No dice for ‘risk-free’ gaming machines in Kentucky, advises AG Coleman

Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman (Kentucky Lantern photo by Mathew Mueller)

The manufacturer of a so-called “risk-free” gaming machine is hitting the pause button in Kentucky after Attorney General Russell Coleman said the machines are illegal under a ban passed by lawmakers last year.

Bob Heleringer, an attorney for Prominent Technologies, told the Lantern the company strongly disagrees with Coleman’s advisory but is directing businesses with the “risk free” machines to turn them off while a legal challenge to the ban continues.

The slot-style gaming devices  — dubbed “gray machines” because of their murky legal status — were found in many bars and gas stations around the state; the legislature outlawed them in 2023 in a bill signed by Gov. Andy Beshear.

Opponents argue the machines are illegal gambling, while proponents refer to the machines as “skill games.”

Louisville Public Media reported earlier this year that manufacturer Prominent Technologies said their machines had been changed to become “no risk” games that comply with the ban. The machines tell the user whether their next game will win money or lose money, which the company argues removes the risk from using the machines.

But Coleman in an advisory released Tuesday wrote such games are illegal because the user still will not know the outcome of future games beyond the next one. “Thus, the game lures the player into continuing to play on the chance that the next game play will result in a win worth more than he will have to pay for the current play,” Coleman wrote. “This hope that the subsequent game play will be a winner is the ‘element of chance’ that makes these so-called ‘Risk-Free Plays’ games illegal gambling devices. There is no safe harbor in Kentucky’s gambling laws for this kind of game.”

Coleman in his advisory wrote that with a Franklin Circuit Court ruling upholding the “gray machines” ban, local prosecutors are “free to investigate and prosecute any violations of the Commonwealth’s gambling laws, including the laws related to ‘gray machines.’” That ruling is being appealed by plaintiffs including the company Pace-O-Matic, a competitor to Prominent Technologies.

Heleringer, the lawyer for Prominent Technologies, said the company notified Coleman’s office in January that it was installing “risk free” games and attorneys for the company met with staff from Coleman’s office in August. He said that despite the two sides’ disagreement, the company would resolve matters in the “legal arena.”

Heleringer derided Coleman’s use in the advisory of a court decision from 1918, in which Coleman compared the “risk free” game machines to slot-style machines that offered users “redeemable chips.”

“No one is lured into anything,” Heleringer said. “If they make a conscious decision as an adult to play a game and that game tells them the next play is not a winning game, not a winning move, they can elect at that point to get their money back.”