Oaklawn Park and Southland Park Get Slot Machines 

The state racing commission has announced that they have new rules when it comes to “electronic games of skill”, otherwise known as slot machines. They are allowing two pari-mutuel tracks – Oaklawn Park and Southland Park Greyhound Racetrack – to operate slot machines on their premises. They can each of up to 1,000 slot machines under Act 1151 of 2005. 

Some say that by calling them games of skill, they are just fooling themselves into thinking that they haven’t just allowed gambling to come into the parks. They say that they are slot machines no matter what you call them. Proponents disagree; they say that the games of skill are a completely different game. With slot machines you put your money in and play a game of chance – you hope that you will win, but you have no way of changing the outcome so that you do win. With games of chance, you can actually change the way that the game ends up. If you play the game a lot, you can get better at it, and thus change the outcome – which means it is not a game of chance – therefore, not a slot machine. 

The committee is also planning on checking out some of the other games that are already located at Southland Park – games reportedly also games of chance, but there have been complaints that they are slot machines as well. They need to investigate the machines to see if they fall under the correct heading, and if they don’t they will have to remove the games Oaklawn has submitted a proposal to add similar slot machine type games, but until the committee has reviewed the ones at Southland, they probably will not be getting approval.

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