Casino news source: Billings Gazette - http://www.billingsgazette.net
Bingo machines could remain
By VINCE DEVLIN
Missoulian
POLSON - Aside from the lack of a lever to pull, the devices look, act - and can pay out like - a Las Vegas slot machine.
Put your money in one of the machines at the Kwa Taq
Nuk Resort here, decide how much you want to bet, how many lines you want to play, and press the "spin" button.
On the video screen, symbols roll across five rows and, one by one, come to a stop.
Get all the right symbols in one line, and you win money that can run into seven figures in a state where three figures is the usual maximum payout.
Yes, there is little to distinguish these machines from the one-armed bandits of Vegas, save for that lack of one arm.
But there is one other major difference: Technically, you are not playing a slot machine.
Technically, you are playing bingo.
Bingo is classified as Class II gaming and Indian tribes are allowed to operate Class II gaming in states that allow charitable or other groups to also do so. That makes the Rocket Bingo machines legal at many tribal-controlled casinos across the nation.
If the state of Montana and the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes fail to reach agreement on a new gaming compact for the Flathead Indian Reservation in the coming days, all traditional keno and poker machines with their usual $800 maximum payouts - including those operated by the tribes, which occasionally pay almost twice as much - will have to be unplugged come midnight on Nov. 30, and be moved off the reservation by Dec. 15.
But the Vegas-like machines at the Kwa Taq Nuk Resort will still be plugged in, lit up, and more than willing to accept your money.
"This is not your grandmother's bingo," Heidi McNeil Staudenmaier told the Western Governor's Association Summit on Indian Gaming last year.
Staudenmaier, a senior partner in the Phoenix law firm of Snell & Wilmer, explained that the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988 classified bingo as Class II gaming and allowed it to be played on reservations. States could not control, regulate or tax it.
At the time, of course, the traditional bingo game took many minutes to play as a blower bounced numbered balls around inside a wire cage, and balls were randomly selected and numbers called out until somebody in the relatively small crowd got the right ones in a row and yelled "Bingo!"
But technology has changed the way bingo can be played, so much so that it doesn't even look like bingo anymore.
Technology has also made it possible for tribes from Washington to Florida to connect their machines, so that when you sit down at one in Polson, you can be playing bingo against hundreds, even thousands, of people across the nation. The progressive jackpots rack higher and higher in front of your eyes until somebody wins.
While the video reels roll and symbols - pigs, horses, tractors, haystacks and cash cows, for instance - fly by, in a small corner of the screen you can watch the real game that's being played.
The machine randomly assigns you numbers on a bingo card, then draws 30 numbers. If you have enough of those numbers in the right pattern, you win.
Sometimes you win a few credits back. Sometimes, many.
On rare occasions, people win big money. Thousands of dollars. Hundreds of thousands of dollars.
In August, one of the machines at the Kwa Taq Nuk offered a jackpot that had climbed above $1.5 million.
Remember, of course, that you're playing for that jackpot against people all over the country. That August jackpot was claimed by Manuel Sanchez, who was playing at the Yakama Nation Legends Casino in Toppenish, Wash.
But at Kwa Taq Nuk, they've paid Rhonda Byers of Kalispell $377,763 on a 90-cent bet. And five more times, they've paid out approximately $30,000 or more, including to a husband and wife who both hit jackpot amounts within several days of one another.
The games instantaneously release the 30 bingo balls, which means each bingo game can be played in seconds, not several minutes.
Opponents say Congress in 1988 could have never envisioned bingo games that took seconds to play and could make winners millionaires.
Proponents say the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was intended to help Indian tribes become self-sufficient, and that tribes should not be penalized for utilizing technology and ingenuity to do so.
Right now, the Salish and Kootenai Tribes offer the Class II games only at the Kwa Taq Nuk. But they plan to put more in at the former Joe's Smoke Ring north of Evaro, and hope to lure Missoula area gamblers who would rather wager their money on the chance to win thousands (or hundreds of thousands) of dollars, rather than the hundreds they can win on Class III machines.
Some gamblers like the chance at big payouts. Others prefer the interaction the Class III gaming machines offer, where they can choose which cards they keep and discard in poker, and can select their own numbers and patterns for keno. In Rocket Bingo, all gamblers do is push a button and wait a couple of seconds to see if they won or lost.
When gamblers do hit jackpots at Kwa Taq Nuk, they can collect up to $2,500 of their winnings on the spot. The balance is paid by check two business days later.
Published on Monday, November 20, 2006 |
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