Zingy I-892 "pseudo slots" are sure bet for the house

By Lynda V. Mapes
Seattle Times staff reporter

TOM REESE / THE SEATTLE TIMES Testing engineer Paul Dasaro puts a tribal gambling device through its paces at the lab in Lacey, Thurston County.

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Her voice, husky and inviting, purrs "Come closer," and it seems few can deny her lure: Cleopatra, an electronic slot machine, is one hot ticket.

One of the most popular electronic slots around, Cleopatra doesn't want to let her gamblers go. "I wish you could have stayed longer," she croons at the end of each game.

With her flashing lights and frequent payouts, Cleopatra is a temptress, to be sure, but she has a false heart: She's not really a slot machine at all. She's a computer game, with a plastic play button and a predetermined outcome, not a true one-armed bandit.

Yet gamblers love the easy-to-play, mesmerizing machines — and so does the house: Electronic slots generate more than 70 percent of the money made in any casino.

"They're huge, and they are the wave of the future," says Dallas Burnett of the state gambling commission, which helps police slot machines in tribal casinos.

	TOM REESE / THE SEATTLE TIMES At the state gambling lab, engineers Paul Dasaro and Brenda North make sure machines function as they should and check to ensure that they pay out at least the state minimum of 75 percent and that they can't be cheated, by the player or the house.

Under Washington state compacts, tribes have the right to operate 18,225 electronic slot machines in their casinos, as many as 2,000 under one roof.

On Tuesday, voters will decide whether to double the number of slots allowed in the state, and for the first time, let them into neighborhood venues. Initiative 892 would allow another 18,225 machines in neighborhood bars, restaurants, bowling alleys, bingo halls, charities and cardrooms across the state.

The initiative, bankrolled by gambling interests, gives 65 percent of net machine proceeds to machine operators. One percent of the rest, after state administrative expenses, would fund programs for problem gamblers. The remainder would pay for an annual state property-tax cut.

Slot machines are already big business: Just ask Burnett, who leads a cadre of computer technicians that road tests every new electronic gambling device allowed in the state's 24 tribal casinos.

Behind a double-locked door in a state office in Lacey, technicians bare the heart of these machines: a computer card, the size of a matchbook, that determines the outcome of every round of play.

But though they look like slot machines — very much by design — — the electronic pseudo slots are anything but.

Burnett likens the machines to a nicotine patch for smokers. For while their buzz may be the same — unlike a Las Vegas-style slot machine, in which some element of random chance is involved in each play — the outcome of every round on these electronic pseudo slots is predetermined by a computer setting.

Payout rates on electronic slots are set by the house at anywhere from 75 percent to upward of 90 percent. Still, at the end of the day, the house always comes out ahead. Unlike in poker, or blackjack, there is no risk for the house of a player who can win a big hand.

"They take the uncertainty out of the business," Burnett said of the machines.

With their lights, sounds, music, bonus screens, and other electronic gimmicks, the machines provide the illusion of player interaction. But it is only that. Put a rock on the play button, and the outcome will be the same.

The machines are nothing more than an electronic form of a scratch ticket — the same game as the Lottery. And as with the Lottery, the only element of chance is whether a player is the one in line when the winning ticket comes.

At the state gambling lab, the employees' job is to make sure the machines function as they should. Engineers take the machines apart and check their hardware and software, making sure the machines pay out at least the state minimum of 75 percent, and that the machines can't be cheated, by the player or the house.

More than 1,000 gambling machines have been checked by the lab since it opened in 1999, when the first machines went into tribal casinos.

It's an odd sight, this gambling lab, with slot machines, their colored lights blinking and synthesized sounds of tumbling coins and jaunty music blaring amid the usual office cubicles and fluorescent lights.

As engineers worked last week, the game 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall played the self-same tune over and over, punctuated with electronic burps, while a white rabbit raced around the screen on another game, Silly Wabbit.

Files in this government office have names like "Instant Winner" and "Loco Loot."

For all their whimsical names and jolly sound tracks, the machines can be trouble for problem gamblers, some experts say, because of their enticing sounds, lights, and seamless action, which can lure some players into gambling more, when they should stop.

"Pull tabs in a bar and charity bingo are a far cry from these very sophisticated machines," said Rachel Volberg, president of the National Council on Problem Gambling.

She said putting the machines in restaurants, bowling alleys and other neighborhood locations not typically thought of as gambling venues adds up to "normalization. ... It takes down the barriers between gambling and the rest of the world."

Volberg authored the state's two studies of gambling prevalence, which in 1999 found as many as 270,900 adults in the state were problem gamblers.

Tim Eyman, sponsor of I-892, said concerns are overblown, even hypocritical.

"It's already here," he said of slot-machine gambling in the state. "Normalization? Well what do you call 18,225 machines in the state of Washington already? If that's not normalization, I don't know what is."

Lynda V. Mapes: 206-464-2736 or lmapes@seattletimes.com

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

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