In a dusty corner of gaming history lies a machine so notorious, it was practically banned by behavior, not design. Meet Flush Attack—a video poker game that once promised big wins and delivered even bigger controversy.
In this episode, host Lawton Barnes unearths a relic of casino infamy: the Flush Attack poker machine, manufactured sometime after 1994 by Sigma Game, Inc. Though initially appearing to be a standard video poker terminal, Flush Attack’s gameplay had a fatal flaw—one that savvy Las Vegas locals were quick to exploit.
“They would have a whole bank of these machines in the casino,” Barnes explains. “They’re all networked together, and the players are paying into a progressive jackpot.”
Here’s how it worked: once a collective threshold of flushes was hit, the machines would trigger a Flush Attack mode. The next player to land a flush would win the entire progressive pot. And that’s when the vultures swooped in.
“Locals… they would play the machine up until the point where they drew a flush or four cards to a flush, and then they would just sit there and wait,” says Barnes. “Tourists would keep pumping money into the machine to build up that progressive jackpot… and as soon as the machine signaled, Flush Attack, then the locals would bam, hit the deal draw button.”
The result? A clear imbalance where unwitting tourists unknowingly funded jackpots that the locals strategically stole. This behavior, while not illegal, was enough for casinos to classify it as “unsportsmanlike conduct”—and that marked the end of the Flush Attack era.
When Barnes found one of these machines at an auction for just $50, he couldn’t resist. But the unit was in rough shape.
“The monitor is out. And what we’ve got is this condition here, called playing blind,” he says, describing the challenge of reviving the defunct screen. After a series of failed fixes—including a Craigslist LED monitor with a dim, yellowish tint—Barnes admits defeat.
“If I can’t get the monitor any better than this, I don’t really want this machine in my collection,” he concedes. “I’m going to try to unload it for, like, 100 bucks.”
While Flush Attack may not have survived as a collectible, its legacy as a cautionary tale in casino game design remains strong. For Barnes, the lesson is clear:
“Flush Attack… see ya, wouldn’t want to be ya. But as for the rest of you people, hey, keep on rocking like Dokken!”
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