixed it right away but they didn't take back money from people who had been payed out.