Preview Before You Play

  Early each winter, after the manufacturers unveil their new machines for the coming year at the Las Vegas gaming convention, these innovative slots start finding their way into our favorite casinos. They all beckon to us with lights, and music, and promises of fun and fortune to be won. Don’t you wish you had enough entertainment money in your budget to play them all? 

  Better still, don’t you wish there was a way to view them all in action, to learn how they work and what they pay, to find your favorites - all without having to spend ANY money to do so? Well, there is.

  Most of the casinos I visit have around 2000 machines for me to choose from. Maybe two hundred or so of them each season are new games I have never played before. In the past I have spent far too much money trying out these unfamiliar games just to see how they work.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve stayed too long with a tight, uncooperative, losing game just because I wanted to see what happens in the bonus feature.  With minor variations, the base games on a machine are all somewhat the same. We really play the base games so we can win a chance to play the bonus ones. (That’s not entirely true. We also play to win some money!) The bonus games are where you find the fun features, however - the clever gimmicks and surprises, the opportunities to win the big jackpots. It’s where you get your entertainment. 

  “How can you learn how a particular game works without spending money to play it?” you ask.  There are two ways you can do this. One way is to play vicariously by watching other people at the casino spinning the reels hoping to win. They probably won’t appreciate your watching over their shoulders, however, and will likely move to another game before very long.

     If voyeurism makes you uncomfortable, a better way to learn what these games have in store is by watching the films posted on YouTube by other players.  I have frequently seen the new releases on these blogs before I have seen the actual games in my Southern California tribal casinos. You can learn a lot from these films. Players like Casinomannj or DProxima have posted hundreds of winning games on their web sites. Sometimes they film their entire game to show how long it took to get the bonus. Sometimes they only film the bonus itself. Sometimes they edit their films to show only the winning bonus spins. You can sometimes tell they are hiding from casino security guards so they won’t be caught filming the games. Usually they are playing max bets so their jackpots will be as large as possible and exciting enough to attract many viewers. Besides seeing how large the wins can be, you can also see on their sites how many spins it takes to bring up the bonus, and how often or how infrequently those bonus spins hit. These players do a good job narrating and editing their films, and I would recommend their sites to anyone wanting to view what the casinos have to offer. You can search YouTube by the player’s name or by the name of the game you want to see. If you subscribe to your favorite player’s site, you can post a comment or ask a question as well.

     Here's a sample of Casinomannj:

  You might not want to spend a lot of time doing this. You’ll be anxious to play and try to duplicate their success yourself. After all, there’s no money to be won watching a game on YouTube.  Viewing these videos can be informative, however,  and you can get some idea of what to expect if you decide to play the game yourself. What you see watching someone else’s game will be more realistic than what you see playing free casino-type games on the internet sites or on computer casino software. Those games are set to pay off large amounts of pretend credits to encourage you to try them for real money. 

  The slot manufacturer WMS has a section on its web site with statistics on Today’s Active Gambler.  Watching it I learned that there are over 5,000 channels of slot films on YouTube that together total nearly 300,000 film clips. Some have a few thousand hits: some have over a hundred thousand. You won’t be alone in learning to play your favorite game by watching it on YouTube. Hopefully the experience will help you choose wisely and pick a game that is fun, and it may let you take home a little more money when you play for real.

First Ever Borgata Basketball Tournament

    In an earlier entry, here, I talked about sports betting and how New Jersey lost out on their chance to be one of only five states where it is legal. New Jersey and the Borgata Casino in Atlantic City have made the news again.

    It’s not sports betting, but it does involve betting and it does involve sports - basketball to be exact. Executives at the Borgata Casino Resort and Spa have told the Associated Press that they have received permission from the New Jersey gaming regulators to hold a contest of skill in the casino this March 21 where players shoot free throws for cash. It is the first of many skill-based events planned to let gamblers take more control over the outcomes of their bets. The restrictions against sport betting in NJ do not apply because, similar to poker, bettors are gambling against each other, not the house as in blackjack or slots.

    For a $20 buy-in, contestants will compete in 90-second rounds for the right to play in the final round of sixteen in a bracket format. The top final four finishers will split $10,000 with half that going to the winner. Yes, you do need a player’s card to participate. This will be the first game of its kind offered by a licensed US casino according to New Jersey officials.

    Free throws will be shot from a 15-foot distance, at a 10-foot high basket, using a regulation size ball. Anyone 21 or older can play - even professional athletes. If someone from the NBA takes a chance to risk a $20, the term March Madness, so familiar to those of us who follow NCAA basketball every year, may take on a whole new meaning.

    If you think you’ve got what it takes, you can read the official rules here, or call 609-317-1000 to reserve your spot.

Sports Betting and the 2016 Olympics

    If you like to gamble at your favorite local casino on slots and table games (and who doesn’t) I bet you wish you could place a bet on the World Series or the Super Bowl there as well. I know I do.
    Unfortunately, that isn’t likely to happen any time soon. Under the 1992 Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA), sometimes called the Bradly Act, Federal law made sports wagering illegal in all states except Nevada, Delaware, Oregon, and Montana. These four states were all grandfathered in because of wording in their state legislation allowing sports gambling at the time. New Jersey could have been added to that list. The state was given an eighteen month window to legalize sports betting and become the fifth state covered under the law, but it let its opportunity pass without acting. Regretting their missed opportunity, NJ repeatedly filed suit over the years since attempting to be added to the favored four to no avail. Recently the Supreme Court, by refusing to hear the New Jersey case, effectively ruled that any changes must now be legislative not judicial. So, Atlantic City won’t be accepting bets on sports teams anytime soon.

    It’s not just team sports like football and hockey, baseball and basketball that we Californians are unable to wager on at sport books. We can’t even play the ponies here in the Golden State except at the tracks.
    California has tried several times to make sports betting legal. In the most recent attempt, Senator Roderick Wright introduced California Senate Bill 190 seeking to allow sports betting at the California venues that allow legal gambling: tribal casinos, card rooms, and horse racing tracks.  The bill did not pass, dying in committee June 8, 2013. Even if it had passed, however, because of PASPA, action would have been required in Washington DC before it could be implemented.
    Most of the Californians I know visit Las Vegas when they want to bet on athletic events. The Vegas sports books can legally accept wagers on professional sporting events and college competitions, but not on non-collegiate amateur sports. This restriction is based on Nevada gaming regulation 22.120-1(a). The prohibition stems primarily from a compromise worked out with Senator John McCain to restrict betting on amateur sports to collegiate ones.

    Recently the Las Vegas sports books have questioned just what constitutes amateur sports. They question if the Olympics should even be considered amateur sports when teams are made up of professional athletes like LeBron James. Why should it be legal to bet on professional basketball and hockey players when playing for their home teams, but not be legal to bet on these same individuals when competing in the Olympics for their country? Are the Olympic athletes even amateurs when they are paid such large sums of money for product endorsement? Or when they earn comfortable livings playing these same games? Tough questions to answer.
    Starting in the 1970’s, requirements that players be amateurs have gradually been phased out of the Olympic Charter. After the 1988 games, the IOC decided to make all professional athletes eligible to compete. As of 2012, the only sports in which no professionals compete are boxing and wrestling, and some of those fighters receive cash prizes from their national committees.
    Vegas sport books have teamed up to lobby the Nevada Gaming Commission to allow betting on Olympic events in that state, hopefully in time for next year’s Summer Games in Rio. If the Commission gives its approval later this month, news sources report the IOC will monitor the change closely to safeguard the integrity of the competition. Proponents point out that Olympic betting is already common throughout the rest of the world, and that there have been no problems resulting from wagering on these sports.
     We’ll keep you posted when we learn more.

UPDATED 3-13-2015

   It’s unanimous! As of February 26th, Amateur sports regulations no longer ban betting on Olympic events at your favorite Nevada sportsbook. For more information and current betting odds, check out my updated blog entry HERE.

Slots for a New Generation

    My husband and I love to play the slots.The simpler the game, the cuter the icons, the better. We belong to the over 60 crowd, the geriatric gamers that seek familiarity and predictability in their gambling experience. We don’t like surprises. We don’t like games that require us to skillfully maneuver past obstacles, or to shoot aliens or monsters before they can destroy us, or to ward off myriad other threats. We especially don’t like games that require speedy decisions and award us credits based on how quickly we can execute the bonus rounds. In other words, we are the demographic that most slot manufacturers design their games for - baby boomers and beyond.

    Our gen-x and millennial children, on the other hand, have no use for the games we play.  They frequently lecture us on the insanity of sitting and mindlessly pushing buttons hoping for a jackpot to materialize. They point out to us the futility of expecting a big win from a game that requires no skill, but only lucky timing to pay off. They talk about odds and random number generators and hit frequency and percentages of payout as if we could be educated to give up our penny slots for a more sensible pastime like blackjack. If only we would listen to what they say. We smile tolerantly and then go back to looking for the double-triple diamonds to appear.

    It’s not that our children don’t love Las Vegas. They do. Just not the slots. They love the clubs, and the shows, the buffets and the trendy restaurants, the sports betting and the table games, the weirdos you see on the Strip and on Fremont Street. But they grew up with arcade games and pastimes like Facebook and free-to-play home video games. If these young adults are going to play games, they are going to do it on their mobile devices, not on a slot machine.
 
    The average age of visitors to Vegas has been dropping since 2009, from 50 to 45. But the share of visitors who gambled during their stay has also dropped, falling from 83% to 71% during that same period. Young people still flock to Vegas to play in record numbers, but it is not slot machines they are playing. And this has the casinos worried because slots often return a 60 percent profit margin compared with the single digit margins of table games according to a San Diego Tribune article this month taken from the Washington Post.

    Partly this is the slot manufacturers’ fault. They have not put much effort into designing and producing games that appeal to the skills or interests of younger players. IGT claims that the industry has been slow in developing skill-based video-game-like devices because of state regulations requiring slots to offer random outcomes.

    There are a few companies that have been trying recently to come up with a gaming concept that blends both skill and manual dexterity with luck. One idea has been to combine arcade action in the basic game with bonus rounds that pay based on the random number generators, thus creating a hybrid machine that is both a game of skill and also a game of chance. Gamblit is working with casinos and regulators on concepts meshing the play of mobile games with the random chance of slots, switching from playing with virtual credits to playing with real money when connected to WiFi in an area where gambling is legal.  Which brings us back to my previous post about internet gambling.

    Press releases claim one current innovation for IGT’s Reel Edge series is based on arcade games. Titles include Race Ace and Centipede and the games are played on a console with an optional joystick play mechanism.



    Another company, Aruze Gaming, in an attempt to appeal to younger players, has developed Dark Samurai, a game that features a fighting bonus resembling the type of action seen on most martial arts video games.

    Global leader Konami Gaming has adapted its Playstation 2 game Neo Contra to the slots, marking the first ever release of video game intellectual property to the casino gaming industry.  Mighty Warrior and Supreme Samurai are designed and will be especially marketed toward video game players.  Konami has a forty-two year history of world wide video gaming and, with its extensive catalogue and cutting edge technology, is uniquely positioned to be a leader in the marketing for the coming generation of gamers.

    Counter to this trend, Bally Technologies, the nation’s oldest slot-machine maker, has announced it would pay up to $100 million to buy Dragonplay, an Israel-based developer of games playable on Facebook and cellphones.

    One fear some have in switching to these new-generation skill based slots is that a player could become so good at playing these games that the casino would end up losing money.  I don’t think they will let that happen. The card counters didn’t put the blackjack tables out of business, did they? It’ll be interesting to see what changes the next few years bring.   

Getting Ready for Online Poker

     How would you feel if it suddenly became legal to play poker online? Would you still make the trip to your favorite casino or card club for the fun and fellowship, or would you place your bets on your home computer? If two Los Angeles assemblymen have their way, you may soon be faced with that choice.

     Gambling has been an on again - off again activity in the USA almost as long as there has been a USA.  It was completely banned in the 1890’s, and then, in the roaring 20’s it began making a comeback. It was finally fully legalized in Nevada in 1931. Over time riverboat gambling and then state lotteries and then Native American casinos became legal throughout the nation as states sought to tap into this profitable source of revenue. There are only two states currently that forbid all forms of gambling: Hawaii and Utah.  The others all allow some forms of wagering and forbid others. You might be interested in a site called gambling-law-us.com where you can find out the laws of any particular state you want to know about.

     The first online casino began operation in 1995, offering 18 online games.  It quickly caught on. Conservative estimates have the profit from cyber-gaming growing from $1 billion in 1997 to $10.9 billion in 2006. In 2006, Congress banned online gambling by passing UIGEA (Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006) which prohibited wire transfers for betting. Together with the Wire Act which banned sports betting, these two laws were interpreted as prohibiting most online gambling. In 2011 the US Department of Justice reversed the Federal Ban on Internet Gambling, allowing states to decide whether to legalize the practice within their borders. Since then Nevada, New Jersey, and Delaware have all approved rules allowing online state-regulated poker sites. Eight other states, according to Fox News, have bills in the works.  California is one of them.

     California Democrat assemblymen, Mike Gatto and Reginald Jones-Sawyer, have each introduced bills, AB 9 and AB 167, each called the Internet Poker Consumer Protection Act of 2015, hoping to expand online gaming to tribal gaming facilities and licensed card rooms, but not to racetracks. Both bills ban games banked by the house, including slots, video poker, and table games. Poker is viewed differently because it involves some measure of skill where players can earn winnings in the long term.  If adopted, an action which would require a two thirds majority to pass, a deposit of $5 million dollars would be required to apply toward future taxes.  Licensees would have to have had 3 years of gaming experience, reduced from 5 years in earlier drafts, a requirement which would exclude some newer casinos from participating. The bills also ban internet cafes. All operations and all gamblers would have to be located in California. Another problem to be resolved is the “bad actors” clause in Gatto’s bill, which could potentially ban the Morongo Band of Mission Indians from operating a site because of association with companies who had ignored the federal ban from 2006 through 2011.

     If you are interested in learning more about the progress of California Internet gambling, you can read the full text of both bills and statements by the sponsors at www.californiaonlinepoker.com.