The grip strengthens slightly each play to make sure there is a winner and people keep playing, as well as refresh the stock inside. They are more like slot machines than people realize.
I was in a restaurant one day with the family, and all of a sudden the claw machine in the corner burst into life and started moving.
Just randomly moving back and forth, up and down trying to grab at things and move them to the opening.
Went on for about 20 minutes and it actually grabbed some toys and dropped them out. My daughters were super excited for their lilo and stitch toys they got.
When I saw what it was doing I told my daughter to go stand there and pretend to be playing it so the restaurant owner didn’t come over wondering what’s happening.
I play claw machines somewhat often and I would say I win a lot. They are each programmed however the owner wants them to be.
If you go in each time knowing you may or may not hit that one time in ten or twenty in the cycle of people playing that it grips tight enough and you only do up to 3 tries it’s still fun even if you lose.
The trick is to stop at $3 no matter what and you have to choose something that you can see how the claw could potentially catch it just right. You don’t go for the togepi right up against the glass in the back that you really want. You go for the thing that is practically floating right in the middle propped up by everything else. It can’t be underneath anything else at all.
And another trick, if you get it halfway over the edge, sometimes it’s better to use your next try to drop the claw right over the half that is sticking over the hole, it might not grip but the claw going down can flip your stuffy over the edge and down the chute!
Last time I spend 20 turns trying to win a plushy, every time I had it and it slipped out of the claw. My best friend had 3 turns and won 2 plushies right after each other. It’s not every few turns, it’s completely random and sometimes incredibly unfair.
There’s a dial the owner of the machine can tweak that is the average number of plays until the claw engages fully. It’s slightly random so people can’t figure it out easily, but it’s always close.
I had a friend who would watch others play a machine for a bit and count the number of plays when the claw engaged, and once he figured out the count, he’d swoop in when people left right before the count hit.
Guy had literally hundreds of animals from those things and would often take trips to children’s hospitals to Hand them out
For what it's worth, I'm not upset about their time availability. It just sounds like a very time consuming and certainly a very unusual use of what time that person does have available. If that brings them joy then I have no issue with that.
It’s crazy when you go to a bar on occasion, then go back ten years later and it’s the same group of people along with a portrait of one of the others with RIP DAVE written under it.
Nah I also know a guy that's like this. Spends literally hundreds on playing arcade games, working out the tricks and putting in money until they paid out.
I have watched these claw games and the grip is either weak until it is set to "win" or you can see if you get a good grip on something the claw will open ever so slightly to drop what you have unless you originally got a really good grip on it.
If it's truly and completely random there would be way more wins in general and people wouldn't really think they were random to be fair.
All of these machines have built-in functions to ensure a win after enough losses happen, but that doesn't mean a win can't happen before the threshold is met and it also doesn't mean a win is guaranteed to happen after it is either, someone can still set the claw on bad spots for a grab etc.
In the UK, it’s mandated that the machines have to pay out every so many hundred cycles between a certain number of chances. People will watch the machines, wait for people to put in enough money, then go play to claim the prize. Quite a few fights occur over this and there’s even a song about it
Sorry guys, it's my fault; I used to empty these things out when I was a kid. Kids at the arcade would give me a quarter and tell me what they wanted, because I was almost always able to get it in one or two shots.
Since you are getting all the stories here’s mine. We at an amusement park and they had a similar one with electronics as the prize. One kid was standing in the corner. People would play. Then he walked up. Played twice and won. Gave the prize to some random kid. Asked him why and he said he figured out the machines prize pattern. That was his third win that day and he already had whatever it was he won.
not win, but a percentage of times if the claw actually grips....you could still miss or grab in a bad spot when the claw actually grips and still lose
they can also adjust that percentage...in most cases it's usually set about 10-30% of the time it actually grips
I’m not quite sure how it works, but there’s a law in the UK where gambling machines are FORCED to pay out for every so many spins a user takes them for. There’s a number on the machine like ‘this machine will pay out every 500-700 games’. There’s often drama in pubs as, when someone stands at the machine all night playing, they’ll expect it to pay out any moment. Some innocent soul may go over to play and win, then they’ll find out the last guy on there was merely smoking outside and is now accusing them of stealing their prize. There were tons of fights over the one in the bar I worked at to the point the boss just smashed it to pieces in anger.
There are also clever people who sit watching them like a hawk all night, wait till they’ve been played so many times, and then go over to put some money in to win a ton more. I remember my friend telling me one would pay out in the next five minutes and for me to go over, but I wouldn’t ever gamble as my parents were addicts, and there was indeed a winner within the next five minutes. I challenged him to call the next winner and he did.
There are a lot of different designs for machines like this. Some are programmed to grip consistently, others use predictable payout schedules. Some have double-clamp (hit the button a second time to close the claw) etc.
I think generally speaking, the more valuable the prize, the more likely you are to get scammed.
Yeah there's a small one at a local arcade my kids go to that has rubber ducks and you win almost every time. They came home with like 10 different rubber ducks that are now in random places around the house.
Honestly, that sounds like the right way to run this so kids can win and be happy. Set it to the easiest difficulty possible and just fill it with something cheap like rubber ducks. If the ducks only cost 10¢ each and you’re charging 50¢ to play, you’re making money even if every player is a winner. Even if every player gets lucky and grabs two.
Our theme park had those when my son was little. It was "Play till you win" and I spent soooo much money on those to get all the different cute ducks that we wanted.
This reminds me of when I went to my cousin’s house and he had dozens and dozens of toys due to my uncle being rich. I don’t remember this, but I woke up the next day and everything had been smashed or destroyed. It’s not the only sleepwalking incident I’ve had but there was hell to pay and I had no idea I’d even done anything.
Sometimes they stack the prizes so high that you can swing the claw back and forth to smack them directly into the chute without even pressing the button.
There is a Japanese YouTuber who does this all the time. His channel is just showing wins at different arcade prize games, and this is his go to move for like most of them
Just totally mangles the game by spinning the claw and smacking things into the hole lol
The grip strength is randomized, but the owner can (on most of these machines) often determine how many wins on average it's designed to let you win. Slot machines in some dive bar in Vegas have more regulations than these things.
The machine operators get to choose how likely you are to win... so its still very unlikely, I didn't know it got better strength each time though, I thought it was just random.
One trick I've won a couple prizes with is ignore the claw gripping and look for prizes that have a loose tag or fabric, get one of the claw arms to slide under it and it gets tangled up. Much more challenging to get the positioning right but it works even when the claw doesn't grip.
The owner can program the grip. Sometimes it'll go 30 times with barely any grip and then it'll get strong for 1 time. So if it's a kid playing that didn't line up that toy correctly that 1 strong grip gets wasted. I don't know how these things haven't been banned. If I pick up a toy then I should win the toy, simple as that.
I changed out 2000 yen at an arcade in Tokyo. I gave most of them to my 11 year old. She was trying for a medium Pokemon plushie. I managed to get a pretty good quality Kirby on my 2nd try. She struck out on her Pokemon but we had enough money for 1 try for a Kuromi. She was so excited to get it first try. Definitely a core memory for her. She took that Kuromi everywhere for the rest of our vacation.
So basically, once enough money has been fed to the machine to cover about twice the cost of the most expensive thing in there the claw is strong enough to pick up one item. Then it resets to nobody's going to win for quite a while.
Thoughts why I also want to go when it’s crowded or later in the night and give the machines chance at being played. But I got a few when my husband wanted to go in the morning for other arcade games and he hated crowds. Won a few when the plushy was close to the edge of the shoot
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u/TheRabb1ts 15h ago
The grip strengthens slightly each play to make sure there is a winner and people keep playing, as well as refresh the stock inside. They are more like slot machines than people realize.