Slot player’s jackpot appeal heard in Nevada Supreme Court

Brendan Riley

Wednesday, March 29, 2000 | 1:41 a.m.

CARSON CITY, Nev. - A Redwood City, Calif., gambler found one ally - and possibly two - on the Nevada Supreme Court as his lawyer fought Wednesday for a $1.8 million payoff withheld due to a slot machine's malfunction.

During arguments on Cengiz "Gene" Sengel's appeal, Senior Justice David Zenoff said, "The good will of the state of Nevada is at stake in a situation like this."

Nevada's guarantee to the gambling public is a fair deal, and if the dispute involving a Quartermania slot machine makes it seem like players aren't getting one, "that word gets around the country," Zenoff added.

Dan Reaser, lawyer for International Game Technology which provided the Quartermania slot machine to the Silver Legacy hotel-casino in Reno, said machines carry a printed warning that malfunctions void payoffs.

"One of the other things on the face of that machine is a jackpot," said Chief Justice Bill Maupin. "It looks like a jackpot to me."

There was no comment from three other justices hearing Sengel's appeal. A ruling will be issued later - possibly several months from now.

Sengel, who hit what he thought was a big jackpot in September 1996, wasn't present for the arguments.

Sengel's lawyer, John White Jr., said the issue is a first for Nevada's highest court: whether jackpots can be denied due to a malfunction of a slot's "associated equipment" and not the slot itself.

He said three jackpot symbols lined up but the payoff was denied because a coin box drawer, inside the slot machine and inaccessible to players, inadvertently opened. The slot machine was wired to stop in such cases.

"They could have wired it to the elevator," White said of the security system, adding that it shouldn't stop a payoff if a player lines up the winning symbols.

"We were lucky. It's called gambling," he added.

"The game that you see is not the game that you played," Reaser countered, explaining that the reel stop created by the security system isn't the same as the proper one created by an internal computer that randomly selects symbols.

"Mr. Sengel lost his game fair and square," Reaser said.

Progressive jackpots like those in the Quartermania machine are property of all the gamblers who put money into the machine, he said. Giving Sengel the money cheats those other players of a chance to win in line with the device's normal operations.