G2E Preview - Part 4: Everi

If you don’t keep up on the business side of gambling, the mergers and acquisitions and the like, you might think the fourth manufacturer highlighted on these G2E write-ups, Everi, was a new company. And you’d be partly right. Everi, Inc debuted on the world’s stage by ringing the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange on August 24, 2015. But while new in name, Everi blends two well-known companies that have been a part of the casino industry for decades — Global Cash Access Inc (GCA) and Multimedia Gaming (MGAM). This year’s G2E 2015 will be Everi’s launch party, and you’re all invited if you’ve signed up for G2E.

Everi

everi.com

G2E Booth #1116

The blending of these two companies, Multimedia and Global Cash Access, seems a strange marriage at first. One is a gaming business and the other is a payments business. As a gambler, you are undoubtedly more familiar with Multimedia. You might not know anything about GCA, so let’s talk a little first about what GCA brings to the union. 

This business part of Everi consists of three parts: payments processing, kiosks, and compliance. The first two ensure easy access to funds, the ability to redeem TITO tickets, a simplified way to break bills. A new term you might hear in connection with the new company is Everi Wallet which is a payment and monetization solution for real online gaming. 

The third part of what GCA provides is more interesting to me because of my tax background. You will have to bear with me…it’s my blog and tax talk is my thing.

Everi is offering the casinos a system called Compliance Manager to ease the reporting requirements imposed on them by the government, particularly reporting required by Title 31.  If you don’t know about Title 31, go back and read my earlier BANK SECRECY ACT blog entry. It’s the section of the Code dealing with money laundering and various reporting requirements usually for cash transactions over $10,000.

Part of the Compliance Manager program is a feature called Title 31 Manager that completes, files, and archives all required forms while tracking cash and check transactions at slots and 3rd party check cashing suppliers. It also consolidates all audits and creates CTRs (currency transaction reports), SARs (suspicious activity reports), W-9s and W-8 forms for electronic filing.The W-9 form is the one you fill out when you get your hand pay to provide your Social Security Number for the W2G form. The W-8 Form is one filed by foreign gamblers to claim exemption from withholding on their winnings or a reduced withholding rate due to treaty status. I won’t repeat what I’ve written before about these forms because you can read my earlier posts if you are interested. Suffice to say Everi is attempting to provide the help the casinos need to file all the forms the government requires.

Besides the Title 31 manager, Compliance Manager also contains a Tax Form Validator which completes, files, and archives W2G’s (for hand pays greater than $1200), 1099-Misc Forms (for prizes and for comps with over $600 value), and 1042-S (for covered expatriates subject to special tax rules.)

Compliance Manager also has a Patron Authenticator function which validates patron address and tax information against US Post Office and IRS databases. This is to reduce the problems caused by winners providing wrong or stolen information for the forms. It also checks various watch lists. You might want to review another earlier post about SELF BANNING from casinos and how these lists are checked before jackpots are payed out. There are other features: which are not as interesting to me: Form Creator, a Chip Log function, and Jackpot X-change Tax Form software.

I’ll bet you didn’t know all this goes on in your local casino, did you?

Now let’s look at the other half of Everi, the slot games you’re all anxious to learn about.  Unfortunately, I have not seen any news releases about new games being unveiled by Everi at G2E. I can list some popular Multimedia titles you have probably played and enjoyed recently, and I can give you a link to Everi where you can see these games and learn more about specific ones - but I don’t know what the next new game will be.

Here are some of my favorite Multimedia — I mean Everi — games. Anthony and Cleopatra, Artemis, Bonnie & Clyde, Carnival in Rio, Ghost in the Machine, Wild Pixies, Wild Tornado, Yard Birds. You’ve probably played a lot of Everi games. This list barely scratches the surface. You’ll find more on the Everi web site. What you’ll notice about them all is the imaginative concepts behind the games and the dynamic artwork. The artists and engineers at Everi’s creative center in Austin, TX, are dedicated to producing unique experiences based on original ideas. These games are usually a lot of fun.

Multimedia primarily produces Class III Vegas style games, but they have branched out and are now developing Class II games for the growing market. You can usually identify a Class II game by the bingo card somewhere on the screen. Multimedia - I mean Everi - has  designed its new Class II slots so the bingo card does not appear until money is fed into the machine. Random $$ Slots has just posted a new Class II game you can link to called Silver Fox. Pay close attention to the video and the explanation he provides. A new feature of the game is the option to play the game in slot mode or bingo mode. If you don’t know what bingo has to do with slots, read the earlier material about Tribal Gaming and Class II Slots.

Here’s your link to Silver Fox:

You probably know about the TournEvent that Multimedia sponsored this year, You may have even seen the big bus at your local casino during the qualifying events.  The million dollar prize will be paid out in 20 annual installments to one of the lucky 200 contestants. It will happen September 30 at XL Night Club. .

Everi (Multimedia) is also hosting the second annual TournEvent of Charities on September 29 during G2E. The event features 24 celebrities who play a TournEvent competition on behalf of their selected charity. Everi will be donating $40,000 total to the celebrity’s charities and another $40,000 to Save a Warrior, the company’s official charity. To watch, come to booth #1116. At 2:30 the celebrities will be introduced, play begins at 3:00, and winners will be announced between 3:30 and 4:30.

More to come of G2E fun in a few days.

G2E Preview - Part 3: Aristocrat/VGT

I live in Southern California, where real buffalo still roam on the grounds of some of the reservations where our NA casinos are located. And every year in SoCal, between April 1 and May 15, readers of the SoCal Gaming Guide cast their ballots for the 2015 Reader’s Choice of the best NA casino and best slots to play there. Barona, naturally, was voted everyone’s favorite casino. 

And, this year, the overwhelming favorite for the best slot company, taking first place in eleven of fifteen categories, was Aristocrat. The company’s Buffalo Stampede topped the competition for the best video slot, the best bonus round, the luckiest slot, the best slot graphics, and the best penny slot. Another Aristocrat title was a big winner. The Walking Dead was named to the list of top three in the categories of Best Video Slot, Best Progressive Slot, Best Video Bonus Round, and Best Slot Graphics. Aristocrat’s CanCan de Paris and Mr. Cashman were also winners in the Best Penny Slots and Best Classic Slots, respectively.  A great win for the Aussies

Aristocrat will be sharing a booth this year at G2E with Video Gaming Technologies which it acquired in October, 2014. In our third installment of G2E, let’s take a look at what these two companies will be showcasing for us if we attend G2E in Las Vegas at the end of the month. 

Aristocrat/VGT

aristocrat-us.com

G2E Booth #1141

If any slot manufacturer could be said to be trying to have something for everyone, it is Aristocrat. The Australian company, whose history we covered in part 2 along with Ainsworth, offers games for every type of player. Players who prefer more of an entertainment experience. Players who love the thrill of frequent jackpots. People who love progressives - yes, IGT has some competition! Players who want an immersive experience with their favorite movie or TV characters. Players who love the old core games and Mr. Cashman’s surprise appearances. Aristocrat has something for them all according to their press releases.

Many of the games highlighted in recent press releases are games we have already seen on our casino floors this summer. Some of them are games I wrote about last fall. At G2E this year Aristocrat is showcasing its new gaming hardware. They’ll present the ginormous Behemoth cabinet housing Buffalo Stampede. And they’ll show us their Arc Double Cabinet housing entertainment themes such as Britney Spears and the Big Bang Theory. You can already enjoy these games in many casinos and on YouTube videos. These recent releases will soon be followed by other games based on licensed brands. They include Buffalo Grand, the latest version of the Buffalo game, HBO’s Game of Thrones, and the holiday favorite A Christmas Story.

One new Aristocrat offering that you may find interesting is Lightning Link or Lightning Cash. These are Aristocrat’s very first Linked and Stand-alone Progressive games to feature selectable multi-denominations. Players select either 1 cent or 2 cents for a 50 line game (500 credit max bet), or 5 cents or 10 cents for a 25-line game (250 credits max bet). The progressive jackpot is the same whichever denomination you choose, but the bonuses are proportional to the denomination. There are four fun titles to choose from: Happy Lantern, High Stakes, Magic Pearl, and Sahara Gold.  News releases say the games are designed for players who enjoy frequent jackpots, and a medium-high volatility range.

Other items to look for are Cashman Fever II and Cashman Takes Flight, 5 level progressives based on Buffalo and Five Dragons. Superman the Movie, Sons of Anarchy, and Can-Can Paris have already made it to the casinos. Ted, based on Seth McFarland’s raunchy 2012 comedy about a living adult teddy bear might show his face any time.

A lot of what Aristocrat brings to G2E this year is for the casinos, not their players, and is called Oasis 360 system. This is a system to keep casino operators connected to their customers on property and off. It allows casinos to track customer behavior when they patronize affiliates and strategic partners, empowering them with crucial data to meaningfully reward customers. 

I’m not sure I like this. I don’t like being tracked. I hope it doesn’t mean any more than modifying the Total Rewards system to allow tracking Caesar’s play at Harrah’s would. Those of you attending G2E should try to find out more for me. 

The system’s ONE LINK technology works on any suppliers system. It allows operators to centrally configure, manage, and display table signage. It provides flexible slot bouncing including mystery bonuses, magic-hour bonuses, and Hot Hand Bonus Poker. I don’t know what any of that is - and it probably doesn’t mean anything to most of us players -  but the casino operators will probably think it’s great.

HALO is another offering for the casinos that will let them manage their customer loyalty programs. They will be able to easily manage tier promotion and demotion, and it will allow staff to take the player’s club to the casino floor to reprint cards, issue comps, add comps, enroll new players and more.

Aristocrat will also be showing their new beverage ordering system, Drinks on Tap. This system will allow players to order and pay for drinks from their electronic gaming machines (EGM) and will let you even add a tip.

MOBILE CONCIERGE is Aristocrats fancy name for its new mobile app which appears to me to be just another way to send the promotional material they now send us through the US Postal Service mail or our computer’s email to our phones as well.  As I said, a lot of what Aristocrat is showing off this year is for the casino, not for the player.

The big news for Aristocrat this past year was its acquisition of VGT, Video Gaming Technologies. VGT was founded in 1991 and was acquired October 20, 2014 by Aristocrat for $1.3 billion. VGT is headquartered in Franklin, TN, and its game design studio is in Reno, NV. It has won awards as the #1 provider of Class II gaming machines in the US, and is the #2 lessor of gaming machines to Native American tribes.

Before acquiring VGT, Aristocrat had no Class II presence, so acquiring the company with its market-leading footprint in Oklahoma made a lot of sense. There are opportunities for Aristocrat to take VGT’s mechanical reel expertise and apply that in a Class III market. There is an opportunity for VGT to take some Aristocrat content and place it into the Oklahoma market. 

The companies are very complementary, very synergistic. VGT leads in Class II gaming. Aristocrat wasn’t in Class II at all. VGT leads the stepper segment of the market. VGT has had a challenging time developing successful video product. VGT has wanted to do a wide-area progressive (WAP) for some time, but the technology was beyond them. Aristocrat happened to have a WAP which they quickly put together. A win-win for both companies. VGT recently premiered its wide area progressive, Easy Money Jackpot, which includes Mr. Money Bags, Hot Red Ruby, and Lucky Ducky titles. They have big hopes for the progressive market.

Some of the innovations new to the US were tested in Australia earlier. The Lightning Link stand-alone progressive jackpot game was big in the Australian market about three years ago for example. The company has great hopes for that game’s success. One of the keys to the progressive game's success is its ability to effectively merchandize and attract play, according to developers. “You’re taking some of the big pays out of the pay table and you’re displaying them in a progressive jackpot so players can see where the money’s at. These certain jackpots will get high and players will start playing them.” 

Like the lottery, I guess, when the jackpot gets high and people who normally don’t buy a ticket, decide to take a chance.  Does that increase MY chances of winning? What do you think?

Stay turned. In a few more days, we’ll look at what we can expect from another one of the companies that we count on to entertain us. I wonder which it will be.

G2E Preview - Part 2: Ainsworth

Here’s the second installment of our preview of new slots and technology you can expect to see if you are lucky enough to attend the Global Gaming Expo (G2E) in Las Vegas at the end of this month.  In the previous installment, we focused on AGS and Cadillac Jack. Today we’ll turn our attention to another popular company, Ainsworth Game Technology. Information in this preview comes from Forbes and IndianGaming.

Ainsworth

ainsworth.com.au

G2E Booth #1967

First the history lesson:

If you have played slots by Aristocrat - and I’m sure almost all of you have - Ainsworth games will have an air of familiarity about them. The link is  the owner and chairman of the Australian company, Len Ainsworth. Len Ainsworth, now 92 years old and a billionaire with $1.17 billion net worth, according to Forbes, built two fortunes through slot machine companies. Originally a dental equipment manufacturer, in 1953 he retooled his factory to manufacture gaming machines. The following year he founded Aristocrat Leisure and began selling “pokies.”

Twenty years ago he received a false diagnosis of cancer, and he handed the reins of his business over to his seven sons, retaining a large ownership interest. If they sell the company in his lifetime, he gets the proceeds. In 1995, he set up his second company, Ainsworth Game Technology. Still active at 92, he remains executive chairman of the Australian based company today. He is a philanthropist who donates large sums to Hospitals, Universities, and Medical Research. Forbes reports that Ainsworth no longer drives, but still rides a motorcycle at his farm in Sydney.

What you can expect to see at G2E:

There are a lot of Ainsworth games on the casino floors where we play. One of the most popular at my local California NA casinos is the Sweet Zone brand. Popular favorites you may have seen include RumbleRumble, Flying Horse, Jumbo Wilds, and King Cat. This summer the company is debuting the brand new Sweet Zone title, Grand Lions. You can view a video of Flying Horse from Albert’s Slot Channel that demonstrates how the Sweet Zone games play below.

A highly anticipated brand that will be unveiled at G2E is Order of the Dragon. The series has three titles and will introduce the Double Sweet Zone concept.  Double Sweet Zone offers players the option to play the original Sweet Zone for 50 credits or the Double Sweet Zone for 100 credits.  The double sweet zone option gives you double “red” sweet zones on reels 2 and 4.

Also making its debut at G2E  2015 is Sky High Stacks. This series of games contains a free games feature with an expanded 9 x 5 array, increased wild multipliers, and stacked symbols during the feature.

Other popular Ainsworth titles you may have played that will be displayed on the company’s A560SL cabinet at G2E include the recently released Frontier, Fire$torm, Fire Wizard, Ice Wizard, Fire Money, Ice Money and the Quad Shot titles: Gold Zone, Golden Lion, and Mighty Panther.

Ainsworth has licensed titles on display also. Some of you have played and made videos of some of these games: The Sound of Music and Showgirls have videos on YouTube you can watch. Two new licensed titles being unveiled at G2E are Cinderella and Three Amigos. You’ll want to look for these new games and see what fun they’ll promise. Mustang Fever and Mustang Fortune, both based on the success of Mustang Money, are two other games you might want to look for.

Don’t forget to visit Ainsworth Game Technology at Booth #1967 when you visit G2E at the Sands Expo and Convention Center during your trip to Las Vegas late this September. And thanks to Albert'sSlotChannel for sharing his video.

G2E Preview - Part 1: AGS/Cadillac Jack

Slot fanatics and game lovers of all kinds will be heading to Las Vegas and the Sands Expo and Convention Center September 29 - October 1 for the world’s premier casino-entertainment event, G2E 2015. You may be one of the lucky ones who are able to attend. If so, you’ll have a chance to see hands-on demonstrations of the new games we’ll all be playing soon on the casino floors and the innovative systems that slot manufacturers will be unveiling for the first time. Perhaps you’ll even attend seminars and network with gaming executives and exhibitors. Whatever you do, you’ll find this year’s Integrated Resort Experience an unforgettable one.  

Here’s a preview of what you can expect at G2E this year, courtesy of the September 2015 issue of indiangaming.com.  We’ll focus on a different manufacturer every few days between now and the big event. Because we’ve spent so much time discussing Class II slots lately, we’ll start with a leader in the Native American gaming industry we are all familiar with: Cadillac Jack. 

AGS/Cadillac Jack
playags.com

G2E Booth #2256

Those of you who gamble at Native American Casinos have undoubtedly seen a lot of new Cadillac Jack machines on the tribal casino floors this summer. American Gaming Systems (AGS) acquired Cadillac Jack for $12 million as part of its acquisition of rival Canadian company Amaya Gaming for $382 million this June. The goal was to broaden its range and market in both Class II and Class III machines, and because of Cadillac Jack’s strongly established footprint in Mexico, to give AGS an international presence.   

AGS developed its first Class II platform in the late 90’s for the Native American market. Since then they have expanded into Class III, Vegas style slots along with Wide-Area Progressives and Casino Management Systems. Sources say they operate over 10,000 games worldwide. AGS recently has expanded its product line to include live felt-table games. Many of their new games were displayed in San Diego this April at the NIGA’s Trade Show and Convention. Now those of you attending G2E at the end of this month will have a chance to see them too.

If you are into table games, AGS will be exhibiting Bonus Spin Blackjack, and the Tornado roulette utility device. But the star of the show will be the debut of the Count’s Kustom Blackjack. This is the only live table game with a side bet that offers players the chance to win a custom car, truck, or motorcycle from the automobile restoration and customization shop of the same name, Count’s Kustoms. You may be familiar with the shop from the History Channel reality television series  Counting Cars.

In addition to blackjack, AGS will conduct live product demos of its newest poker games, 2 Card Poker and Top 5 Poker. Play for Fun versions of 2 Card Poker and nine of the company’s 15 other table games are available at www.PlayAGS.com/table-games.html

AGS is also courting the mobile gaming market. They announced their entry into mobile gaming with the acquisition of RocketPlay - a well known developer of online and mobile games which they have dubbed AGS Interactive. They hope to piggyback on the success of their flagship product, Lucky Play Casino. The company expects to showcase a new app, Vegas Fever, by the time G2E rolls around according to Indiangaming magazine.

AGS will also be exhibiting a range of new and recently released slot titles. One new addition to the company lineup is Dr. Cheddar’s Clone Machine, The game features cartoon mice as mad scientists and the irresistible mechanical wheel in the top box. Sounds like fun, doesn’t it? Another featured slot is Tidepool Wonders, the next installment in the company’s Skytower cabinet.The game contains expanding reels and its own virtual wheel. Colossal Diamonds will round out AGS’s offerings on its impossible-to-miss Big Red cabinet. At the size of three standard cabinets, this three-reel, single-pay line game was  a big favorite when it debuted this summer at Caesar’s Palace and Paris Las Vegas. 

Showcasing the company’s most innovative video content, is the ICON cabinet new from Cadillac Jack. It will house the company’s core video content, including two new games, Golden Wins and Tiger! Tiger! which are aimed at fans of the high-volatility, big win style of slot machines.

The company will also be introducing its latest addition to the It Pays to Know series, Family Feud. Some sites say the Family Feud slots were introduced at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas way back in 2001. IGT purchased the licensing and rereleased the game in both a modern form and a vintage incarnation featuring the first host, Richard Dawson. Declining popularity took the game off casino floors. 

This new game by AGS is also based on the popular television game show and features a skill-based trivia bonus round. The survey questions in the game come directly from the show, and by choosing the most popular answers, players can affect the outcome of the bonus game and win more credits. Although they claim this is a new release, there are already Family Feud games on YouTube you can watch. 

I hope you found something in the AGS/Cadillac Jack preview to look for at G2E. In a few days I’ll share some information from another manufacturer with you. Check back in a couple of days, and see who it will be. 

Video Poker Class II Machines

We’ve spent a lot of time in the past few days talking about the differences in Class II (Bingo type) and Class III (Vegas type) slot machines. But slots aren’t the only gaming devices people play in the casinos. There are also video poker (VP) machines, and these VP machines are also either Class II or Class III games under IGRA. The odds, the playing strategy, the outcomes are different for these two types of machines. I won’t repeat the prior information about Class II slots. You can take a look at Parts 1 - 4 of the series on Tribal Casinos if you haven’t already done so or if you want a review. Today we only play Poker, video poker. 

I always try to throw in a little history when I write so you can learn a little something in what you read. Today’s history lesson, class, is a review of the origins of video poker. Some of you might have read some of this when I originally wrote about video poker in May.

In the mid-70s, in the infancy of personal computers, a gaming distributor for Bally’s named Si Redd had an idea for a new game. The game he pitched to company executives in Chicago was video poker. Bally’s rejected his idea of an electronic version of draw poker. They decided they did not want to take a chance and branch out from slots to a whole new untested game. Si Redd had confidence the electronic version of the popular card game would be a success. He convinced Bally to let him take the patent on video poker, probably one of the biggest mistakes Bally Gaming ever made, and as they say, the rest is history.

Within months, Si had made a deal with Fortune Coin Company in Reno to form a new company known as Sircoma (Si Redds Coin Machines) and to mass produce the new video poker machines for him. By 1981 the new game was the most popular new addition to casinos everywhere. Just a year later, Sircoma went public with a name change instantly recognizable to casino players everywhere - IGT, International Game Technology. Soon after, IGT introduced video slot machines following the video poker machine’s success. 

Myriad variations of the popular VP games are found today on casino floors everywhere. Your machine may even let you play many, many games with the same spin. Video poker games are popular with players for two reasons. First, your money usually lasts longer playing video poker than it does playing slots. Second, and more importantly, players can actually beat the machine if they know the odds and make wise decisions about which machine to choose and about which cards to keep and which cards to throw away. 

What machine should you choose when you sit down to play video poker? If you don’t want to play Class II VP, make sure you don’t choose one with a tiny bingo card anywhere on the machine’s display! If you see a bingo card on your display, your odds of winning will not come from the odds of randomly drawing cards from a 52 card deck. They will be the odds of filling a certain pattern on a bingo card.

If you’ve picked a Class III - Vegas style VP game, take a look at the payable for the machine. You can determine the expected return (ER) of your machine from the figures there. There are 2,598,960 hands of 5 cards that can be produced with a 52-card deck. The random number generator in Class III video poker machines is set to simulate the probabilities of drawing any one of these hands. Because this is a fixed probability, the house gets its edge by adjusting the payable of the machines. By comparing payables you can choose the one with the best return. My thanks to slot fanatic Random $$ Slots who taught me how to do this. 

The key to the Jacks or Better game is in the payout for the Full House and for the Flush. The very best machine to play will be one that pays 9 for a Full House and 6 for a Flush, a 9/6 machine. This machine, according to blogger Bill Burton, has an expected return of 99.5%.

Casinos lower the payout and increase their hold by reducing the coins paid for the Full House and Flush. The average machine will pay an 8/5 return - 8 for a Full House and 5 for a Flush. When they do this, the expected return drops to 97.3%

When the payout for a full house and a flush are lowered to 6/5, the expected return will drop to 95%.  A quick rule of thumb is that the payout will be reduced by 1.1% for each 1 coin reduction from either hand. 

You will have no idea what the expected return for a Class II video poker machine is. The results are predetermined based on the bingo game. Mathematicians at IGT are able to calculate the odds for millions of different bingo patterns on a bingo card. Theoretically they can choose a bingo pattern that mimics the odds of getting any winning hand from a RNG in a Class III machine. But keep in mind when playing Class II video poker machines that Native American tribes are sovereign nations. Their casinos are not subject to state regulation or to public reporting of their machines’ return percentages. They could set their payouts to anything they want as long as they could stay competitive.

What should be your strategy playing these games? With a Class III machine, the skill of the player can determine the outcome of the game. The more you know, the better your choices, and the more you can win. You strategy is to learn as much as you can about the odds of achieving various results. There are a lot of sites on the internet that will help you do this. One good one is The Wizard of Odds written by Michael Schakelford. He’s got a lot to share — odds, calculators, analyses, anything you want or need to master the game. 

As the Gambler says: “You got to know when to hold, ‘em, know when to fold ‘em. Know when to walk away, and know when to run…”  The more you know, the better you’ll do. on a Class III game.

However, skill has nothing to do with the outcome in Class II video poker. The result is determined by the results of a ball draw, not by a machine’s random number generator. Poker knowledge and playing skill means nothing because the result of your hand is already predetermined by the pattern of the winning bingo game. Therefore, deciding what cards to hold and what cards to draw does nothing to improve your chances of winning. 

In fact, if you make a mistake, intentionally or accidentally, and throw away the wrong cards, if your display can not bring up the cards required by the ball draw, a strange thing happens. A “magic genie” will appear on the screen and change your choice to the one required by the bingo-ball draw.  If the bingo game determines you win a certain prize, you will get it with this special feature, regardless of what you do.

I guess this might be good for the novice player. Correcting a playing mistake and showing the player the optimum strategy might help him become better at the game.  Who knows, it might even improve my poker game. Maybe I should look for a Class II VP machine and see.  :)

But if you are actually skilled in the game, avoid these Class II games like the plague and stick to the Class III poker games with the best full house/flush returns. If you are really good, you might want to forget them both and switch to table games instead. 

Tribal Gaming & Class II Slots - Part 4

Whenever a new game appears in one of my local SoCal Native American casinos, like most of you, I try it a time or two. You never know when they’ll put in a good one. Recently both Harrah’s Resort Southern California (Rincon) and Pala have added some banks of Cadillac Jack slots to their floor. The games are colorful, the music is loud, some might say annoyingly so, and because you can’t stop the reels and go to the next spin when you have a win, it takes a long time to collect your credits. That makes the machines seem to be paying often and paying more. These new games are very popular with the casino patrons, and their seats are always full. The players are all watching the reels that pay both right to left and left to right to see if they have a hit. They generally pay no attention at all to the tiny bingo cards at the bottom of the screens. 

That little bingo card is what tells informed players that the machine is not really a slot machine at all. It is really a bingo game disguised to look like a slot machine. it’s a Class II slot.  Another annoying clue that these Cadillac Jack machines are Class II games is this. When you have a win, you can’t just push the button and go right to the next spin. You are forced to wait and listen to the music signaling your win play while virtual coins rain down onto your screen. You can’t play on until all the winners of the linked games are paid and the server is ready for the next game to start. 

If you’ve never played a Class II slot, a good way to get a feel for their characteristics is to watch one of the YouTube videos filmed by players such as Random $$ Slots. There’s a link to one of his channel devoted exclusively  to Class II Slots HERE. The channel originally had examples of Class II games by WMS, IGT, and Cadillac Jack. Games by other manufacturers are being added to the site as they are played and filmed. Nearly all the major slot manufacturers it seems are devoting much of their resources to developing these bingo games. There are Class II games shown on the internet manufactured by slot giants such as Bally and Multimedia in addition to WMS, IGT, and Cadillac Jack. There are some smaller companies developing games as well. I suspect more and more manufacturers will be focusing on these Indian Casino Class II slots in the future. 

People who play Class II slots often complain that they can tell by looking at the tiny bingo card on their screen whether they are going to have a winning spin. I guess they like to be surprised. Under IGRA (the Indian Regulatory Gaming Act), the games are required to have a draw of bingo balls that must result in a game winning pattern. When the machine draws the bingo balls, the first 30 numbers drawn are daubed red - you can watch them appear on your bingo card when you spin the reels. If there is no winner in the first 30 numbers generated, the machine will continue adding yellow balls to the display until it arrives at a game ending pattern. These yellow balls, however, do not contribute any pays. 

In the early days, if you had a win, you had to daub your card by pushing the spin button a second time; now cards are auto-daubed. You can even change your card before the next game if you don’t like it, just as you can trade your card in for a new one when you’re playing a paper bingo game. On the Class II machines, you change your card by touching the display until you get one you like. It won’t matter what card you pick because there are too many possibilities to predict the one that will have the random numbers you’ll need for a good win. You might as well keep the first one they gave you, but if it makes you feel like you have some control over the game, even though you don’t, go ahead. Change your card if you like.

Take a look at the first video Ishtar’s Oasis by WMS on this slot channel CLASS II SLOTS and see if you can predict whether a spin is a good one by looking at the red daubs on the bingo card. Often you can. Sometimes you can’t because there are many more arrays that award credits in the electronic game than there are winning arrays in a regular paper bingo game. 

When you play in the casino, you might also want to take a quick look at the pay-table equivalent for the bingo games that your information screen can show you. There’s no way to study it really. In fact the machine I tried looking at refused to go to the bingo information screens after a time, wanting me to play instead I guess. Nor can you learn anything from it to improve your wins as you sometimes can with slot pay tables. There is too much information. It will give you a feel for how complicated the mathematics behind the game is, however. 

While you are watching this game on the internet, pause the action and take time to read the comments by the creator. You can learn a lot from the comments he posts with his videos. Reading them and watching the games, I relearned a lot I had forgotten about Class II Bingo Slots from years ago, and I saw some things that have changed. Today’s games are much different and much better than the ones we played a decade ago when they first appeared in our NA casinos. Today it’s hard to tell them from Vegas-style slots. 

If you think you can predict how big your win might be from the tiny bingo card that usually comes up before the slot reel screen does, and you don’t like knowing, you are not alone. Many players don’t want an early display of the bingo card spoiling their surprise. Cadillac Jack has a new innovation, called by John Groshowski the “unscripted bonus event. “ (Mr. Grochowski writes about such things in the Chicago Sun Times as the Gaming Guru). Cadillac Jack’s unscripted bonus, he says, adds bingo draws within the bonus events. These draws have varied enough outcomes that players can’t predict what will happen. 

There are also machines where the bingo card is revealed after the slot screen rather than in advance. IGT does this. One place you can see this in Random $$ Slots’ video of 2x3x4x5x by IGT.  A comment there also tells us that MultiMedia is now manufacturing Class II machines that don’t show the bingo card when the machine is idle. There will be more and cleverer way to address the bingo-card issue in the months to come. One easy fix might be to design the display so that the bingo card was not shown on the computer screen at all unless you pushed a button to reveal it.

As you watch these games and others, focus on the tiny bingo card when a bonus comes up. Ask yourself if there is still a card to watch during the bonus spins. If the bingo card in the corner during the game is no longer there when you play your bonus, perhaps it’s because your bonus is predetermined by the arrangement that brought it up. If so there is nothing you can do to change your bonus. If your bonus begins with your making a choice of some kind, such as picking one of four cards, your bonus total will be dependent on your choice.

If you watched Ishtar’s Oasis by WMS, you saw there was no bingo card on the screen during the bonus spins - the bonus spins were all for show, If you watch Spider Queen by Cadillac Jack, there is a small bingo card during the bonus rounds as well as during the base game so the amount of your bonus is not predictable from the triggering bingo card. The Cadillac Jack Power Stream series of games are the ones appearing recently in our California Casinos that used to have only Class III slot games. There are several films of these Power Stream games you could view. If you watch the Spider Queen video, you can see many of the Class II game characteristics illustrated: right to left and left to right pay, stacked symbols (that hardly ever seem to be part of your win), high volatility games, long waits while your credits pour into your bank if you have a hit, encouraging “messages” to read, and loud music to listen to while waiting for the payout to end. A lot of Razzle-Dazzle to entertain you while you wait for the next game to start - and no way to speed through it.

Class II game payouts are funded by other players. There is no random number generator in your individual machine, and you are not betting against the house. You are wagering for a share of the money other players are betting. For this reason there must be at least two players playing each game - though they can be on different themed machines. If there are not at least two players, the machine will cycle through the display waiting for the server to have a quorum. An excellent illustration of this is in the film of Queen of Wonderland by Cadillac Jack. Watch the start of this video and see how long it takes for the first spin to register. This is because there are not at least two active players to play the game. The hit frequency is always 50%, but the payout percentage is determined by how many prizes of various amounts are loaded into the program. This is a difficult concept to wrap my head around, and I have not been able to find in print if there are any restrictions on how low an indian casino can set this percentage. Logically you would expect a Class II casino to pay out about the same percentage as the one required for casinos having Class III games. Otherwise they could not remain competitive.

If you have a comment or know of a link to an explanation that could help us all better understand Class II pays, feel free to comment below - or better yet, send me an email to spin2win.jen@gmail.com.

HERE’S A LINK to an article written by Frank Legato who was discussing Class II slots with Casino Operations Senior VP, Charles Lombardo, formerly slot operations VP at Caesar’s Palace. Mr. Legato has worked with major slot manufacturers who have refined Class II technology to provide games that look and play like the Class III Vegas-type slots. The information in the paragraph above above comes from this article. It still leaves me with unanswered questions, perhaps the answers are trade secrets, but you may find the article helpful. 

The article also has some information on hit frequency on three reel slots which I have not seen anywhere else at this time, but which I want to share with you. I think it may explain an anomaly that appears on the film of the IGT three reel slot Double Diamond Stars. 

At around the 30 second mark of the video, a single credit is added to the total without any explanation. But Lombardo gives us a plausible one.

Lombardo says this: “Because traditional [three reel] games like Blazing 7’s or Red, White, & Blue generally have a hit frequency around 14% for the seven or eight winning combination in the pay schedule, a 50% hit frequency would be impossible and still have the game make money for the casino. To remedy this, Lombardo explains, we came up with a bonus feature. 14% of results in the pool will be actual reel combinations, and the other 36% will yield a bonus symbol on the reels that will accumulate. When you accumulate 25 of these symbols, you will win 1 bonus credit. Therefore you still have the 50% hit frequency, but your frequency of reel wins is similar to what it is in the traditional Class III versions of those games.” Did you watch this happen in the film of Double Diamond Stars?  Watch it HERE.

So, where are we going with all this? Nowhere I want to be! 

I think what we are going to see over the next few years is that a lot of our Native American casinos, and maybe even some of the traditional non-Indian casinos we play at, will be putting more and more of these Class II bingo-slots on the casino floors. The games will become increasingly harder to distinguish from the traditional Vegas Class III slots as the technology gets better and better.  Most people playing the games will not even realize there is a difference. 

I also suspect that, when this happens, State revenue from the tribes will drop. That revenue now comes from payments required by the compacts. If the Native American casinos have Class II rather than Class III machines, the tribes will not have to pay the State the large per-machine fees the compacts demand. When that happens, the State lawyers will undoubtedly find a new way to define Bingo that excludes these Class II slots from that definition. And then the State will once again force the Native American residents of California to give up what is rightly theirs to fill the State coffers. There is a term I would use here to describe this ravaging of other peoples if I were not a lady!  I’ll leave it to your imagination. You know how I feel about past atrocities and future fears. 

I will probably follow this with an article on Class II video poker in a few days.  We’ll see.

Special thanks once again to Random$$Slots for all his help with this and for permission to use his slot videos in preparing these four articles.  Please continue to visit his site as he makes more films of games from more manufacturers available to help us all understand how to play our favorite games.  And don’t forget to view, like, and subscribe.

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.