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Game room's machines will test legal waters

Diamond Dust in Hernando County is installing 52 video slot machines the manufacturer says comply with state law.

By JONATHAN ABEL
Published October 15, 2006

BROOKSVILLE - Diamond Dust game room, which has been closed almost a year, is getting ready to reopen with brand new machines that it says meet Florida law.

The salmon-colored brick building, halfway between Brooksville and Spring Hill, could become the next battleground in the statewide conflict over the legality of video slot machines.

Last winter, authorities raided two game rooms in Hernando County and threatened to raid 11 more here and in Citrus if they didn't close. Hordes of seniors were forced to go elsewhere for entertainment.

But on Friday, a semitrailer from Minnesota pulled up to Diamond Dust, at 16090 Cortez Blvd., bearing 52 new machines, manufactured and leased by Spectre Gaming, a Minnesota company.

Spectre claims to be the only company whose machines comply with Florida Statutes, which outlaw slot machines.

The video machines in 200 or so game rooms across the state look a lot like slots - wheels spin, and if they line up you win - but game room advocates say they're more akin to arcade games that you might find at Chuck E. Cheese's.

Slots are illegal; amusement games are not.

Boiled down to its basics, the law says that coin-operated game machines are legal if they're games of skill and illegal if they're games of chance.

What constitutes skill or chance is a topic of fierce debate, but Spectre Gaming thinks it has tipped the balance toward skill with its new machines.

"What Spectre has done," explained Spectre consultant Frank Mirabella, who is also a lobbyist for the Florida Arcade Association, "is develop a technology that does not use any preset retention ratio. An experienced player will always do better than an inexperienced player."

This preset payout ratio was an important point for prosecutors who had argued that the machines were games of chance. If the machines' payout was predetermined, no matter the skill of the player, then how could skill be involved?

On Friday, Ocala prosecutor Mark Simpson said it would go "a long way toward making it a game of skill" if the games turned out not to have a preset payoff. But he was skeptical, he said, because if that were true, they wouldn't be profitable.

In the last few months, Spectre Gaming has met with some sheriff's offices and prosecutors around the state to demonstrate how its machines work. Both the Hernando Sheriff's Office and the 5th Circuit State Attorney's Office turned the company away, preferring to inspect the games only after local game rooms start using them.

It's not clear, however, when Diamond Dust will reopen.

Derell Johns, a general manager for Spectre Gaming who was installing the machines on Friday, said that everything would be ready to go in as little as 10 days.

But Lisa Brown, owner of Diamond Dust, said she didn't want to comment on her plans because things were still very much up in the air.

The recent history of game rooms on the North Suncoast has been tortured.

Two game rooms were closed down in a raid on Dec. 20. Five owners and operators were arrested on illegal gambling charges and later pleaded guilty to lesser offenses.

In May, the Spin City Club in Spring Hill reopened for two weeks until it got a letter from the State Attorney's Office warning that arrests would be imminent if it stayed open.

Since then, the game room owners have either quit the business or kept quiet.

Diamond Dust would be the first to reopen and does so at considerable risk.

Within 48 hours of opening, Simpson said, the game room would have a visit from an investigator, and, if found out of compliance, arrests would follow immediately.

The 52 machines, each valued at between $3,000 and $6,000, could be seized.

In August, 144 game machines confiscated in Hernando were crushed by an 80,000-pound front-end loader at the county landfill - an emphatic demonstration of law enforcement's opposition.

But Spectre Gaming hopes things will be different this time. The company installed its first machines in August in Sarasota and Palm Beach counties, according to Mirabella. Now, besides Hernando, Spectre is also installing machines at a Disabled American Veterans center in Bradenton.

The video slot parlors are particularly popular with the elderly as a cheap place to pass the time and meet other seniors.

But Simpson insists the game rooms are not senior centers. One Spring Hill game room he raided was raking in $12,000 to $17,000 a day, he said.

The game room owners are so persistent, according to Simpson, because of all the money at stake.

"There's no other business that promises the kind of return these people can make on their investment," he said. "These aren't philanthropists, believe me. They try to hide behind the elderly and make it sound like they're all do-gooders. They could care less."

Jonathan Abel can be reached at jabel@sptimes.com or 352 754-6114.

[Last modified October 14, 2006, 21:39:03]