If you think you can predict how big your win might be from the tiny bingo card that usually comes up before the slot reel screen does, and you don't like knowing, you are not alone. Many players don't want an early display of the bingo card spoiling their surprise. Cadillac Jack has a new innovation, called by John Groshowski the 'unscripted bonus event. ' (Mr. Grochowski writes about such things in the Chicago Sun Times as the Gaming Guru). Cadillac Jack's unscripted bonus, he says, adds bingo draws within the bonus events. These draws have varied enough outcomes that players can't predict what will happen.
There are also machines where the bingo card is revealed after the slot screen rather than in advance. IGT does this. One place you can see this in Random $$ Slots' video of 2x3x4x5x by IGT. A comment there also tells us that MultiMedia is now manufacturing Class II machines that don't show the bingo card when the machine is idle. There will be more and cleverer way to address the bingo-card issue in the months to come. One easy fix might be to design the display so that the bingo card was not shown on the computer screen at all unless you pushed a button to reveal it.
As you watch these games and others, focus on the tiny bingo card when a bonus comes up. Ask yourself if there is still a card to watch during the bonus spins. If the bingo card in the corner during the game is no longer there when you play your bonus, perhaps it's because your bonus is predetermined by the arrangement that brought it up. If so there is nothing you can do to change your bonus. If your bonus begins with your making a choice of some kind, such as picking one of four cards, your bonus total will be dependent on your choice.
If you watched Ishtar's Oasis by WMS, you saw there was no bingo card on the screen during the bonus spins - the bonus spins were all for show, If you watch Spider Queen by Cadillac Jack, there is a small bingo card during the bonus rounds as well as during the base game so the amount of your bonus is not predictable from the triggering bingo card. The Cadillac Jack Power Stream series of games are the ones appearing recently in our California Casinos that used to have only Class III slot games. There are several films of these Power Stream games you could view. If you watch the Spider Queen video, you can see many of the Class II game characteristics illustrated: right to left and left to right pay, stacked symbols (that hardly ever seem to be part of your win), high volatility games, long waits while your credits pour into your bank if you have a hit, encouraging 'messages' to read, and loud music to listen to while waiting for the payout to end. A lot of Razzle-Dazzle to entertain you while you wait for the next game to start - and no way to speed through it.
Class II game payouts are funded by other players.There is no random number generator in your individual machine, and you are not betting against the house. You are wagering for a share of the money other players are betting. For this reason there must be at least two players playing each game - though they can be on different themed machines. If there are not at least two players, the machine will cycle through the display waiting for the server to have a quorum. An excellent illustration of this is in the film of Queen of Wonderlandby Cadillac Jack. Watch the start of this video and see how long it takes for the first spin to register. This is because there are not at least two active players to play the game. The hit frequency is always 50%, but the payout percentage is determined by how many prizes of various amounts are loaded into the program. This is a difficult concept to wrap my head around, and I have not been able to find in print if there are any restrictions on how low an indian casino can set this percentage. Logically you would expect a Class II casino to pay out about the same percentage as the one required for casinos having Class III games. Otherwise they could not remain competitive.
If you have a comment or know of a link to an explanation that could help us all better understand Class II pays, feel free to comment below - or better yet, send me an email to spin2win.jen@gmail.com.Bingo Slot Machine Strategy
HERE'S A LINK to an article written by Frank Legato who was discussing Class II slots with Casino Operations Senior VP, Charles Lombardo, formerly slot operations VP at Caesar's Palace. Mr. Legato has worked with major slot manufacturers who have refined Class II technology to provide games that look and play like the Class III Vegas-type slots. The information in the paragraph above above comes from this article. It still leaves me with unanswered questions, perhaps the answers are trade secrets, but you may find the article helpful.
The article also has some information on hit frequency on three reel slots which I have not seen anywhere else at this time, but which I want to share with you. I think it may explain an anomaly that appears on the film of the IGT three reel slot Double Diamond Stars.
At around the 30 second mark of the video, a single credit is added to the total without any explanation. But Lombardo gives us a plausible one.
Lombardo says this: 'Because traditional [three reel] games like Blazing 7's or Red, White, & Blue generally have a hit frequency around 14% for the seven or eight winning combination in the pay schedule, a 50% hit frequency would be impossible and still have the game make money for the casino. To remedy this, Lombardo explains, we came up with a bonus feature. 14% of results in the pool will be actual reel combinations, and the other 36% will yield a bonus symbol on the reels that will accumulate. When you accumulate 25 of these symbols, you will win 1 bonus credit. Therefore you still have the 50% hit frequency, but your frequency of reel wins is similar to what it is in the traditional Class III versions of those games.' Did you watch this happen in the film of Double Diamond Stars? Watch it HERE.
So, where are we going with all this? Nowhere I want to be!
I think what we are going to see over the next few years is that a lot of our Native American casinos, and maybe even some of the traditional non-Indian casinos we play at, will be putting more and more of these Class II bingo-slots on the casino floors. The games will become increasingly harder to distinguish from the traditional Vegas Class III slots as the technology gets better and better. Most people playing the games will not even realize there is a difference.
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I also suspect that, when this happens, State revenue from the tribes will drop. That revenue now comes from payments required by the compacts. If the Native American casinos have Class II rather than Class III machines, the tribes will not have to pay the State the large per-machine fees the compacts demand. When that happens, the State lawyers will undoubtedly find a new way to define Bingo that excludes these Class II slots from that definition. And then the State will once again force the Native American residents of California to give up what is rightly theirs to fill the State coffers. There is a term I would use here to describe this ravaging of other peoples if I were not a lady! I'll leave it to your imagination. You know how I feel about past atrocities and future fears.
I will probably follow this with an article on Class II video poker in a few days. We'll see.
Class 2 Slot Machine List
Special thanks once again to Random$$Slots for all his help with this and for permission to use his slot videos in preparing these four articles. Please continue to visit his site as he makes more films of games from more manufacturers available to help us all understand how to play our favorite games. And don't forget to view, like, and subscribe.