wanted to keep, push levers in . To activate the draw feature,
pull small lever next to the word "DRAW" and the dice that
were not held would be re-popped. The Aces were wild, so
the player had a good chance to match either the dice num-
ber or an Ace to better their hand.
improve the odds for the
player.
For decades it was be-
lieved that Baker Novel-
ty stole the idea for their
machine from D. Got-
tlieb, but the fact of the
matter is Gottlieb did
not do their homework
when it came to the odds
of their new The Indian
Dice machine. The Aces were wild which meant that every
die had a wild card on them which made it easier to match
one of the numbers on the dice, in other words, they had 2
chances out of 6 or 3-to-l odds of matching the dice needed
for a good hand. It would be like a deck of 52 cards hav-
ing 12 wild cards. Can you imagine how many good hands
would be dealt to players in a poker game? It would create
havoc! Along with having Aces wild, the player could vary
their choice of wager which would pay anywhere from 2
to 20-to-1 odds. To add insult to injury, the award card was
confusing; it did not state whether a Full House would beat
any 3 of a Kind which would cause a problem with pay-
outs.
In 1939, Baker Novelty and Mfg. Co., of Chicago, came out
with a machine named "Pick-A-Pack" that was identical to
The Indian Dice machine but instead of 5 dice this machine
had 3 dice that had cigarette packs etched on each side of
the dice of
nation-
ally known
n a m e
brands .
The
ma-
chine I ac-
quired did
not
have
the correct
dice so I
made my
own by us-
ing
IMP
reel strips
from Slot Dynasty; I later added the correct set of dice. The
two end columns were filled in to create a 3 column ma-
chine. It also had a triangular window behind the middle
column that displayed the names of the cigarettes. In order
for the name of the cigarettes to be fully displayed in the
window, some names were shortened, ex. Lucky Strike be-
came "Luckies"; Chesterfield became "Chesters". The disk
originally had 12 characters, 2 of each brand name. That was
changed in the later models to: l of the Ch esters was replaced
with the words "3 of Any Kind" to make it easier to win. This
machine operated on penny only. Operation was identical.
Insert penny; pull handle, the middle disk would spin, and
After many hours of research playing both machines, I
would constantly find myself a winner playing The Indian
Dice machine because on many chances I would have the
odds advantage. On the Pick-A-Pack machine, your odds
are initially 36-to-l to win a hand with 216 different combi-
nations (6x6x6). These are the odds for the later models that
had the "3 of Any Kind" located on the disk. The odds of
getting 3 of a Kind to match what was on the disk of the ear-
lier machines would be even higher odds which would make
the operator very profitable, just the opposite with The In-
dian Dice which was not favorable for profit. My conclusion
is that Baker Novelty did not steal the idea or concept for
their machine from Gottlieb, but that Gottlieb sold the rights
of the machine and its mechanism to Baker Novelty. At the
time, Baker had the rights to revamp other mfg. 's games,
like " PACES RACES", into their own machine named
"BAKERS PACERS" . Baker was getting out of making the
big console machines and getting into the counter machines.
Along with the fact that D. Gottlieb and Co. had used in their
ads the slogan that they did not mfg. gambling machines.
They were getting into mfg. pinball machines which were
more profitable. It is a shame that these two machines are
rare because they are both fun to play. The Indian Dice is
much rarer because it had a very limited production .
the 3 dice would be popped. Then the player would look at
the window located in the middle column to see what brand
was to be matched. The player then held dice that matched
brand in window by pushing in lever or levers, and then ac-
tivating the "DRAW" feature by pulling small lever located
next to the word DRAW. By having to match the name brand
that was displayed in the window, it made winning a pack
very hard to do. So Baker added the "3 of Any Kind" to
If you have any new information regarding these two ma-
chines, please reply via email to dappledman@yahoo.com .
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