There will be strange political bedfellows and breakups. So get the humor while you can, because there will be plenty of non-funny, long, rambling discussions about this.

The horse people showed them a really good model: Shower your legislators with attention and donations and they will make your slot machines legal, too. (The reasons he thinks they are legal, like the reasons Damon Thayer thought HHR machines were legal are complicated and have to so with constitutional definitions of games of chance versus games of skill.)Īnyway, folks like Damon Thayer and his allies showed how easy it is to make some formerly illegal slot machines legal and now the gray machine advocates want a shot. He thinks the gray machines are illegal, but state FOP president says they are legal. It’s confusing enough, particularly with people like Senate Floor Leader and former racing industry insider Damon Thayer who said all along that historical racing machines were legal before they were actually made legal with the help of Damon Thayer. Other people, mostly from the Fraternal Order of Police, which benefits from these new machines, say they’re perfectly legal. They’re also cutting into Kentucky Lottery proceeds, which help fund college scholarships.

That’s mostly because they don’t benefit the racing industry. Now it seems we have something new called “gray slot machines” that are very definitely illegal, say the legislators who supported the illegal slot machines known as historical horse racing before they defined them as legal. After numerous court battles, these slot machines, called “historical horse racing” were illegal until last year when a push by the horse racing industry led the General Assembly to define them as legal. We have slot machines that are not slot machines but look exactly like slot machines. There is betting on horse racing, which is legal, and betting on basketball games, which is not. When it comes to gambling in Kentucky, there are so many shades of gray, it’s hard to keep them apart.

Illegal ways to beat slot machine