Thinking of visiting Las Vegas to Play Slots?

By Ellen Shepard - 2007-03-01 - Article viewed 41 times. Find more articles like this in our Accessible Games category.

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Did you know some 43,000,000 Americans have one or more physical or mental disabilities and this number is increasing as the population is growing older. That means that one in every 5.8 Americans had at least one disability. Nevada has over 10,000 severely disabled in wheelchairs and 55,000 residents have been issued permanent handicapped parking rights. With today's Las Vegas population, it means that approximately 81,000 residents are disabled and out of the 36 million people that visited Las Vegas this year, 2.8 million were disabled!

Las Vegas casinos treated the disabled as first class citizens even before the ADA told them they had to. Kerkorian built the Las Vegas Hilton and the MGM (Now Bally's) with ramps to accommodate wheelchairs. Wheelchairs were also kept on hand, and were easily signed out, for the use of hotel and casino guests. Security personnel were available to push ill or injured guests from one location to another.

Of course, today, all of the new casinos and hotels are fully compliant with ADA when they open for business. So, too, are all of the new restaurants, stores and office buildings, supermarkets have electric carts that will be loaned to the wheelchair bound or seniors that have difficulty walking and parking spots for the disabled are all over the valley. Las Vegas is very good accessibility wise for the disabled visitor.

For many elderly and even not so elderly people playing slots is still the most enjoyable and relaxing form of gambling. With this in mind we have compiled some interesting slot machine facts and fiction

The slot machine was invented in 1895 by Charles Fey of San Francisco California.

The first slot machine was called Liberty Bell. Three bells in a row produced the biggest payout to the grand sum of ten nickels, but slots did not become popular until Bugsy Siegel installed them in his Flamingo Hilton hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada resulted in an overnight success and a thriving gaming device industry.

Slot machines are known in the UK as fruit machines, in Australia as poker machines (pokies) and in the USA as slot machines. Slot machines are commonly found in pubs, clubs, arcades and of course, casinos.

Slot machines owe a lot of their popularity to the fact that they can be played at the player's own pace with no skill required. They have evolved over the years from simple three reel machines with each reel containing 20 symbols to the random number generated machines in today's casinos with each reel sometimes containing hundreds of symbols.

Today these so called 'one-armed bandits' can be found in casinos around the world in hundreds of different models and coin denominations to suit every player including mechanical reels, electro-mechanical video and the new touch screen styles. With just a touch on the screen you can change from poker games to slots, from three to nine reels or other games such as 21 (Blackjack), Keno, Videopoker or Poker Bingo.

The object of the game is to win money from the machine. The game usually involves matching symbols, either on mechanical reels which spin and stop to reveal one or several symbols, or on a video screen. Casinos offer slot machines with denominations from $.01 or penny slots, all the way up to $100.

Slot machines have a wide variety of winning combinations of symbols. If a player matches a certain combination the slot machine "pays out" either in cash or as extra games. Becoming popular now are 9 line slots with a bonus round and scattered symbols (scatters). Most accept variable amounts of credit to play with. The higher the amount bet, the higher the payout will be.

Most slot machines are programmed to payout between 80 and 99 percent of coins played into them (This includes jackpot payoffs). Although several machines may be located beside each other and look exactly the same, they could each be programmed to payout an entirely different percentage rate.

Remember - Slot players don't lose because they never win, they lose because they don't quit when they're ahead.

To read more slot myths and to find some great tips for playing slot machines visit Slot Tips and Myths

You may also be interested in meeting new friends by playing online bingo with chat Free Online Bingo

Another article of interest on online gambling is available at
Online Casinos - Accessible to the Elderly and Disabled