Spend Management Visibility: Not having everyone on board means missing data, and therefore poor spend visibility. If you don’t know how much is being spent with which vendors, and the details of what is being bought, it is impossible to accurately assess whether you are getting good service or value, and it’s difficult to compare vendors.
Slot machines may share a progressive jackpot that is awarded randomly to one player and one player only at a time. Each slot machine connected to the progressive network contributes a small part of each bet played to the jackpot. Some slot machines have “local” progressive jackpots which are not shared with other machines.

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Online slots are the most popular and most played of all casino games. Punters love them, and top casinos are happy to oblige. There are over 2,000 online slot machines currently available from more than 50 different software developers.

by Steve Bourie Learn more about the author read more »

All of the stories in this book relating to slot machines and video poker are based on the assumption that those machines act in a random manner. This means we’re assuming that those games aren’t programmed to avoid giving a player a winning slot combination or poker hand and the opportunity exists on each pull of the handle, or push of a button, for any possible winning combination to occur.

We know that there are gaming regulatory agencies that are supposed to provide the public with protection from playing on a rigged machine but how is it done? and how effective is it?

Being the nosy guy that I am, these were a couple of questions I was curious to get answered and it ended up taking me on a little bit of an adventure. Not only did it result in this story about the regulatory process for electronic gaming machines but it also led me to question the motives of a national news organization.

In the United States there are only four states that have their own facilities for testing electronic gaming machines: Montana, Mississippi, New Jersey and Nevada. For the other states that offer legalized casino gambling but don’t have their own labs almost all rely on the services of Gaming Labs International - an independent testing firm based in Toms River, New Jersey.

It only made sense to start with the biggest state first, so in February 1997. I called the Nevada Gaming Control Board to ask for permission to visit their testing lab in Las Vegas. They told me I needed to get permission for that from Bill Bible, the Control Board’s chairman, so I wrote him a brief letter explaining that I wanted to write a story about the lab for my book. Twelve days later I received a reply from him stating that I was welcome to visit the lab but that some parts of it were confidential and would not be accessible to me. He only requested that I call that department in advance to make an appointment. A few days later I called and made arrangements for a visit on March 18 at 3:00 p.m.

Not being a computer expert - just a curious casino gambler - I wasn’t exactly sure what I should ask and about 10 days before my trip I started to ponder questions I thought might be appropriate. Then, on March 12, just six days before the scheduled visit, I was watching television when I switched channels and caught a story on the ABC News show PrimeTime Live about slot machines. The segment was titled 'Against All Odds' and featured their chief investigative reporter Brian Ross.

The story focused on the computer chips in slot machines and began with parts of an interview with Frank Romano who, Ross said, was banned from the industry because a company he owned with two partners was charged with rigging its video poker machines to avoid giving out royal flush jackpots.

Ross went on to say that the public knows little about the inner workings of machines and that PrimeTime conducted a four-month investigation into the industry that included numerous interviews with industry officials, the reading of confidential documents and the viewing of secret video tapes of an interview with a former state gaming official who was involved in a slot cheating scandal.

Ross said that Romano claimed he didn’t know anything about the cheating at his company and that he had persuaded a federal judge of that fact. Also, Romano had no qualms with talking about the 'secrets' of the gambling industry even though Larry Volk the person at his company who programmed the chips to avoid giving the winning hands had been murdered: Volk was shot to death at his house in Las Vegas shortly before he was scheduled to begin giving testimony about how he programmed the chips to cheat.

Ross said Romano claimed the computer chips made cheating possible and that the true 'secret' of the industry was that the chips of many machines were programmed with a 'near-miss' feature which didn’t directly affect the odds of the game but did lure players into playing longer.

Romano then gave an example where a slot machine would line up two 7s on the payline and have the third 7 settle below the payline making people think they were close to winning. He said those kind of results were programmed into the machines on purpose.

Ross said the casinos pay out up to 98% on these machines and that Romano claimed the industry came up with this idea as a way to get the dollar volume up by keeping the players at the machines for a longer period. Romano claimed it was 'cheating' and that the industry was 'teasing' the player by making them think they were close to winning.

The next scene shifted to an interview with gambling addiction authority Valerie Lorenz who, Ross said, wasn’t surprised that the industry would do such a thing.

Next was an interview with Bill Bible, chairman of the Nevada Gaming Control Board who said that cheaters would be caught and prosecuted. Ross commented that most of the Board’s cases involved players cheating casinos and asked Bible if it also applied to casinos that cheat customers. Bible replied that it did and that his department inspects computer chips both before they’re put in the machines and also after they’re out in actual play.

Ross then questioned how good a job the state did in examining the chips because of allegations raised in a six-hour series of supposedly 'secret' videotapes with Ronald Harris, a former Gaming Control Board employee who was involved in a slot cheating scandal. Harris was a computer expert in the gaming lab where the machines were tested and the videos were made by the attorney general’s office while questioning him about his cheating activities. Harris was eventually convicted of felony cheating charges.

Parts of the 'secret' tape are then shown with Harris claiming that the state’s gaming regulations weren’t being enforced and that the machines were 'deceptive.'

Harris: I remember reviewing one, and it was a thousand times more likely that the three 7s would line up directly above the payline than on the payline. I mean, doesn’t that seem deceptive to anyone here?

Questioner: To make the customer feel as though they came very close to getting a jackpot and that perhaps the next one or the next one, to paraphrase the ad, the baby would be ready to deliver?

Harris: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah, it’s out there. It’s being done. It’s condoned by the board..

Ross commented that the attorney general’s office told PrimeTime it couldn’t prove any criminal wrongdoing based on Harris’ allegations and that they never looked at all into the alleged 'deceptive' features on slots.

The interview with Bible then continued with him confirming that Harris was a former employee who had a great deal of knowledge about the industry and that his allegations were still under review. Bible denied that any cheating was allowed by him or the board and he pointed out that Harris just didn’t have much credibility.

In the next scene Ross said that two other former employees of the lab, without any criminal backgrounds, also believed that the machines were 'deceptive.' He interviewed Gordon Hickman a retired employee who said that the machines were very prevalent. Ross said that in a confidential memo to the attorney general’s office Hickman claimed that he was ordered to okay machines that 'display near-misses in 7s a third of the time just above the payout line.' Ross said Hickman thought the machines were 'deceptive' but he was ordered to app

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