These Empire City stats were based on 25-cent machines. That’s the same rate as Atlantic City’s Borgata, minutely better than the Connecticut casinos at 91.59 percent and the Vegas Strip casinos at 91.52 percent, but not as good as the downtown Vegas sites at 94.85 percent. The latest reports show that Empire City’s VLTs paid out 91.76 percent of what they took in.
The VLTs hold up comparatively well against the slot machines in other casinos. Probably more important to the gamblers are the odds of winning. The results look like a Vegas slot machine, but, in essence, it’s the same process as furtively scratching a lottery ticket outside of a convenience store. Instead, the main computer generates a number combination exactly like a lottery scratch-off ticket and “scratches” the results off while bells, bars, cherries, and whistles spin in front of the gambler. The VLTs are networked into the New York State Lottery mainframe in Schenectady, and they don’t run off a random number generator, per se.
