players to make worthwhile money playing SWPs, but it is much harder than in the past. The quiz machine/SWP today A fundamental change occurred in the nature of SWPs in the early 2000s. Single games in stand-alone cabinets were discontinued and replaced by multi-game terminals. Some of these can run a choice of up to 25-30 different games on the same machine. Some are also able to provide services other than gaming. These units can be managed and updated remotely through an ISDN or ADSL network connection. Leading multigame terminals and their manufacturers at present are: itbox made by Maygay Ltd and originally used exclusively by Leisure Link, all machines are now owned by GamesTec. FatBox Slim made by Fat Spanner Ind:e and Indego made by GamesMedia/Channel1 Gamesnet made by GamesTec Today most SWP/quiz machine games offer a nominal £20 jackpot for 50p play and a few offer £40 for £1 play. But on present day games the payout is carefully controlled and manipulated by the software. Payout levels are set at lower levels than previously. Legal grey areas An SWP machine must offer the chance to win the jackpot on every game; however, the level of skill involved to do that is set so high as to be virtually impossible. Manufacturers have, at times, set the skill level so high that it is physically impossible to achieve this. Because there is no governing body for skill games, the only time this is brought into question is when the gaming authorities are alerted and take court action to prove or disprove that this is the case. In practice, this is very rare, as the gaming authorities have no jurisdiction over skill machines, and the only way for a prosecution to succeed is to prove that the game in question breaks the law in some way. This can be done by proving that the machine differs to the legal definition of a skill machine which says that a player must be allowed to win prizes by skill alone. If there is an element of luck in the game it is automatically classed as a game of chance and is legally bound by the gambling commission legislation. Many manufacturers push this boundary to the limit and sometimes into the grey area of legal definitions beyond. The stake/prize level of a skill machine is also a grey area, as there is no legal