Windsor chips used in Detroit

The tokens are not supposed to fit. But some MGM slot machines do accept them.

That means a sizable advantage for someone who plays an MGM Grand machine with a token purchased in Windsor. At the current exchange rate, using a Canadian dollar token in a machine that costs one U.S. dollar to play saves about 32 cents per bet.

Some MGM customers say they have received Windsor tokens in rolls or in payouts from slot machines.

The problem doesn't occur with chips in table games because dealers can easily spot foreign chips. But in slot machines, it's up to electronics inside to reject foreign tokens.

Not so, Michigan's top gaming official said. Machines are required to be marked with clear warnings that slot machines are only to be played with the coins appropriate to the casino. And if a player intentionally drops Windsor coins into MGM Detroit slots, it violates state law.

"If you're intentionally using coins that are not made for that casino, you're committing a fraud on that casino," said Nelson Westrin, executive director of the Michigan Gaming Control Board.

Token mixing happens at other casinos, including some American Indian casinos in Northern Michigan.

But they are dealing with tokens of equal value.

"It happens sometimes with our dollar tokens," said John Hatch, spokesperson for Kewadin Casinos in the Upper Peninsula. "We trade the ones we get from other Indian casinos back to them."

In Detroit, with only a bridge or a tunnel ride between the two casinos and a big difference in the value of the dollar, "it's a more sensitive problem than it is elsewhere," said Richard Currie, vice president of sales and marketing for Coin Mechanisms Inc. of Chicago.

Currie's firm makes the electronic mechanisms inside slot machines that accept or reject tokens, and supplied them to both Casino Windsor and the MGM Grand Detroit.

Tom Nelson, a deputy director for the Michigan Gaming Control Board, said the MGM Grand Detroit Casino is not allowed under state rules to pay customers for the value of a foreign token. Customers who get such tokens at the cashier window or in slot payouts are out of luck.

The face and color of the Windsor and MGM Grand quarter tokens are different, but they are the same size. The alloys they are made of are slightly different; the MGM tokens were made of alloys specified by the gaming board. But there is some overlap, Currie said.

Even sophisticated electronic systems that test the coin dropped into the machine against a sample coin don't work perfectly. They are designed to be within a window that will accept the correct coins and reject the wrong ones, but that can be adjusted by the casino. Sometimes, casinos make changes because the mechanism is so precise the machine won't accept valid tokens.

Asked why the MGM Grand casino sometimes gives Windsor tokens to casino customers in rolls of tokens, spokesperson Lisa Vallee-Smith had no comment.

09-22-99