CA Tribal Casinos and Class II Slots - Part 3

When my husband and I moved to California in 2002, we didn’t know much about playing slots and neither did the Indians running the casinos. Valley View was our favorite place to play at that time. Valley View had opened the previous year in 2001 with only 750 slot machines. The casino was in a tent and the Native Americans running it played all sorts of fun games with their visitors in addition to the ones on their Vegas-style machines. None of the SoCal casinos had penny machines yet, but it didn’t take too much money to play the old coin-fed machines since the choices on the nickel machines were 1,3,5,7,and 9 lines. I remember how daring it seemed raising our bet to 9 lines a spin when we first played. Wow, 45 cents a spin max bet! And how exciting it was hearing the cascade of coins drop into the machine’s hopper. Those were the days! Back when there were REAL coins involved. One could have a whole lot of fun on very little money. It’s no wonder we played so often.

We gamers might have been able to play without spending much money in the old days, but for the tribes it was a different story. There were tribal/state compacts required by IGRA for casinos that wanted to have Class III, Vegas-style machines. There were payments that had to be made to the State of California for the privilege of operating the casinos. These payments to California didn’t cost the San Pasqual Band of Mission Indians, who owned Valley View, nearly as much as what they pay today, but still it was a lot of money. If you haven't read PART 1 and PART  2 of this series, you might want to do so first.

Here’s what Valley View paid under the original 1999 compacts to operate their 750 machine Class III casino.

When gambling was first legalized in California, the tribes operating casinos paid into two special State Funds. One was the Revenue Sharing Trust Fund designed to assist tribes without casinos, or tribes with very small casinos with under 350 machines. The tribes who operated casinos shared their profits with the ones that didn’t through these payments. My figures are taken from the 2005-06 fiscal year and were published by the LAO in February 2007. The report is very long but very interesting if you like tribal history and you can read it HERE. 

Valley View paid $360,000 into this RSTF fund in each of the early years - nothing for the first 350 machines and $900 apiece for the next 400 machines. The LAO report says $33 million was paid by all the California tribes in total to the RSTF to share their revenue with other California tribes. 

Under their compacts these same tribes also paid $27 million in to the CA General Fund. Another $140 million was paid to cover the cost of gambling addiction programs, regulatory costs, grants to local governments affected by tribal casinos, etc, etc. $101 million was also paid into a designated account expected to be used to repay State transportation funds for loans to the General Fund in prior years. 

Mind boggling, isn’t it? And all this is before considering the costs to the casinos of construction and maintaining their facility, hiring their workforce, paying utilities, etc. — and before even considering the costs of purchasing or leasing the machines in it from the slot manufacturers. Under the 2004 compacts, the figures get even worse. We don’t dare think about what the State is trying to extract from our Native American friends under the 2006 proposed compacts!

Seeing the costs to have Class III - Vegas style games in the casinos with state compacts, I think you can understand why the Class II Bingo-type slots allowed under IGRA might appeal to the poor, cash-strapped Indians hoping to make a little money operating their gambling halls.

Class II - Bingo type gaming is MUCH less expensive for the tribes than Class III - Vegas style gaming. No compact with the State is necessary for a tribe to operate a Class II Gaming facility. None of the payments required of casinos with Tribal/State compacts have to be made.

Here’s a quote from the Republican Caucus California State Senate Briefing Report 2/12/2014:

“A tribe could open a Class II gaming facility without a compact on the land in question [reservation land] at any time. Class II gaming is defined as the game of chance commonly known as bingo (whether or electronic, computer, or other technological aids are used in connection with playing the game) and if played in the same location as the bingo, includes pull tabs, punch boards, tip jars, and other games similar to bingo…” 

You are really playing electronic Bingo disguised to look like slots, when you play a Class II machine. A Random Number Generator in your machine is not determining your win. You are not playing against the casino. You are playing against the other players linked to your machine, and it is all determined for you. Numbers are being drawn for whole banks of machines through a central processor (server) when you play. These are then translated into slot combinations to illustrate a win equal to what the the red balls you see on the little bingo card on the corner of your screen says you’ve won. And the razzle-dazzle display on your screen makes it all feel like a real slot machine win.

“…No compact with the State is necessary to operate a gaming facility with only Class II Slots. When the Legislature refused to ratify the compact between the State of California and the Lytton Band of Pomo Indians to operate a Class III casino in San Pablo, the tribe opened a Class II facility there using video bingo machines that resemble slot machines. Lytton, which has no tribal-state compact makes no payments to any state-managed fund, and is not regulated or audited by the CGCC, (the California Gambling Control Commission) has been very successful in this venture.” 

Valley View did not switch to Class II machines to try to save money or add Class II machines in order to have more machines than their compact allowed, but our local casino Pechanga did. In the early days, Pechanga was not the mega resort it is today. Today it is the largest casino in the West (Including Vegas casinos), and it is the casino resort ranked first by USA Today in their recent survey. In the early days of California Native American Casinos, Pechanga was trying to cut costs just like all the other casinos were. We didn’t often play there. We did not like playing at Pechanga in it’s early “Class II” days, and so we drove to Valley View in San Diego county to play real slots instead. 

There were two strange types of machines gamblers played at Pechanga. One room had games that resembled the Texas Eight-Liner machines I wrote about in an earlier article. The other had machines with the little Bingo Cards in the corner alerting players that the games they thought were slots were Class II Bingo machines instead. The machines appeared to play much like any Vegas-style slot on the casino floor in the early 2000’s, except that if you got a win, you had to daub your bingo card to claim your prize. You did this by pushing the play button a second time, and you had to do it before your time ran out. If you weren’t paying attention and were talking to your neighbor and missed the end of the countdown, you also missed your prize. 

I hated the Class II machines at Pechanga. The requirement to daub within the designated time was stressful, and so I always played the machines by pushing the play button twice instead of once whether I thought I had a winning card or not. I didn’t want to risk not getting my prize by not daubing in time. Daubing the card was the equivalent of shouting “Bingo” in a regular bingo hall to claim a win I guess. If you don't do that before the next ball is drawn you lose there too. Fortunately we are not required to daub our card to claim our win on Class II slots today. I don’t know what company made those old Class II slots. I was not so aware of the various manufacturers and the differences in machines at that time. I just knew I didn’t like them.

I still don’t. But as I learn more about Class II slots and how they work, and as the manufacturers get increasingly better at the mathematics and technology that makes these Class II Bingo machines look and act more like real Class III Vegas-type Slot machines, I find it easier to ignore the tiny bingo card in the corner, and I sometimes wager a little money in the Class II machines. 

The biggest difference between the two classes of machine, and the most important thing to remember when you play, is this:  With Class III - Vegas style machines,  you are playing against the house and wins are determined by the computer’s random number generator. With Class II - Bingo machines, you are playing against other players, there is no random number generator in your individual machine,  and you can only win prizes that haven’t already been paid out.

There will be at least one more entry (and maybe two) about Tribal gaming and Class II machines over the next few days. I’ll share part of an article by Frank Legato containing an interview with a VP of Casino Operations, Charles Lombardo, about how these Class II machines work. I’ll also refer you to a YouTube channel posted by Random $$ Slots. You’ll be able to watch 20 videos of various Class II slots found in our casinos today and read his commentary on them. His films will illustrate a lot of what to look for if you play these machines. The best is yet to come.