Originating in Japan in the 1930s, pachinko is that country’s most popular form of gambling. Though Japanese pachinko parlors collectively pull more gambling revenue than major casino destinations like Las Vegas and Macau, the game has struggled to find a footing outside of its home country.
As to why that is, I can’t really come up with a great concrete answer. You’d think it would at least spread to nearby gambling-hungry Asian countries, but not so much outside of scattered parlors in South Korea and China. It’s virtually unknown in the West unless you’re into Japanese pop culture.
Basically, if Chinese tourists don’t have strong interest in an Asia-rooted game then you won’t see it spread out to Western casino markets like Vegas. My best guess is they feel they are doing just fine with slots and the table games they know how to manipulate and don’t really want to experiment. Other theories are that the pachinko market is almost entirely controlled by the Yakuza and Korean organized crime, or that the game is potentially beatable.
Wait, potentially beatable? Well, at least in theory, and at least with the analog-style games that are somewhat like pinball. As with rolling dice at craps, it’s at least theoretically possible to control your shot once you know the table … the thing is that all those physics variables in play are so subtle that it’s unrealistic to think the human eye and hand can manage to clock them just by eyeballing things.
Though there are pachi addicts who swear by setting the dial at a certain spot, advantage play at pachinko actually centers around jackpot timing – much like beating certain progressive jackpot slots. If you’re at a machine where you know when the odds of hitting a jackpot change, you simply bet low during the low odds period and bet high during the high odds to come out ahead over the long run. Or, you can “vulture” machines (as is done with certain exploitable slots) to pounce on ones that have been primed to hit a jackpot when a clueless or tapped-out player steps off of them.
Much is interesting about pachinko – it’s potentially beatable over the long run in multiple ways, and it usually has a naturally low house edge due to the established customer base of low rollers. This is all kind of a moot point unless you live in Japan, however, as it just isn’t present most anywhere else. And if you do live in Japan, you’ll probably need an unusually high tolerance for loud J-Poppy noise and dense cigarette smoke to play it at parlors for any length of time.
As far as online options go, I don’t think you’ll see much outside of Asia. The tiny handful of games I can find are at casinos that cater to the UK / Europe and they’re more of an oddball bingo hybrid than straightforward Japanese parlor pachinko.
Resources:
- Interesting history of pachinko
- Interesting article on the skill aspect of the game