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Adding “Skill” to the Slots

It pretty much goes without saying that playing the slots is not a skill. Whether you play the slot games at online slot machine websites or Vegas-style land-based casinos, you have undoubtedly figured out that your own actions are of little consequence to the ultimate outcome of the reels. The introduction of random number generators (RNGs) has pretty much made it so that a trained monkey could activate the slots, and either win or lose on chance.

Sometimes, however, randomness is not a good thing. Some states and municipalities, concerned about the potential detriments of problem gambling on their population, have tried to wipe out slop machine play by mandating that all gambling involve some sort of skill. As it takes no skill at all to operate a standard slot machine (which operates completely on chance), these laws would phase out this form of gambling entirely… if not for the so-called skill stop.

A skill-stop button was first added to a slot machine by Zacharias Anthony some twenty years ago. The button gave slot players the opportunity to stop each reel of the slot game individually, introducing some degree of “skill” into the gambling. Anthony’s skill buttons were originally converted onto existing devices. Nowadays, however, some machines come already equipped with the buttons. Skill stop slots had their origin in New Jersey, the first state to require “skilled” gambling, and remain immensely popular in Atlantic City today. In fact, all Jersey slots without skill stops were destroyed in the late ‘70s when the popularity of the converted machines edged out the preceding models entirely.

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