Fresh from AliExpress, [Big Clive] got another fascinating item to tear down: a crane claw, as used in those all too familiar carnival games. These games feature a claw the player moves into position above a pile of toys or other items. Lower the claw gently down in the hopes that it grabs the target item. In a perfect world, the claw will move your prize and deposit it, via a chute, into your waiting hands. Of course, everyone knows that these games are rigged and rely less on skill or luck than the way that they are programmed, but the way that this works is quite subtle, as you can see in the video below.
Despite how complex these crane claws may appear, they are simply solenoids, with the metal rod inside providing the claw action. The weight of the rod and claw section opens the claw via gravity. The strength of the claw is thus fully dependent on how strongly the solenoid is being driven, which, as [Clive] demonstrates, depends on the voltage and the duty cycle. At only 12V, the target plushie will easily slip away again as the claw barely has any strength, while at 24V, it’s pretty solid.
The basic way these crane games are programmed is to use a voltage and/or duty cycle that depends on the amount of money spent (in credits) and the monetary value of the items you can ‘win.’ If you’re very lucky you’ll get a solid catch even with a floppy claw. Most of the time you’ll have to wait until you get a solid claw. While a simple concept, it seems more designed to game the player. As [Clive] duly notes, just buying the item will probably save you a lot of money and frustration.
Or, build your own, of course. There are plenty of examples.
So many of these arcade machines (not just the claw machines but many others) are as rigged as any slot machine.
Basically black jack is also rigged. It is not a fair play for the customers.
The house always wins
Isn’t Blackjack exactly fair unless the casino has dealer wins on push?
Roulette might also be but I’d have to double check pay out rates. IIRC it was all proportional to the odds of winning so mathematically fair. Though I think some may not inlude 0 and 00 in those odds/rates which would skew it in their favor.
I dealt blackjack for a few years. The house has a small advantage, but noticeable, due to the dealer having one card face down and also going last. That hidden card causes players to speculate on what the dealer may have, so they’ll bust when they don’t need to or stay when they shouldn’t. That single, face down card makes a massive difference.
Black jack is fair, in that we know it is “rigged”. It is also a game of chance which is advertised as a game of chance, and not trying to masquerade as a game of physical skill.
It is not, read more from here: https://theslotgames.com/how-does-the-house-have-an-advantage-in-blackjack/
You will have to explain your point, I looked over the article, and it all seems supports what I said. Maybe it is the definition of ‘fair’ in this context?
Fair does not mean you have a 50% / 50% chance of winning. Fair means that the rules and mechanism of the game are fully disclosed.
We know the house has 2% natural advantage in black jack if the rules are followed. Providing the house is playing with the specified rules, I don’t see anything unfair.
In contrast, the claw does not disclose itself as a game of chance, or that that claw is rigger to only work ever Nth time. Which is what I consider ‘unfair’.
I get what you mean, but it’s buttons and a joystick. It’s not exactly physical skill.
It’s kind of like being surprised that cart racing or fighter games cheat. Of course they do. The skill is in finding ways to beat the cheating. There are guides out there on how to beat claw games, but obviously some of it relies on finding goofy quirks and such.
Although some of it is just “study each machine and figure out if its settings suck or not.” Some of them are ludicrously regular in terms of the strength bit: they’ve got payout detection to ensure that you’re not just relying on luck to hit the average payout (so you never pay them right after someone wins).
Slots aren’t rigged at all! The return rate is usueally 96.5%, so put in $100 and get $96.5 back on big averages. It’s fairly honest about you losing. It’s just that humans only notice the winners and music, not the people losing all.
When I was in Vegas once in the 90s on business, I theorized that slots near any air dam entrances would be set for better payoff percentages to attract people in with their winner alarms. I found that to be true at least on the day I was there which was on a weekday afternoon during the off season because I turned a $10 roll of quarters into $30 in less than an hour. In one case during that test I put a quarter into and pulled the arm to shut off the flashing light and alarm on the machine on which I’d just won and immediately won again making me regret that I hadn’t inserted more than one quarter.
Another theory I tested that day was in one of the really huge casinos where there were very large numbers of slot machines sitting idle for long periods. My theory was that since the machines were microprocessor controlled they’d be programmed to give what they would detect as a new user via idle time a small payoff to hook them. I went down a row of unused machines putting just a quarter into each. Almost immediately one of the gals who go around offering drinks came up to me and said my odds were better staying on one machine. Now, I’m sure SHE believed what she’d been told, but when do casino’s tell you how to take more of their money? I considered my theory confirmed and left since I wasn’t in Vegas to gamble.
Worked with a guy who was once a slot machine tech, long out of the industry. I believe him.
He said that they go a long way to make the machines perform as advertised: i.e. taking an exact percentage of the money put in on average. The old ones (this was the 90s) used pseudo-random number generators with known statistical coverage, so this was “easy”.
All of them are rigged. If the operators didn’t have the advantage the game wouldn’t be in an arcade.
https://www.pandavending.com/MANUALS/TR_Series_Toy_Cranes_Manual.pdf …Advanced Features…default voltage value: strong claw =38V; weak claw=10V…Normal Mode- strong claw timing mode 1
(strong claw lasts 2s after grabbing toy) .. 2 whole seconds!!!! No, its not rigged at all!!
So could a Tesla coil or something maybe used by the claw help give it the power needed to clamp the item and get it for you?
I imagine a HERF gun or similar could energise the coil, at the risk of disrupting any electronics in the line of fire.
Another company. https://madeforarcade.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Vertaald-exemplaar-van-HANDLEIDING-GRIJPKRAAN-EN-compressed.pdf …B1: price ratio – the ratio between the number of games played and the number of prizes paid out. Set the ratio lower to pay out more prizes, or higher to make it harder for the player to win. A ratio of 5 means that a prize can be paid out every 5 games. The other 4 times the claw will be a bit weaker, making it more likely to lose the prize….C1: clamping force of the claw – do not exceed 38 volts! The higher the voltage, the more clamping force the claw has, the better the prizes are grasped C2: the time in seconds that clamping force C1 is maintained C3: clamping force of the claw after period C2 has expired – do not exceed 38 volts! The lower the voltage, the greater the chance that
the claw will still drop the prize during transport C4: clamping force of the claw during movements… You have to be silly, to play clamp/Crane Games believing that you are going to beat it. Its impossible!
There’s a claw arcade by my home in Sedona, Az. We go once a week and turn $20 into 10 stuffed animals. The trick is WHEN you activate the solenoid. I wish I could attach a photo here to show you her collection 😂 If you’re ever in Sedona, go to Z claw arcade.
A different way these games work is just by having cheap prices. You can bulk order stuffed animals for $1 a piece.
Take an AM radio at the lower end of the dial and sniff for PWM noise around that dangle cord from the power supply that does the grabbing. You might be able to hear the pulse changing and get “inside” it’s thoughts, know when to grab and go.
I like to remind everyone who regards the Las Vegas strip with awe that it was built entirely on the backs of losers. I also ran a claw machine at my last job (not in Vegas) and ours had a BCD switch for how often it would grab properly.
Guy I worked with decades ago inherited (and fairly quickly sold) an arcade at a UK seaside resort when his father passed, among the stories he told us were some interesting facts, the claws were reliably the most profitable of all machines, video games the least.
The reasons he sold it were “interesting” to say the least.
Interesting, from my experience with them I had assumed that the claw fell closed under gravity and took power to open, so that the claw always had an equally light grasp on anything it picked up and it was really a game of trying to pick up an object with very little grasping force. I didn’t figure out that the grasping force varied, but that might be because I didn’t play too many times before figuring out that the whole game wasn’t worth it.
It’s very difficult to define the force of a solenoid, because it depends on both the supplied voltage and current and the displacement of the plunger to the coil. For a simple open loop circuit, it’s not a predictable factor with the different sizes of objects being grabbed. I don’t think you can actually define any variable that corresponds to the likelihood of grabbing the object – you may only switch between some mix/max grabbing force like switching between 12 and 24 Volts driving the solenoid where one means you won’t grab it and the other means you’re very likely to grab it.
I’ve seen a few places with crane claw games which are advertised as not ending until the player wins. I’d imagine that they’re likely running the claws at around 24v.
I work in a gameroom And they are set. The controls are inside the bottom door..
I guess I have to thank the people who run these machines.
They taught me early in life there are plenty of people who want to con you out of your money and you have to take care of yourself. I guess I was 8 to 10 years old back then. I can’t remember ever playing these machines myself, but just by observing others it became obvious pretty quickly how fake the whole thing is. I think I lost interest in carnivals all together when I was around 12 years old.
But a thanks for Big Clive for showing how these things works, and for getting a bunch of pluch animals to test it properly :)
(Spelling correction complains both about “pluch” and “pluche”, but you get the meaning. Not native English here.)
It’s spelled “plush” or “plushie” in the US :)
If you unplug the machine for 30 seconds and the plug it back in and power up. You will get your suffie. 60% of the time, it works everytime…
Big Clive has a collection of great videos he’s made; tearing things apart, seeing how they work, and reverse engineering the circuits. Also highlighting the safety issues he finds. Be sure to check them out.
+1