At least she still got $1.85.
Warning: Miss Kitty's diamond is a a drawing and you cannot win it. (via Marchin Wichary)
87-year-old Pauline McKee was enjoying herself at a 2011 family reunion at the Isle Hotel Casino in Waterloo, Iowa, when her Miss Kitty slot machine gave her a staggering payout of $41.8 million. Instead of taking that money to the roulette table to try and double it, like any responsible gambler would have, McKee and her daughter foolishly tried to cash out.
Casinos, however, are not in the habit of honoring $41.8 million slot receipts without a fight. Specifically, a fight over the fact that there is no way in heck Miss Kitty even had millions of dollars to give out. The casino's case rested on two pretty strong arguments: 1.) There's a sign reading "MALFUNCTION VOIDS ALL PAYS AND PLAYS" on the machine, and 2.) The machine's maximum payout (printed in the user agreement) was $10,000. It would seem, then, that anything over ten grand would bring the malfunction clause into effect.
Or as the Iowa Supreme Court put it, "McKee did not read the rules of the game or look at the paytable before playing the Miss Kitty game." That's legalese for "Seriously? You thought a slot machine in Iowa paid out $42 million?"
Take those winnings back to the machine and try again...once.
They did, however, confirm that she won that individual lever pull on the game...but determined that the payout was worth $1.85. Keep in mind that even 25¢ slots let you (and encourage you to) place multiple bets on a single lever pull, so that might be less than her single turn cost.
Look, I enjoy losing money on a slot machine every once and a while. I just try to remember that I'm paying small amounts of money to a box to make loud noises and flash bright lights in my face for 30 seconds at a time. It's a dumb service, but I'm willing to buy it because I'm dumb. Just not dumb enough to forget I'm paying a box to whistle.
In any case, the game's manufacturer, Aristocrat Technologies, says they had alerted casinos to the possible glitch and provided a fix, which the casino did not implement. Not that it matters, because the Iowa Supreme Court has now made it safe for casinos everywhere to give credulous grandmothers heart attacks from excitement before breaking what remains of their hearts with disappointment.