Many gambling enthusiasts in the United States are at least vaguely familiar with the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, US law Pub.L. 100–497, 25 U.S.C. § 2701.
Oct 04, 2017 Alabama law forbids casino games, such as slot machines, but allows charities in some counties to offer bingo games to raise money. Casino operators have long argued the machines play rapid-fire electronic bingo, and the whirling displays and chimes are only for entertainment. Slot-machine reels spin, and is told whether he or she has won by the gambling device. As such, as the Supreme Court of Alabama has held, the machines are illegal and not permitted to play the game commonly known as bingo in Alabama. Defendants' gambling devices play like, look like, sound like, and attract the same class of.
Passed in 1988, this federal law established how Indian (Native American) gaming would be managed and regulated. The act included definitions for 3 types or classes of gambling games. They are usually referred to as:
- Class I games
- Class II games
- Class III games
Congress passed the law to help Native American tribes and nations improve their economic status after more than a century of oppression and exclusion in mainstream US society. Many Native American groups wanted to build land-based casinos, which would not only attract tourists but create jobs.
There was considerable resistance to this movement in many states, most of which did not allow gambling of any kind. To help resolve the conflicts and provide some clarity between treaties, state law, and federal law, the US government established a framework that eliminated some barriers to Native American investment in gambling industries. The law also provided some regulatory limits to respect state laws.
The Indian Gaming Regulatory Act introduced some confusion into the worldwide lexicon of gambling games because the distinctions are only observed within US jurisdictions. Other nations regulate gambling with different definitions.
But as the internet became a worldwide communications network in the 1990s and 2000s, most of the content published about gambling dealt with US law and casinos. Although non-US casinos have to observe their own laws and regulations, players who research gambling law on the internet must be careful to distinguish between USA gambling definitions and other gambling definitions.
What Are the 3 Classes of Gambling Games?
Class I gambling includes all traditional Native American gambling games, most of which are only used for ceremonial purposes or in the contexts of cultural-specific celebrations and ceremonies. These games, which are only available at small stakes, are completely regulated by the Native American tribes and nations.
Class II gambling includes all variations of bingo games, player-vs-player card games like poker (where the house does not play a hand in the game), tip jars, pull-tab games, punch card games, and anything similar. Some people mistakenly include lottery games in this category, but the law clearly excludes state-run lotteries and similar games from Class II.
Bingo Based Slot Machines
Class III gambling consists of everything that is not included under Class I gambling or Class II gambling. That means the lottery games you play are Class III gambling games. Slot games, roulette, dice games, and card games like blackjack where the house is also a player all fall under the Class III gambling games category.
So How Can There Be Class II Slot Machine Games?
If you’ve ever visited a Native American casino–like the Winstar Casino in Oklahoma, you’ve almost certainly played some Class II slot machine games. They look much like traditional slot machine games. They have 3 to 5reels with symbols on them, they pay jackpots, and they do everything else you expect of a slot game.
And yet, they are not slot machine games.
A clever company in Franklin, TN, known as Video Gaming Technologies, or VGT, developed electronic bingo games for Native American casinos that use the results of those bingo games to emulate slot game action.
In other words, the slot machine cabinets contain two screens, one that displays the results of the bingo game and one that displays the results of the simulated slot game. This dual visualization of the gambling game takes advantage of the fact that at the core of all gambling games is a simple principle:
You’re making a wager on an unknown outcome. What the Class II slot games do is take the result of the bingo game to determine what happens in the slot game.
What’s cool about this approach is that VGT was able to add bonus games to the bingo games that work like slot machine bonus games. They’ve developed a huge selection of bingo games that play like slot games. VGT is so successful they were acquired by Aristocrat Leisure Limited in 2014, although the former VGT still operates as an independent subsidiary company of Aristocrat.
How Do Class III Slot Machine Games Work?
The key to the hybridization of bingo and slot machine games is the Random Number Generator. Mathematicians have been developing algorithms to calculate unpredictable numbers for hundreds of years. For a detailed look at the concept, read “How Do Random Number Generators Work?” on Jackpots Online. Although the RNG does not produce a truly random number, in typical circumstances the number is random enough. Even so, slot game designers use random numbers in multiple ways.
Before I continue, I should mention that US law requires slot game designers to work by different rules from other countries’ slot games. In the United Kingdom, for example, the outcome of a slot game is determined by a single random number. In the United States, the outcome of the Class III slot game is determined by several random numbers.
To begin with, an electronic slot machine or online slot game uses a software concept called an array to represent each reel. Computer arrays work like rows of boxes, where each box holds one piece of information. The arrays for slot reels may have anywhere from 22 to 256 slots. Each slot in the array holds a symbol marker that tells the slot machine game what to display on the screen.
Slot game designers use special algorithms to decide how often each type of symbol should appear in each slot array. The frequency of the symbol’s use in the array and the size of the array determine how likely or unlikely it is for any single spin of the slot game reels to create one or more winning combinations. The game’s software may award prizes for one or more winning combinations at a time, depending on how many pay lines the game offers.
The random number generator produces a new number every few milliseconds. The number is placed in a temporary memory location called a register. The slot game software grabs the latest random number from the register and uses that to determine what happens next. For example, a 5 reel slot game needs 5 random numbers to pick how many slot positions will be spun on each reel before the reels stop in new locations. If the slot game awards random prizes like progressive jackpots, these are determined by additional random numbers.
How Class II Slot Machine Games Differ from Class III Slot Machine Games
What VGT did was create bingo game software that determines the actual prizes awarded to players.
But to make the bingo games look like slot games, they used the bingo game’s random results as if they are the random numbers that Class III slot games use.
To ensure that the slot game winning combinations match the bingo game prize values the VGT games work more like slot games in the United Kingdom. The game determines what prize was won and then creates a short video simulation of the slots landing on that winning combination.
Conclusion
How do class II slot machines work?
Free Bingo Slot Machines
Either way, the slot games award prizes on a random basis. You could say that US gaming laws are paranoid in that Class III slot game software is required to closely emulate the physical spinning of slot reels. In fact, physical slot reel games have been displaying results of these virtual, in-memory array games for more than 20 years. So even when you see physical reels spinning, their stop positions have already been determined within microseconds of your pressing SPIN.
The Class II slot gaming experience is a fun gaming experience.
But the bingo game is displayed on a small screen, because VGT’s designers have found that players don’t enjoy looking at bingo patterns as much as they enjoy looking at 3 to 5 reels spinning and stopping on various symbols.
For the player, what matters is that they’re gambling for real money on an unpredictable outcome–and they can enjoy an entertaining evening with friends or loved ones.
[toc]The battle over the difference between electronic bingo and slot machines is heating up in the state of Alabamaonce again.
Wednesday, Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall announced the state was filing multiple lawsuits against casino operations in five counties that it says continues to operate illegal slot machines.
The machines in question, which look and play exactly like slots, are electronic bingo machines. Traditional slots one might find in a Las Vegas, Nevada casino are random number generator-based games. This basically means a computer randomly generates the numbers which determine outcome of each slot spin.
Electronic bingo machine or slot?
Electronic bingo games may look and play the same as slots. These games are indistinguishable from the slot machines one might find in a Las Vegas casino in many ways.
However, the difference is the results of each spin are based on electronic bingo games usually involving multiple machines. The bingo games run in the background. Meanwhile, the player goes through virtually the same slot machine experience they might find in Las Vegas. All the while, these bingo games determine the outcome behind the scenes.
Prior to 2010, several electronic bingo machine operations opened across Alabama, taking advantage of laws that allow bingo parlors to operate and county and municipal lawmakers who approved the presence of electronic bingo parlors featuring the games.
The Alabama anti-gambling task force
In early in 2010, an anti-gambling task force put together by then-Governor Bob Riley shut down many of these parlors. In March 2010, the Alabama Supreme Court decided the Governor did not have the authority to put together an anti-gambling task force. Susquently, a number of these parlors reopened.
However, the anti-gambling taskforce reopened later in the year with the help of the Attorney General’s office. The courts determined the Attorney General did have the authority to operate such a task force.
Raids continued, and several court battles between the state and electronic bingo parlors ensued over the next few years. Most operations closed and reopened regularly following varying court decisions.
In 2016, Victoryland, one of the state’s largest operators, won a ruling in a federal court against the state and reopened.
AG says electronic bingo parlors are defying state law
Marshall still believes electronic bingo parlors are operating in defiance of state law. The lawsuits filed this week ask the courts to stop operators from promoting, operating, and transporting the machines.
The state also filed motions requesting preliminary injunctions to shut the operations down immediately.
“It is the responsibility of the Attorney General to ensure that Alabama’s laws are enforced, including those laws that prohibit illegal gambling,” Marshall said. “Through multiple rulings in recent years, the Alabama Supreme Court has made it abundantly clear that electronic bingo and the use of slot machines are illegal in all Alabama counties. Therefore, we have taken action to hold accountable those who defy the laws of our state. These lawsuits represent a comprehensive legal approach developed by the Attorney General, with the assistance of the Office’s career experts, to finally put a stop to illegal gambling.”
The lawsuits are allegedly the culmination of ongoing investigations into these casinos and gambling ventures around Alabama. The civil complaints call for the closure of the casinos because the Attorney General says they present a legal nuisance.
The Attorney General also says the State pursued numerous cases against electronic bingo operators over the past five years. Each time, part of the goal was to clarify the state’s anti-gambling laws.
Each time, the Attorney General claims people cannot play bingoon electronic devices. This essentially defines electronic bingo machines as slot machines. Resultingly, slot machines remain illegal in Alabama.
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