40 Percent of California Slots Not Approved - 04-14-08

April 14 - Out of the five hundred California slots at Indian casinos across the state that were examined last year, officials report that they found problems with over 40% of them, leading to serious questions being posed about these machines.

Following the state's first-ever inspection of California slots, it was revealed in the report that at the seven casinos examined, it was found that the software at many of these machines were so obsolete that inspectors simply could not authorize them to operate.

According to the report, some of the software was so outdated that some machines still had not heeded the software companies' updates from four years back. This led to a number of problems, some of them serious enough to distribute incorrect financial information to the central slot control accounting system or to miscalculate progressive slot calculations. In most of these cases, the player came out on the losing end.

Tribal representatives are arguing that the problem is not as bad as the report makes out, and certainly counter claims of the severity of the software shortcomings. An attorney representing some of the Indian casinos in California state, Howard Dickstein said: "It's like having Windows '03 or Windows '07. There is nothing wrong with the software and, by definition, the differences between the old and new software don't involve game integrity, don't involve any critical issues."

Indeed, the state has not required that the casinos remove any of the obsolete software. Howard Ross, deputy director of the state gambling commission's compliance division said: "The manufacturer hasn't said that the software's been revoked. They're just warning them of the problem... The manufacturer is no longer putting that software out, however. It's a gray zone."