You don't need buckets of coins to play these slot machines

Ahh, the melodious sound of coins pouring from a slot machine. A sound that tells casino visitors they have arrived. A sound that has come to represent America's love affair with gambling. A sound that is . . . disappearing?


That's right. Slot machines are going coinless.


When the much-anticipated Borgata casino opens in June in Atlantic City, it won't have a single machine that dispenses coins -- a first for the gambling mecca. Instead, it'll offer a new generation of machines that spit out vouchers instead of coins.


It's not alone. Over the past two years, coinless slot machines have begun popping up from the Las Vegas Strip to Mississippi.


''It's proving very popular among our guests,'' says Yvette Monet, a spokeswoman for MGM Mirage, which began rolling out 18,000 of the machines in October.


Among the MGM Mirage casinos getting coinless slots this year are the MGM Grand, the Mirage, Bellagio and Treasure Island -- all on the Las Vegas Strip. Rival Park Place Entertainment, which owns Las Vegas' Caesars Palace, Bally's and Paris, also is adding the machines, with 15,000 scheduled for installation by the end of 2004.


The idea of coinless slot machines has been around for a while. In 1993, the MGM Grand experimented with an early version of the devices. But they were quickly pulled. ''Customers clearly were not ready for them,'' Monet says.


Casino owners, however, didn't give up. New and improved versions of MGM's machine surfaced in Las Vegas about three years ago at small casinos catering to locals. Some even were programmed to make the sound of coins hitting the tray when players hit the jackpot -- just the ticket to lure wary gamblers. Soon they were winning enough fans that the big casinos decided to jump on board, says Anthony Curtis, publisher of Las Vegas Advisor newsletter.


Purists may snicker, but Curtis says the machines have advantages. ''You don't have to deal with dirty coins, scooping them from trays or lugging them around from machine to machine,'' he notes. ''You also don't have those session interruptions for a hopper fill'' -- when a slot attendant fills up an empty machine with coins.


Not that those session interruptions are such a bad thing.


''Though customers like (the elimination of delays), it's not good for them,'' Curtis notes. Slots are what he calls a ''negative-expectation gambling proposition'' -- the more you play, the more you lose. ''Adding speed will cost them more money in the end.''


Indeed, the big winners from the new machines are (you guessed it) the casinos. In addition to speeding up play, the machines make the labor-intensive job of counting and wrapping coins unnecessary. (The machines will accept dollar bills or vouchers from another machine.)


And there's no longer a need to employ slot attendants to fill empty machines with coins.


The casinos even benefit from player forgetfulness. When players win on one of the new machines, they must take the voucher it spits out to a cashier to get cash. But some absent-minded patrons ''walk out and never cash their tickets,'' Curtis says. ''From the casino's point of view, it's a slam-dunk.''


Curtis expects the machines to sweep through the gambling world, though casinos probably will keep a few of the old machines around for purists, as they have with single-hand blackjack.


''It's unstoppable,'' he says, ''though it will take a few years before everyone goes this route.''






Gene Sloan USA TODAY