She was playing a 5¢ machine and the alleged win was $8,588,749.65. This number looked familiar to me as a power of 2. To be specific, 2^33 = 8,589,934,592. If this were a count of tenths of pennies, it would equal $8,589,934.592. The difference between that and the jackpot is $1,184.942.
What I think happened is the machine declared the win as an unsigned integer, meaning a number that could never go negative. However, through some programming error, it wanted to. When you try to put a negative number into an unsigned integer, the computer will wrap around the other end. In this case, I think something bizarre happened and through whatever programming error, the game thought the player had a loss of $1,184.942. When it tried to display this number as an unsigned integer, it wrapped around the maximum value and displayed the win of $8,588,749.65.
Every slot machine I've ever seen says somewhere "malfunction voids all pays and plays." If I were the judge, I would have to say that this was indeed a malfunction and side with the casino. This was, of course, what the casino argued. Nevertheless, their $80 compensation offer strikes me as very stingy.
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