Times have changed. The interests of cost-conscious resorts and customers opting for convenience appear to have joined in a neat fit any craftsman would admire. The result is that coinless slots were almost nowhere a few months ago but may be pretty much everywhere by year's end. The current wave of coinless slots premiered at Bally's Las Vegas as the resort converted about a hundred of its nearly 2,000 machines to dispense tickets which can then be either cashed or played in another machine. Under the best of conditions, casinos get what they want - which is less time spent handling coins and filling empty coin hoppers.
Customers get the convenience they want.
Assuming the tests work well at Bally's, you can expect to see the same games taking their places on casino floors at Caesars Palace, Paris and the Flamingo. The new Suncoast in the northwest Las Vegas area jumped into the coinless business in a big way with about 90 percent of its slots and video pokers dispensing tickets for payouts in excess of about a hundred coins. Casino operators are understandably shy about moving too far, too quickly, in a market as competitive as Las Vegas. Dissatisfied customers will simply walk next door or across the street to a casino that gives them exactly what they want. There's a feeling among some casino industry veterans that handling handfuls of coins and toting buckets of coins around a casino may be a habit that gamblers will not quickly abandon.