This article, How to beat The Claw | Unplugged – Yahoo! Games, is an interesting read and it brings back some great memories. My kids consider me the Claw champion, so much so that when I do not win them a prize from one of these machines they consider complaining to the manager that the machine is rigged.

Little do they know that it is! I was consistently able to beat the machines in my area and then all of a sudden, nothing! Nada! Zilch!

Adjustments were made to prevent the SQLGator from winning. I’m sure that I am not the only one as evidenced by this article.

It reminds me of the time in high school when our McDonalds had a fish bowl on the counter with a shot glass in the middle. If you could get a nickel in the shot glass, then you received a free small drink. Also, a dime would earn you a small fry and a quarter got you a sandwich of your choice. Being entrepreneurial young men, we had a similar fish tank in the garage and we practiced for a few hours practicing the technique guaranteed to win most of the time. During lunch everyday during my junior year we went to McDonalds with a dollar’s worth of change (cause hey sometimes we were slightly off in our calculations) and proceeded to win a small drink, a small fry and a burger of our choice. Then we could save our money for dates!

This promotion was not working out as well as they had planned. New rules! Only one prize per visit, no problem; we will take the sandwich please. A couple of months go by, and the fish tank is gone from the counter. At that point I knew what it was like to go to Vegas and get caught counting cards! Thanks for the memories McDonalds!

Enjoy!