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  1. Founded in 1991, Video Gaming Technologies, Inc. (VGT) is a leading developer, manufacturer and distributor of Class II (Native American bingo-based gaming) casino games in North America. With over 20,000 terminals in more than 140 locations across the U.S., VGT offers exceptional customer service and some of the highest ‘uptimes’ in the industry.
  2. When we play the slots, we have some incredibly lucky sessions and some incredibly unlucky ones too. On a larger scale, some people are consistently luckier than others. All results on a slot machine are random. So we see things like your dry spell of bonus rounds while others get them frequently.

A Class II slot machine does not generate its own results. They're connected to a 'system controller' which basically does a bingo drawing every time a slot player spins the reels and then feeds the results to the slot machine. Obviously it's not a standard bingo game that draws numbered letters like 'B1' and 'O71'.

Introduction to Texas Slot Machine Casino Gambling in 2020

Texas slot machine casino gambling consists of two American Indian tribal casinos with Class II competition-style or bingo-style electronic gaming machines. Carnival cruise ships offer onboard casinos when traveling to international destinations.

Texas does not have theoretical payout limits at its tribal casinos. No return statistics are publicly available.

This post continues my weekly State-By-State Slot Machine Casino Gambling Series, an online resource dedicated to guiding slot machine casino gambler to success. Now in its third year, each weekly post reviews slots gambling in a single U.S. state, territory, or federal district.

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Relevant Legal Statutes on Gambling in Texas*

The minimum legal gambling age in Texas depends upon the gambling activity:

  • Land-Based Casinos: 21
  • Poker Rooms: 21
  • Bingo: 21 in casinos, 18 in churches, and less than 18 with an adult
  • Lottery: 18
  • Pari-Mutuel Wagering: 18

The Texas government and the state’s three federally-recognized tribes have, so far, been unable to negotiate tribal-state compacts. Without these gaming compacts, Texas prohibits tribal casinos from having Class III Vegas-style electronic gaming machines.

However, Texas tribal casinos can offer Class II bingo-style machines. Although these machines appear as traditional slot machines, they are not Class III machines. Players compete for prizes against other players throughout a casino’s gaming floor.

There have been substantial lawsuits by the Texas government to shut down tribal casinos offering Class II gaming, with some successes. Various court filings and rulings regarding the legality of tribal casinos in Texas have continued since the late 1980s.

Texas challenges the legality of the federal Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988 based on the argument that the federal Restoration Act of 1987 takes legal precedence. This somewhat earlier Restoration Act gave federal recognition to the Tigua and Alabama-Coushatta tribes while also explicitly forbidding gambling.

None of the pari-mutual racetracks in Texas offer electronic gaming machines.

*The purpose of this section is to inform the public of state gambling laws and how the laws might apply to various forms of gaming. It is not legal advice.

Slot Machine Private Ownership in Texas

It is legal to own a slot machine privately in the state of Texas without restriction on its date of manufacture.

Gaming Control Board in Texas

Texas does not have a state gaming commission as it prohibits non-tribal casinos. No tribal-state gaming compact exists. However, the Texas Lottery Commission exists and operates the Texas Lottery.

Machine

Casinos in Texas

There are two American Indian tribal casinos in Texas as well as up to five international cruise ships with onboard casinos.

The largest casino in Texas is Kickapoo Lucky Eagle Casino Hotel with 3,300 gaming machines.

The second-largest casino is Naskila Gaming with 365 gaming machines.

Commercial Casinos in Texas

The commercial casinos available in Texas are up to five cruise ships. Onboard casinos are only open while in international waters.

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Carnival Cruise Lines operates these cruise ships sailing out of the Port of Galveston.

Tribal Casinos in Texas

The two tribal casinos in Texas are:

  • Kickapoo Lucky Eagle Casino Hotel in Eagle Pass located 143 miles southwest from San Antonio.
  • Naskila Gaming in Livingston located 74 miles north-northeast from Houston.

Other Gambling Establishments

As an alternative to enjoying Texas slot machine casino gambling, consider exploring casino options in a nearby state. Bordering Texas is:

  • North: Oklahoma Slots
  • East, Arkansas Slots, Louisiana Slots, and the Gulf of Mexico
  • South: The country of Mexico
  • North and West: New Mexico Slots

Each of the links above will take you to my blog for that neighboring U.S. state to Texas.

Our Texas Slots Facebook Group

Are you interested in sharing and learning with other slots enthusiasts in Texas? If so, join our Texas slots community on Facebook. All you’ll need is a Facebook profile to join this closed Facebook Group freely.

There, you’ll be able to privately share your slots experiences as well as chat with players about slots gambling in Texas. Join us!

Payout Returns in Texas

Texas has no theoretical payout limits established as the state prohibits slot machines. Further, no return statistics are available.

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Summary of Texas Slot Machine Casino Gambling in 2020

Texas slot machine casino gambling consists of two American Indian tribal casinos offering bingo-style video gaming machines. The Port of Galveston offers Carnival cruise ships with onboard casinos open while sailing in international waters.

Neither theoretical payouts nor return statistics exist as Texas prohibits land-based casinos with Vegas-style slot machines.

Annual Progress in Texas Slot Machine Casino Gambling

In the last year, there has been little to no change in the slots gaming industry in Texas.

Related Articles from Professor Slots

Other State-By-State Articles from Professor Slots

  • Previous: Tennessee Slot Machine Casino Gambling
  • Next: U.S. Virgin Islands Slot Machine Casino Gambling

Have fun, be safe, and make good choices!
By Jon H. Friedl, Jr. Ph.D., President
Jon Friedl, LLC

Many gambling enthusiasts in the United States are at least vaguely familiar with the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, US law Pub.L. 100–497, 25 U.S.C. § 2701.

Passed in 1988, this federal law established how Indian (Native American) gaming would be managed and regulated. The act included definitions for 3 types or classes of gambling games. They are usually referred to as:

  1. Class I games
  2. Class II games
  3. Class III games

Congress passed the law to help Native American tribes and nations improve their economic status after more than a century of oppression and exclusion in mainstream US society. Many Native American groups wanted to build land-based casinos, which would not only attract tourists but create jobs.

There was considerable resistance to this movement in many states, most of which did not allow gambling of any kind. To help resolve the conflicts and provide some clarity between treaties, state law, and federal law, the US government established a framework that eliminated some barriers to Native American investment in gambling industries. The law also provided some regulatory limits to respect state laws.

The Indian Gaming Regulatory Act introduced some confusion into the worldwide lexicon of gambling games because the distinctions are only observed within US jurisdictions. Other nations regulate gambling with different definitions.

But as the internet became a worldwide communications network in the 1990s and 2000s, most of the content published about gambling dealt with US law and casinos. Although non-US casinos have to observe their own laws and regulations, players who research gambling law on the internet must be careful to distinguish between USA gambling definitions and other gambling definitions.

What Are the 3 Classes of Gambling Games?

Class I gambling includes all traditional Native American gambling games, most of which are only used for ceremonial purposes or in the contexts of cultural-specific celebrations and ceremonies. These games, which are only available at small stakes, are completely regulated by the Native American tribes and nations.

Class II gambling includes all variations of bingo games, player-vs-player card games like poker (where the house does not play a hand in the game), tip jars, pull-tab games, punch card games, and anything similar. Some people mistakenly include lottery games in this category, but the law clearly excludes state-run lotteries and similar games from Class II.

Class III gambling consists of everything that is not included under Class I gambling or Class II gambling. That means the lottery games you play are Class III gambling games. Slot games, roulette, dice games, and card games like blackjack where the house is also a player all fall under the Class III gambling games category.

So How Can There Be Class II Slot Machine Games?

If you’ve ever visited a Native American casino–like the Winstar Casino in Oklahoma, you’ve almost certainly played some Class II slot machine games. They look much like traditional slot machine games. They have 3 to 5reels with symbols on them, they pay jackpots, and they do everything else you expect of a slot game.

And yet, they are not slot machine games.

A clever company in Franklin, TN, known as Video Gaming Technologies, or VGT, developed electronic bingo games for Native American casinos that use the results of those bingo games to emulate slot game action.

In other words, the slot machine cabinets contain two screens, one that displays the results of the bingo game and one that displays the results of the simulated slot game. This dual visualization of the gambling game takes advantage of the fact that at the core of all gambling games is a simple principle:

You’re making a wager on an unknown outcome. What the Class II slot games do is take the result of the bingo game to determine what happens in the slot game.

What’s cool about this approach is that VGT was able to add bonus games to the bingo games that work like slot machine bonus games. They’ve developed a huge selection of bingo games that play like slot games. VGT is so successful they were acquired by Aristocrat Leisure Limited in 2014, although the former VGT still operates as an independent subsidiary company of Aristocrat.

How Do Class III Slot Machine Games Work?

The key to the hybridization of bingo and slot machine games is the Random Number Generator. Mathematicians have been developing algorithms to calculate unpredictable numbers for hundreds of years. For a detailed look at the concept, read “How Do Random Number Generators Work?” on Jackpots Online. Although the RNG does not produce a truly random number, in typical circumstances the number is random enough. Even so, slot game designers use random numbers in multiple ways.

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Before I continue, I should mention that US law requires slot game designers to work by different rules from other countries’ slot games. In the United Kingdom, for example, the outcome of a slot game is determined by a single random number. In the United States, the outcome of the Class III slot game is determined by several random numbers.

To begin with, an electronic slot machine or online slot game uses a software concept called an array to represent each reel. Computer arrays work like rows of boxes, where each box holds one piece of information. The arrays for slot reels may have anywhere from 22 to 256 slots. Each slot in the array holds a symbol marker that tells the slot machine game what to display on the screen.

Slot game designers use special algorithms to decide how often each type of symbol should appear in each slot array. The frequency of the symbol’s use in the array and the size of the array determine how likely or unlikely it is for any single spin of the slot game reels to create one or more winning combinations. The game’s software may award prizes for one or more winning combinations at a time, depending on how many pay lines the game offers.

The random number generator produces a new number every few milliseconds. The number is placed in a temporary memory location called a register. The slot game software grabs the latest random number from the register and uses that to determine what happens next. For example, a 5 reel slot game needs 5 random numbers to pick how many slot positions will be spun on each reel before the reels stop in new locations. If the slot game awards random prizes like progressive jackpots, these are determined by additional random numbers.

How Class II Slot Machine Games Differ from Class III Slot Machine Games

What VGT did was create bingo game software that determines the actual prizes awarded to players.

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But to make the bingo games look like slot games, they used the bingo game’s random results as if they are the random numbers that Class III slot games use.

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To ensure that the slot game winning combinations match the bingo game prize values the VGT games work more like slot games in the United Kingdom. The game determines what prize was won and then creates a short video simulation of the slots landing on that winning combination.

Conclusion

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How do class II slot machines work?

Either way, the slot games award prizes on a random basis. You could say that US gaming laws are paranoid in that Class III slot game software is required to closely emulate the physical spinning of slot reels. In fact, physical slot reel games have been displaying results of these virtual, in-memory array games for more than 20 years. So even when you see physical reels spinning, their stop positions have already been determined within microseconds of your pressing SPIN.

The Class II slot gaming experience is a fun gaming experience.

But the bingo game is displayed on a small screen, because VGT’s designers have found that players don’t enjoy looking at bingo patterns as much as they enjoy looking at 3 to 5 reels spinning and stopping on various symbols.

For the player, what matters is that they’re gambling for real money on an unpredictable outcome–and they can enjoy an entertaining evening with friends or loved ones.