Pachinko: the Game of Luck

You Leave Richer or Poorer....

Pachinko (パチンコ) are the quintessential Japanese slot machines. A pachinko are machines with small marble-like balls that you have to throw and which then cascade down through a dense forest of pins, depending on where they land you receive money or not. On most playing modes, the only thing you can control is the speed at which you throw the balls, so it’s quite a “stupid” game.

Gambling in Japan is generally banned by the Criminal Code chapter 23,however there are several exceptions, including betting on horse racing and certain motor sports. Pachinko is officially not considered gambling because Japanese laws regard pachinko as an exception to the criminal code on gambling for historical, monetary, and cultural reasons. 

Japan is full of pachinko arcades where Japanese people have tons of fun gambling. Those arcades are usually crowded, the noise of the falling balls is deafening, and they blast the music up to encourage people to keep playing. If you ever want to experience pachinko, the first thing to do it is buying balls at the entrance and then proceeding to sit down at the machine you like best. If you’re lucky, you might leave richer than you came in. Legend has it that professionals devote themselves to study the probability of winning with each machine at a certain arcade; but then it is said that the parameters of every machine are changed from time to time so people can’t cheat…