NEVADA DRAWS THE LINE AT NEAR-MISS SLOTS

All forms of gambling depend upon people acting illogically: No legitimate game can give the player even equal odds. If a casino opened a roulette wheel without the zero and double zero and did not take a fee in any other way you can be sure that the wheel is crooked.

To a great extent government regulators take the role of disciplining parents, deciding what is good or bad for rambunctious children. We do not have a free market in gambling. Although, it is sometimes hard to convince the regulators that there job is not to maximize the profit for casinos but rather to protect the public, and the casinos themselves, from self-destructing.

The most difficult choice any lawmaker faces is where to draw the line.

The Nevada regulators recently ruled that nearly 10% of the state's 122,000 slot machines would have to be retrofitted because they were seen as misleading the public. The decision feels right, but the question remains whether this is too little, too late.

The concept of the near-miss machine is a wondrous combination of high technology, marketing ingenuity and human psychology, with perhaps a smidgen of greed thrown in. One now-banned machine was a three real video slot, that took up to three coins. The first coin activated the middle line, a second was necessary for the top line, and a third for the bottom. When three coins were played the machine was completely random; but when only one or two coins were played it was programed to make three 7s appear more often on the bottom line.

That machine seems dangerously misleading, since it entices players to play three coins more often than they might otherwise. Imagine the feelings of a player who puts in two coins, only to see the jackpot slip away because she did not put in three coins. Now imagine that same player putting in another two coins and the exact same thing happening.

Another now-banned machine presents a more subtle danger. Whether a player won or lost was entirely by chance; however, once the machine had decided that the player had lost it would go into a predetermined table of losing hands and display jackpots symbols more often than chance would dictate on the pay line.

If this were done on a video poker machine it would work as follows: If you keep an Ace of Spades and throw the other four cards this type of machine goes through a two-stage process. First, it randomly determines your hand, say Ace, 2, 6, 7, 10, mixed suits. But, having determined you lost, it then would decide non-randomly which hand to show you. So, instead of your losing Ace, 2, 6, 7, 10, you might be shown Ace, King, Queen, Jack of Spades and a 9 of Clubs. Still a loser, but only one card away from a Royal Flush jackpot.

One thing to remember about near-miss machines is that they work; if they did not increase play no one would care. The manufacturer argued, correctly, that the near-miss concept is inherent in virtually every form of gambling, especially on slot machines. For decades three-reelers have come with a disproportionately large number of jackpot symbols on the first two reels: how often have you seen Bar, Bar, Plum come up? Did you think it was just a coincidence?

The manufacturer argued further that these machines add extra excitement for the player. In a way, their problem is that they are right. If you think about it, what difference does it make whether Ace, 2, 6, 7, 10 or a four-card Royal Flush appear? The next pull of the handle is an entirely separate, random event. It is only a weakness of human psychology that makes people think that they must be getting close to winning.

But gambling is built on such weaknesses. Crooked carnival games actually rig unwinable games in the player's favor at first, to hook the sucker into betting more and more money in a desparate attempt to gain those last few points. But even honest games rely on concepts like Gamblers Fallacy: if Red shows up 20 times in a row on roulette most players will then bet on Black, figuring it has to "even out." (Actually, they should bet on Red, since the pattern indicates a very small chance there may be something wrong with the wheel, particularly if the casino boss is betting on Red).

The question becomes, where do we draw the line? Lottery scratch-off tickets are often designed to be near-miss: if three matching symbols are required, cards are purposely printed with many pairs. In California's 6/49 lotto there is a 56.4% chance that you will pick at least one winning number. If you add in near-matches, picking 35 when the winning number is 36, nearly everybody will come close. Should lotto be outlawed because it is inherently a near-miss game?

Nevada drew the line at the computerized near-miss on the pay line; anything else goes. The theory is that a sophisticated player can count the number of winning symbols over a large number of pulls of the lever. This allows machines to non-randomly show winning combinations above and below the line.

The worst case is the disproportionate slot: each reel has 22 symbols but the machine internally has 32 stops. The chance of the jackpot symbol appearing is not 1 in 22, but 1 in 32. The chance of the jackpot symbol appearing right above the pay line may be 10 times as great. And reels can be set internally with 99 stops, making it virtually certain that jackpots will appear, always above or below the pay line.

I would draw the line to protect short-term players and would outlaw all forms of gambling that appear intentionally misleading. But, then again, nobody asked my opinion.

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