Casino Answer Man: About those Class II and Class III machines

Q. A person I know goes to the Hard Rock Seminole casino in Tampa; she plays the $10-a-pull Wheel of Fortune slot machine. She claims she can tell when the machine is going to hit. I disagree; I say that the random number generator has already determined the outcome, so nobody knows when a machine is going to hit.

I know the machines at the Indian casinos are different, but how are they different from the Las Vegas machines? I don't know what a bingo-type machine is. I am guessing even if the type of machine is different from Las Vegas machines, a person still cannot tell if a machine is going to hit.

A. Most tribal casinos today, including the Hard Rocks, have Class III slot machines. Those are the same games as you’d see in Atlantic City, Las Vegas, Mississippi, Illinois, Colorado – just about any of the commercial casino jurisdictions in the United States. On those games, results are determined by a random number generator, and there is no way to tell what is coming next.

Some tribal casinos have Class II games, which are bingo-based. That includes some casinos that have Class III slots with RNGs, but also have Class II games. At some, the Class IIs are holdovers from before Class III games were permitted. At others, tribal compacts with the host state limit the number of Class III slots and Class IIs are added to bring extra games to the floor.

You can recognize Class II games by a bingo logo on the screen or machine glass. Instead of each machine having its own RNG, Class II games get a bingo pattern from a central server, and then translate that pattern into slot symbols, video poker cards or some other player-friendly display.