A care worker making around $12,000 a year thought she'd won $42.9 MILLION on a slot machine during her birthday trip to a Colorado casino. Five hours later, casino officials told her it was all a software glitch. – Louise Chavez traveled to Fortune Valley Casino in Central City, Colorado, to celebrate her 53rd birthday in March 2010. – She was playing a Price Is Right penny slot machine after placing a 40-cent bet. – Just before 11pm, the machine lit up and displayed a jackpot of $42,949,673.84. – She wrote the exact amount down and spent the next five hours believing she'd become a MULTI-MILLIONAIRE. – She later said she was already thinking about helping her children and changing her family's future. – This is one of the biggest differences between a casino and a prediction market. – In a casino, the house owns the machines, sets the rules, and can refuse a displayed jackpot if it's later determined to be the result of a malfunction. – A prediction market works differently. It's peer-to-peer. You're trading against another participant, not the platform itself. – Around 4am, casino officials told Chavez the jackpot wasn't valid because the machine had malfunctioned. – They said the game's maximum possible jackpot was roughly $251,000, making the displayed amount impossible. – Colorado gaming regulators opened an investigation and sent the machine for forensic testing. – Investigators concluded the machine had suffered a software error that caused an incorrect jackpot to appear on the screen. – Based on the machine's verified game logs, Chavez's actual win was $20.18. – She was paid $20.18, not $42.9 MILLION A woman spent five hours believing she'd won $42.9 MILLION, only to discover the jackpot on her screen was the result of a software malfunction.