Finland's Slot Machine Association
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Payazzo (or pajatso) is a traditional Finnishgamblingarcade game, dating back to the 1920s, when it was introduced into Finland from Germany. The object of payazzo is to flick a coin into one of the winning slots. When the attempt is successful, the machine rewards the player with a couple of coins. If the attempt is unsuccessful, the player loses the flicked coin.
A crucial part of the financial jigsaw is funding from Finland’s Slot Machine Association, which has supplied €50m to help purchase scattered housing developments. Furthermore, all affordable social housing in Finland is backed partly by government grant and partly by loans, capped at 1.7%, issued by the state-owned but independent Housing Finance and Development Centre. In Finland, increasing the supply of affordable rental housing was a critical part of the approach. Finland used its existing social housing, but also bought flats from the private market and built new housing blocks in order to provide homes.
Name[edit]
The game is called pajatso in Finnish. It is a Fennicized form of bajazzo, the name of the early German models. Bajazzo refers to an Italian-style clown (pagliaccio in Italian). Finland's Slot Machine Association (Finnish: Raha-automaattiyhdistys or RAY), the manufacturer of today's payazzo machines, uses payazzo in English for pajatso.
In Finland the game is often referred to informally as Jasso. The popularity of the nickname was proven as the manufacturer decided to use only the informal form in the names of some models of payazzo combining coin flicking with an electronic game of luck. These models are Hedelmäjazzo (Fruit Jazzo) from the early nineties and Komeetta Jasso (The Comet-Jasso), which is used today. The manufacturer also bought the Finnish domain www.jasso.fi to redirect traffic to their website.
Description of a payazzo machine[edit]
Physically, a payazzo machine looks like an arcade cabinet, but it is slightly wider than an ordinary video game arcade cabinet. The front panel of the machine is transparent to allow the player see the flight of the coin.
Behind the transparent front panel there is a vertical playing area that is less than a meter wide and approximately twenty centimeters high (for machines with a single row of winning slots). The thickness of the playing area is slightly more than the thickness of the coin. In the playing area, there are the winning slots, typically nine in modern models, in one row (two rows in some models). The row spans horizontally the entire length of the playing area, and it is slightly below the point where the coin enters the playing area.
A metal ring used to hit the coin is on the right side of the machine (rather than on the front panel) at the height of a typical user's chest. In traditional models, the slot for feeding coins into the machine is on the top of the machine.
In traditional models, also the supply of coins available for paying winnings is visible through the transparent front panel. This way the player can estimate whether there is enough money in the machine to pay potential winnings.
Description of the game[edit]
The player feeds a coin into the machine and flicks it by hitting a metal ring with a finger. The power of hitting controls the initial speed of the coin; determining the initial speed is the only way the player can control the movement of the coin. The initial flying direction of the coin is constant (to the left and slightly upwards).
The coin enters the playing area from the right side. It bounces off the edges of the playing area and gates, small obstacles next to the entries to the winning slots.
Eventually the coin either drops into one of the winning slots or it falls down between the slots. The positioning of the gates usually makes the latter possibility more likely. In the former case, the player gets a prize of a couple of coins, and in the latter case the player loses the flicked coin. The size of the prize for each winning slot is printed next to the winning slot, varying from two times the value of the flicked coin to ten or even one hundred times the flicked coin. The most valuable winning slots are in the middle of the playing area, and in modern machines themost valuable slot has a variable payoff so that the best payoff may not be even in principle achievable with every flick.
Finland's Slot Machine Association Conference 2020
History[edit]
The predecessors of payazzo machines, called bajazzo machines, were manufactured in Germany in the beginning of the 20th century. The game arrived in Finland in the middle of the 1920s, and Finns started calling it pajatso.
The bajazzo machines differed from payazzo machines. In a bajazzo game, a ball was dropped from the top of the machine and the player attempted to catch it into a hat held by a bajazzo figure. The first true payazzo machine was developed in the Germany in the late 1920s, and it was called Blau Wunder. In Finland, the name pajatso was used also for this machine.
It became prohibited to operate payazzos in Finland in 1933, except to raise funds for charity. Since 1937, the state-owned operator of gambling machines, Raha-automaattiyhdistys has a monopoly for payazzos. The profits of Raha-automaattiyhdistys are distributed to various charity organizations who promote public health and social welfare.
Raha-automaattiyhdistys has manufactured payazzos since 1938. The basic structure of payazzo remained the same for a long time, except that the denomination of the coin the game was played with varied due to inflation. It is customary to identify the old machines by announcing the denomination of the coin used to play the game, these old machines include 20 penni payazzo (1958), 50 penni payazzo (1967) and one markka payazzo (1976).
With the introduction of the 50 penni payazzo, the gates were introduced. By adjusting the gates, the operator of payazzo can control the difficulty of the game more accurately.
The first electronic payazzo was introduced in 1982; older payazzos were completely mechanical. In electronic payazzos, the actual game is played with a real, physical coin, but the electronics are used to determine if the player feeds money into the machine, to register whether a coin falls into a winning slot and to pay winnings to the player. By using the electronics, it was possible program variable winning sums for each slot.
Today's models[edit]
Finland's Slot Machine Association Of America
Nowadays, Raha-automaattiyhdistys operates three models of payazzo machines. The first model is Pajatso, which provides a playing experience similar to the traditional mechanical games. The second model is Komeetta Jasso, which combines the payazzo-style coin flicking with an electronic game of luck. In Komeetta Jasso, the player can also change the winning sums the machine pays by flicking a coin into a designated slot. Both of these models are played with the 20 cent coin. The third model is Pajatso RAY, which is played with coin-like metal disks. In addition to the traditional single-flick game, Pajatso Ray has other games consisting of several flicks.
In Finland, payazzos can be found in special gambling arcades, and also in pubs, restaurants and supermarkets.
Outside Finland[edit]
During its history, Raha-automaattiyhdistys has exported payazzos into Norway, Soviet Union, Hungary, Australia, Netherlands, Las Vegas, Iceland and Sweden. Nowadays, payazzo can be played, in addition to Finland, in Chile, where a local operator uses Finnish electronic payazzos.
In popular culture[edit]
- In the song Iisalmen discossaJuice Leskinen sings that he skipped a slow dance while he played payazzo in a discotheque.
- In the song Raptori the rap group Raptori sings that they bought their leather jackets at a thrift store after winning a jackpot in payazzo.
- From December 2008 to September 2009, the Apple App Store contained the coin game entitled 'Pajatzo'.[1]
See also[edit]
- Pachinko is a similar Japanese game, played with steel balls instead of coins.
References[edit]
- ^http://appshopper.com/games/pajatzo
External links[edit]
- Playable electronic (Flash) version, no actual money involved (Finnish language)
Finns had forgotten RAY‘s significance to the Finnish society. The image of the acceptability of gambling had been on a decline for more than a decade. During the campaign, Finland’s Slot Machine Association was able to overturn the acceptability curve of gambling toward a greatly positive incline – for the first time.
RAY’s Suomalaisia ylpeydenaiheita (‘Finnish Factors of Pride’) image campaign awakened Finns to rediscover our country’s special feature: a unique gambling system promoting the well-being of Finns, in the eyes of foreigners. Campaign was also shortlisted in two categories in Effie Awards Finland 2016.
In this campaign Finland’s Slot Machine Association (RAY) addresses the importance of gaming to the Finnish welfare system. In the films, the film crew tests Las Vegas residents on their knowledge of the Finnish gaming system. The Americans have blogged about this on sites like https://www.bestuscasinos.org/real-money/ and are amazed to hear that all profits from gaming in Finland are allocated to the welfare of Finnish citizens. The campaign is launched online on April 8th and will continue on television from April 10th.
“I didn’t know that they do that”, says a Las Vegan. “Wow, really?” I want to move there right away. That’s how it should be done. People taking care of each other”, says another American.
Sanna Pietiäinen, head of Marketing and Customer Relations at RAY, wishes that the campaign would help Finns appreciate how wonderful our system is. “When your neighbour compliments your spouse’s look at a garden party, you’re suddenly reminded how beautiful your spouse is”, says Pietiäinen.
Finland's Slot Machine Association Golf
“By nature, Finns do not brag about brilliant characteristics of Finland and Finnish culture”, says Tommi Viitala, manager of Digital Marketing at RAY. He says that the Finnish gambling system is on the list of things Finns should be proud of, in addition to our education system and the sauna. “This is definitively demonstrated by the powerful reactions of the Americans”.
The campaign will later include Richard Diamond, an imaginary Las Vegan, who tweets a challenge for the whole world to find a gaming system that is better than Las Vegas. Eventually he ends up in Finland. “According to Mr. Diamond, it is insane to distribute gaming profits to those in need”, says Viitala.
The multi-media campaign, created by Avaus, will go on for the rest of the year. The videos and TV spots are produced by Woodpecker Film.
All profit generated by RAY is allocated to supporting social and healthcare organisations and Finnish war veterans. This year, RAY supports 824 social and healthcare organisations with a total of over EUR 315.3 million in over 1,700 locations. A total of EUR 111.5 million of RAY’s profit is allocated to Finnish war veterans through the State Treasury.
Campaign website:
https://www.ray.fi/suomesta
Street interview 1, Las Vegas:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOhUC4EikEU
Street interview 2, Las Vegas:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRJazq98dCY
Introducing millionare Richard Diamond:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UGjysho40E
For more details, please contact:
Sanna Pietiäinen
sanna.pietiainen@ray.fi
Mira Träskelin
mira.traskelin@avaus.fi