Anchor chief fears ‘Strike It Rich’ may sour players

David Strow

Monday, Aug. 16, 1999 | 11:41 a.m.

The newest rage in slot machines make it possible for players to bet more money faster than they ever have before.

Problem is, they can also lose money faster than ever before.

Anchor Gaming Corp., one of the state's largest slot manufacturers, is afraid that the speed of the new games, along with a lack of advantages from betting multiple coins, will eventually sour many slot players. If coins are removed from gaming machines, as most experts predict, the speed of play will increase even more.

"Eventually ... we'll build faster games, and burn these players out," said Randy Adams, director of marketing at Anchor. "You can lose your money so much faster ... the perception is that you've tightened the games up. We haven't, but you can play these games four times faster than you did four years ago."

Adams' solution is a radical one: Change the payback of the game on the fly to reward faster, higher-coin play.

Anchor Gaming, together with Silicon Gaming, is now taking the first step in that direction with the introduction of "Strike It Rich," a bowling-themed video slot game. With a payback varying from 83 percent to 97.5 percent, Adams said it is the first video slot to effectively reward high-coin players.

The next step is to reward player speed by designing a machine that automatically changes paytables while a player is at the machine. It isn't as strange a concept as it sounds; European slot machines have been doing it for years.

Now, Adams is lobbying regulators in Nevada, New Jersey, Mississippi and other jurisdictions to allow the machines in the United States.

It's clear there will be some resistance from regulators, who see the fixed paytable as insurance against cheating or preferential treatment.

"Pigs will fly before we approve that," said one regulator, who asked not to be named.

Dennis Neilander, a member of the Gaming Control Board, agrees that such a machine is now banned by Nevada slot regulations. But he said he was open to discussing potential changes in that regulation.

"The conceptual idea of providing a higher rate of return based on faster play is something new to us," Neilander said. "I can't think of an analogous circumstance. That's always a problem we have when we try to address new technology."

With older machines, the problem was a simple one to solve. Machines took between one and three coins. Slot manufacturers induced max coin play by setting the top jackpot higher than simply three times the single coin payout.

But that doesn't work for multi-line machines, Adams said, because they rely on a huge number of different combinations for their payouts. Rather than waiting for that one rare jackpot to reward the player for aggressive play, Adams feels the best method is continuous rewards.

"What we would like (players) to do is play as much as they can with their gambling money," Adams said. "We want them to lose their last gambling dollar three minutes before the cab arrives to take them to the airport."

In theory, such a machine would start off with a default paytable, with a payback of about 95 percent. As the player plays, the machine analyses to see how fast he's betting, and how many coins are being played on average.

Based on this information, the machine would then slip into a new paytable. That would allow the theoretical payoff of the machine to change, without affecting its randomness.

A one-coin slow player, for example, would slip into a 90 percent table. A 45-coin player playing at high speed would slip into a 99.5 percent table.

Each percentage increase would have a dramatic effect on the length of play. At 90 percent, a player with $100 would average $1,000 in action before losing his stake. At 99 percent, that same $100 buys an average of $10,000 in action -- and consequently, a gaming experience 10 times longer. Stretching out the amount of action would overcome the quicker losses experienced by many multiline players.

"That's the fairest machine for the player, the casino, everybody," Adams said. "What you really want to do is get everyone playing at 99 percent, but you've got to assure me that you're going to put in so much coin per day."

At this point, Anchor appears to be the only company lobbying for such a machine. Ron Rivera, vice president of sales at International Game Technology, said his company wasn't planning such a device.

"I think, really, the underlining theme is providing more value to the player," Rivera said. "If (the new machine) accomplishes that, it would work."

Paytables are controlled on machines by a computer chip. These can be changed, but each chip must be approved by regulators for each particular machine. And there's no way to change the paytable without shutting down the machine first. The minimum payback allowed by Nevada is 75 percent.

"It would probably be unfair to the slower player," Neilander said. "As long as they know that, it would be up to them to play. But we need to make sure the player had proper notice that was going on. That I would consider an absolute necessity.

"I consider anything these guys bring in. I don't profess to know what's best for everyone."

The regulations overseeing slot machines would need to be changed before the machines could be approved, Neilander said. The board can draft the new legislation, and present it to the commission for approval. The second option is for an independent party to directly petition the board with a drafted regulation.

Adams said he's hoping to work with the board in drafting new regulations that would allow the new machines. But before he can move ahead, there are still significant technical issues that need to be overcome.

One would be changes in playing speed that can't be controlled by the player. A player could be playing at optimum speed, run out of credits, try to feed a bill into the machine, and have it rejected. How does the machine prevent the player for being penalized for a factor out of his control?

A second issue might be a disabled player. That player may be playing at their maximum speed, but still be playing much slower than the rate that normally qualifies for the highest paytable. How does the machine prevent penalizing a disabled player?

Or, with so many different paytables, how can the machine be accurately audited to ensure it is paying out fairly?

Anchor researchers are currently working on those problems, and it will probably be at least a year before they've worked them out to the point where a machine will be ready for regulatory scrutiny.

"When you first approach regulators with this idea, it scares the hell out of them," Adams said. "We need to ensure them it's random, not preferential.

"We're making this more difficult than it needs to be. A computer can audit anything."