Casino Enterprise Management

Editor’s Note: This article is the first of a series on the Slot Machine Kings and why they wear their crowns.

Si Redd
“I swear on my mother’s grave, if this slot machine doesn’t earn more than what you’ve got sitting there today, I’ll give you all of your money back!” Si Redd reached out and put his hand on Warren Nelson’s shoulder, Warren looked over to me, and I looked back at Si in awe. This guy was the greatest salesman I had ever seen.

It was in the fall of 1985, and we had joined Warren for lunch at his casino in Reno, the Cal Neva, to talk about IGT’s new wide-area progressive concept called Megabucks. I was lucky enough to be managing the project for IGT. Nobody had ever done a wide-area progressive link before. Si had a way to look straight into your eyes with that boyish charm and make you think he was doing you a favor by letting you put some of his slot machines on your floor and on 60/40 participation. The deal was done.

Si Redd, of course, was the guy who led Bally to its dominance in the decade between 1967 and 1978 before he founded the most powerful slot machine company in the world, IGT. When I first met him in early 1984, he had just turned 72 years old but was just getting started. He used to call me “boy,” but then again, he called everybody “boy.” I was fortunate enough to work for Si not too long after IGT first went public. Back then, IGT was making about $50 million a year by dominating the Poker machine business. By the time he retired as chair of IGT in 1991, he had set IGT up to take off like a rocket ship. He loved slot machines. He loved people. Most of all, he loved to sell. In those early days he had a Beechcraft King Air that he loved to fly all over the country. The name on the side of the plane said it all: The Slot Machine King.

John Acres
I got involved in the gaming business right about the time that the total revenue from slot machines crossed over the 50 percent mark in Nevada, making them a bigger contributor to the top-line revenues than table games. It was no surprise that since slot machines were winning more, they were getting more attention from the casinos — and consequently, more of their annual budgets. With this growing demand came more competition and more innovation. Progressives, signage, more colorful glass graphics and slot branding (like Megabucks, which was the first real consumer slot brand) were pushing slots into the center of the casino floor. Slot machines were quickly shedding their old image of being the dark, drab distractions for wives while their husbands were at the tables. Slots had now become the main attraction, and the driving force behind these innovations was John Acres.

I sold my first slot machine in 1984 to Jerry’s Nugget. It was on a progressive bank, so I guess you could say that I owe that first success to John. When I got to Las Vegas that summer, IGT’s offices were just off Industrial and they shared the building with Electronic Data Technology (EDT). John Acres had started EDT in 1981 to make modern progressive displays and controllers, a brand-new innovation to the industry. John had already sold EDT to IGT by the time I got there, but he had started something to which I owe more than that first sale. Progressives were proving to increase slot revenues by 20 to 50 percent on just about everything to which you attached them. But John was just scratching the surface with progressives. All roads from progressives to slot bonusing to player tracking systems start with John Acres. I think it was 1983 when John installed the first automated player tracking system at Harrah’s in Atlantic City. “The Captain’s Circle” wasn’t exactly a success at first, but it paved the way for the entire industry to be transformed. At the end of 1985, there were only a few player tracking systems up and running. The casinos, at the time, didn’t believe that players wanted to be tracked, much less rewarded, for their slot play. With the opening of Michael Gaughan’s Gold Coast in December 1986, the first property to have 100 percent of its machines connected to an online player tracking system, the slot world changed. John Acres has never stopped pushing the envelope, founding Mikohn, Acres Gaming and, most recently, Acres-Fiore. John is one of the most innovative and creative people I know and, undoubtedly, one of the best sales people (although he’d probably deny the latter). John Acres is a Slot Machine King.

Mac Seelig
In Atlantic City there’s only one king: Mac Seelig. Mac has clearly sold more slot machines in New Jersey than all others combined. He became the IGT distributor for Atlantic City and the Caribbean in 1983, but since that time he has extended his reach across the country. The first time I met him, I thought my hand had been captured by some kind of bionic device. I know that Mac has mellowed over the last 25 years, but back then he came at you like a freight train. One of my first jobs at IGT was to sort through these massive orders that AC Coin & Slot was putting through the system for the Trump Plaza opening. IGT had never seen orders of this magnitude. Mac had somehow convinced the state to mandate that no manufacturer could have more than 50 percent of the floor. It was a brilliant move and a turning point for IGT.

When the “Mac Attack” hit you, it could take your breath away. Mac held a black belt in karate, and his approach to selling slot machines and customer service used the exact same tactics. It was Mac who pushed IGT into coming out with their first solid-state spinning reel game, the M-Slot. Believe me, Mac would push hard until you got it right.

When IGT came out with the M-Slot, it struggled. We were having so many software issues with it that Mac got Peter Dickinson, then IGT vice president of engineering, to fly out and meet him in his office to personally go over the problems. In classic Mac Seelig style, he asked Peter to give him a $20 bill. Not exactly knowing what Mac had in mind, Peter reluctantly reached into his wallet and handed Mac the 20 bucks. Mac took the bill and immediately stuck it into a paper shredder next to his desk. “That’s what you are doing to my customers with this machine,” Mac snapped. “Fix it!” Mac always took care of his customers. He still does. That’s what makes him one of the Kings.

James Maida
You could make the argument that New Jersey’s success and strong regulatory environment helped legitimize gaming. It also created a fertile environment for the riverboat gaming wave that began in the early 1990s, when Iowa, Illinois, Mississippi, Louisiana, Missouri and Indiana all came online within a few years of one another. There is no question that James Maida and Gaming Laboratories International (GLI) provided the technical integrity and regulatory guidance that was crucial in giving these new states the credibility they needed to progress as quickly as they did. GLI was founded in 1989 by James Maida and Paul Magno. To carry the moniker of King, in my definition, you really have to come up with great games and be able to sell the machines. James indirectly sold more than anybody just by setting such high standards for the industry and by making sure the machines were always secure and reliable.

Randy Adams
Before everybody wanted to be Ernie Moody (who is the undisputed Poker Machine King), everybody wanted to be Randy Adams. Although Randy is probably best known for The Wheel of Gold and the “Wheel” patent, Randy probably sold and placed more slot machines than any single salesman in his day. A student of Si Redd, Randy picked up where Si left off. He sold for IGT; he worked with John Acres at EDT to sell the progressives, ticket printers and player tracking systems; and he and Gary Harris (another all-time slot great) turned Universal, with its new stepper product, into an overnight success, knocking out Bally and almost upsetting IGT. After Universal, Randy set his sights on developing the first “top-box games” with Anchor Gaming. These types of games have become the signature of almost every participation game on the floor today.

Randy could always find a creative way to make the deal work. When he first started to place The Wheel of Gold games, the casinos were pushing back on any revenue-share games. (It’s funny how things change but never really change.) Randy came up with a way to structure the fee on a per-spin basis. Working with guys like Bob Campbell, who was then at the Excalibur, he conceived something like a $2.50 charge for every time the bonus event occurred. It sounded great to the operators in theory. Well, it turned out that this was happening every 85 handle pulls — 50 times or more a day in some stores. Brilliant!

I got to work with Randy many times through the years, but the most memorable was when I was with IGT and he was with Anchor. We had been carefully watching the great success that The Wheel of Gold was enjoying in the marketplace. At that time, the Wheel of Fortune game was only on a video slot and wasn’t doing extremely well. The game was too focused on the puzzle aspect and not enough on the wheel. In fact, we couldn’t even display the entire wheel on the screen because the horsepower of the video slot wasn’t yet able to support it. Combining the wheel with such an incredible name created the most popular slot machine game in history. This one definitely puts Randy in the Slot Hall of Fame.

Long Live the Kings
This piece is by no means a definitive list of the Slot Machine Kings. It is only a reminiscing of some of the great talents with whom I have had the pleasure to work. Although I am known for taking over piano bars in various parts of the world to play a song called “The Slot Machine King,” the musical rhyme is just my way of showing respect for these guys. We owe our livelihood to the Slot Machine Kings.

There are so many talented people in our business that helped to bring us the next great idea as well as those eminent sales people who get the games on the floors. I can’t begin to name them all. I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the great Bob Luciano, who has been behind so many of the technical innovations in our industry. And Ben Maze, who taught us all about the power of signage and marketing our products. Other great talents, like Bob Bittman, Joe Kaminkow, Mike Mitchell, Larry Pacey, Jason Stage, Jean Venneman and so many other distinguished game developers, who have proven themselves in the creative fire and are the lifeblood of our industry. Si Redd used to have an aphorism framed on his wall that said it all for me: “There is no shortage of good ideas, only a shortage of those who can bring those ideas to fruition.” Long live the Kings.

Author’s Note: If you have a candidate for the Slot Machine Kings, e-mail me the information and a brief story about the person, and I’ll keep it close at hand for the next edition.

Mick Roemer is the President of Roemer Gaming, a product development and consulting company. He can be reached at mroemer@roemergaming.com or (702) 497-3355.