Class 2 And Class 3 Slot Machines
Players sometimes believe that winning on a Class II slot machine is easier than winning on a Class III machine. Class II machines are similar to Class III machines, each machine has a pull handle or touch screens and are relatively the same size. In addition, since slot machines by description are devices with coin slots and hoppers in which winning coins are dropped—and to be Class II, a bingo game could not share the characteristics of a slot machine, which was classified as a Class III device—tribes developed cashless systems and sold those to the public as better than the coin. Strategy #2- Difference between class II and class III slot machines. One of the hidden secrets in the gaming industry is the use of class II slot machines instead of class III machines. Class III slot machines are known as “Vegas-style” slot machines. They’re the machines that most people think of when they think of a slot machine.
- Class 2 And Class 3 Slot Machines Vs
- Class 2 And Class 3 Slot Machines Walmart
- Class 2 And Class 3 Slot Machines Reviews
Introduction to Oregon Slot Machine Casino Gambling in 2020
Oregon slot machine casino gambling consists of nine tribal casinos and many bars, taverns and pari-mutuel wagering sites with video lottery terminal (VLT) style slot machines.
There is a theoretical payout limit for non-tribal VLTs but none for video slot machines at the 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 Oregon*
The minimum legal gambling age in Oregon depends upon the gambling activity:
- Land-Based Casinos: 21
- Poker Rooms: 18
- Bingo: 18
- Lottery: 18
- Pari-Mutuel Wagering: 18
Oregon state law says bars and taverns can have up to six VLT-style slot machines, along with a restriction on how close together these businesses may be relative to one another.
Pari-mutuel wagering sites may have up to ten VLT-style slot machines.
At non-tribal locations, the maximum bet is $2.50 while the maximum jackpot is $600.
*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 Oregon
It is legal to own a slot machine privately in the state of Oregon if it is 25 years old or older.
Gaming Control Board in Oregon
The Oregon Lottery regulates VLT-style gaming machines at non-tribal retailers. The Lottery’s 1992 video poker lottery terminal network was the first centrally controlled gaming system in the U.S. In 2005, the VLT network added Class III Vegas-style line games for slots.
Eight out of Oregon’s nine federally-recognized American Indian tribes have negotiated tribal-state gaming compacts. Regulation of tribal gaming in Oregon is by the Oregon State Police and the Tribal Gaming Commissions of each individual tribe.
The Oregon Tribal Gaming Alliance (OTGA) is a coalition of these tribes which own and operate casinos in Oregon. In 2015, tribal gaming accounted for less than 32% of all gaming conducted in Oregon. Nearly two-thirds of gaming takes place at 2,550 commercial sites.
Casinos in Oregon
There are nine American Indian tribal casinos in Oregon.
The largest casino in Oregon is Spirit Mountain Casino with 2,000 gaming machines.
The second-largest casino is Wildhorse Resort & Casino with 1,200 gaming machines.
Commercial Casinos in Oregon
Statewide, Oregon has 2,550 retailers operated by the Oregon Lottery.
Tribal Casinos in Oregon
The nine tribal casinos in Oregon are:
- Chinook Winds Casino Resort in Lincoln City, 89 miles southwest of Portland on Route 101 along the Pacific Coast.
- Indian Head Casino in Warm Springs, 104 miles southeast of Portland.
- Kla-Mo-Ya Casino in Chiloquin, 105 miles southeast of Portland.
- Seven Feathers Casino Resort in Canyonville, 202 miles south of Portland.
- Spirit Mountain Casino in Grand Ronde, 64 miles southwest of Portland.
- The Mill Casino Hotel & RV Park in North Bend, 220 miles south-southwest of Portland on Route 101 near the Pacific Coast.
- Three Rivers Casino Resort Florence, 170 miles southwest of Portland near Route 101 on the Pacific Coast.
- Three Rivers Casino Resort Coos Bay, 223 miles southwest of Portland near Route 101 on the Pacific Coast.
- Wildhorse Resort & Casino in Pendleton, 215 miles east of Portland.
Other Gambling Establishments
As an alternative to enjoying Oregon slot machine casino gambling, consider exploring casino options in a nearby state. Bordering Oregon is:
- North: Washington Slots
- East: Idaho Slots
- South: California Slots and Nevada Slots
- West: The Pacific Ocean
Each of the links above will take you to my blog for that neighboring U.S. state to Oregon.
Our Oregon Slots Facebook Group
Are you interested in sharing and learning with other slots enthusiasts in Oregon? If so, join our new Oregon 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 Oregon. Join us!
Payout Returns in Oregon
For Oregon’s tribal casinos, no payout limits have been set nor are actual return statistics publicly available.
For non-tribal sites controlled by the Oregon Lottery, theoretical payout limits are available within the game’s menu for each individual VLT-style gaming machine.
A payout range is due to potential bonus rounds or other game features. The maximum theoretical payout is 96%. Extended play games may exceed this maximum.
These payout percentages by game theme are also online at the Oregon Lottery. For example:
- Five Times Pay Line Game has a payout percentage of 91.99%
- Dragon Fire Keno has a payout percentage range of 91.84% to 92.42%
Summary of Oregon Slot Machine Casino Gambling in 2020
Oregon slot machine casino gambling consists of nine tribal casinos and 2,550 commercial sites including pari-mutuel wagering facilities. Retailers can have six gaming machines while racetrack betting sites can have ten machines.
There is no theoretical payout limit for video slot machines at Oregon’s tribal casinos, nor are return statistics publicly available. However, non-tribal VLTs each show their theoretical payout limit within the game theme menu as well as online at the Oregon Lottery. The maximum theoretical limit for these non-tribal VLTs is 96%.
Annual Progress in Oregon Slot Machine Casino Gambling
In the last year, there has been little to no change in the Oregon slots gaming industry.
Related Articles from Professor Slots
Other State-By-State Articles from Professor Slots
- Previous: Oklahoma Slot Machine Casino Gambling
- Next: Pennsylvania 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:
- Class I games
- Class II games
- 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.

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.
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.
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
Class 2 And Class 3 Slot Machines Vs
How do class II slot machines work?
Class 2 And Class 3 Slot Machines Walmart
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.
Class 2 And Class 3 Slot Machines Reviews
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.