Casino Technology

The best things about casinos are their buffets. Now I know most who enter a gambling joint go to play the slots or blackjack or keno. Me? I go to eat.

Like at Cactus Pete's in Jackpot which is a blink of an eye place north of Wells, Nevada. Jackpot is not large enough to be called a town, but it hosts three or four casinos. And Cacus Pete's is one of them with the best darn buffet I've ever enjoyed.

Hey! Have you heard the scoop on slot machines? Seems what with new technology and all, the payouts on the machines can be changed in the casino's back room even as you play.

The slots which used to be mechanized are now computerized and with a few clicks of the mouse the game changes, the odds change and the payout increases or decreases just as the man in the back determines.

That's like sitting down to a poker game where the winning player uses a marked deck and hides aces up his sleeves.

Nevada law prohibits the fella in black in the back room from changing the odds on a machine until it has been idle for four minutes, which is a good thing for if a gambler was cleaning out the joint and the proprietor, looking over his shoulder, saw that there were no badges walking about, he might be tempted to mouse the gambler's profits.

Gambling the slots has come a long way from the days when a feller plunked his quarter into the machine, pulled the lever, and watched the spinning cylinder.

The gambling parlors have done away with spinning cylinders which are now computer-generated facsimiles. And the sound of plunking quarters? Have been replaced by debit slips. Sure does remove the fun of watching those buckets fill with coins when the machines paid off.

Casino technology is progress, I guess, but for myself, I'll stick with enjoying the buffets.
Casino Technology © 2006 Chaeli Lee Sullivan