Pokies and Slot Machine Information

Ticket slots and slot machines as ATM’s

January 29, 2006 on 7:44 pm | In Slot machine overviews |

Most pokies in Australia are coin and bank note operated - insert your funds, win or lose for a while, then cash out to the tinkle of coins in the tray (or a manual payout over a certain amount).

The trend in the USA is towards ticket operated slots. You insert your funds as bank notes, win or lose, and when you cash out the machine will print a special ticket for your remaining balance. You can then wander over to a new machine and insert the ticket to transfer your balance to that machine, or you can simply redeem the ticket for cash.

There are huge advantages for casinos using the ticket method:
-> If patrons don’t need to wait for payouts, they can move from machine to machine more quickly - increasing the amount the venue can win.
-> No coins to worry about for customers. If you’d seen some of the places I have seen patrons store coins, you’d be rather less happy to handle them. Some folks are very creative with their storage plans.
-> No coins to count. If you have 18,000 gaming machines each holding a few hundred dollars in coins, it becomes a real timetaker to balance/count/empty all machines.

More than 90 percent of MGM Mirage’s 18,000 slot machines soon will be coinless, says Yvette Monet, public affairs manager for the company.

Wired Magazine Online

Its likely the changeover to new technology will cost casinos initially - but they will soon make it back by not having to handle millions of coins. You can safely bet that the savings won’t be passed on to players.

As player acceptance spreads, its likely ticket slots will turn up in your favourite venue.

The next logical step is the installation of magnetic card readers into slot machines, so you can withdraw funds directly from your bank account and into the game. The technology already exists, and according to Wired may be implemented:

some Indian casinos in California — where there are more than 60 autonomous gaming boards — soon may allow ATM payments.

Indian casinos operate under rules quite different to casinos in other parts of the world. It would be considerably more difficult to introduce combination slot machine/ATM’s in countries like Australia, where there is already a backlash against the widespread installation of pokies.