Jim Munding has been asking me to post some relevant information about the newly created OTY category for slot club cards, the Slot Card of the Year or just SCOTY. SCOTY will join the existing categories of Chip of the Year (COTY), Token of the Year (TOTY) and Silver Strike of the Year (SSOTY), and the contest, for the most part, will be run in the same fashion.

As with last years competitions, I will be providing web-space where images of eligible chips, tokens, strikes and cards (4 different pages) can be up-loaded and will remain on-display throughout the process, up until the 10 finalists in each category have been rendered and the judging has been closed. Everyone is welcome to (and very much encouraged) to utilize the up-load feature of the site and post images, as no one person can acquire, scan and up-load all images needed.

What then are "eligible" candidates for the various OTY competitions? The one common requirement for all four categories is that item must have been released, for the inaugural time, between one second after midnight December 31st of the given year and midnight December 31st of the next year. (I am sure that there are other ways of saying this same thing, but I think you’ll understand what I mean.) At the Convention in 2003, we will be announcing the winners of eligible candidates from all of 2002.

After 12 years of Awards, the COTY and TOTY criteria is rather straight forward. Chips are chips and they MUST be issued by a casino and must have a gaming purpose. Tokens are defined as slot machine tokens, meaning that they are specifically manufactured for actually inserting into a slot machine.

Silver Strikes, which is a relatively new category in the OTY competitions, are defined as the product(s) produced by Anchor Gaming (IGT) under their trademarked name of Silver Strikes. This determination was made by the Silver Striker’s Chapter officers for the 2001 competition, and the Chapter’s membership may vote to change the criteria for the 2002 competition. It is important to point out that it is the related Chapter of this OTY that is defining the eligibility criteria (other than date of release. This same process will come into play for the SCOTY.

The CC>CC Board has authorized the SCOTY as a slot club card recognition awards program. The newly founded Slot Card and Room Key Chapter of the CC>CC will be tasked with determining what cards are eligible for SCOTY nomination. As the OTY Chairperson, I will be looking to the Chapter’s officers for that determination, and it will be at the discretion of the Chapter officers as to whether or not to have the definition established by the membership, or determined by the officers.

Shortly after New Years day, 2003 I will be opening up all four of the competitions for candidate nominations. Each and every member (of the CC>CC), with a Nomination Form, can nominate up to five (5) COTY candidates, and/or up to five (5) TOTY candidates, and/or up to five (5) SSOTY candidates and up to five (5) SCOTY candidates. All Nomination Form will be submitted to me and, along with my crack helpers (my wife and son, both Associate Members) will count and validate the nominees. Within each category, all nominees will be listed according to the total number of individual nominations each receives. The top ten, in each category, then become the Top Ten Finalists. A Judge’s Balloting Pamphlet is then created and is only sent out to those members who submitted a Nomination Form (with at least one nominee noted, in any one of the four categories).

The Judge’s Ballot, a full color pamphlet will be your souvenir of participation and within it will be a one page Balloting Form. On the Form you are encouraged to vote for your three most favorite/preferred examples in all four categories. You will need to prioritize the three selections as 1, 2 and 3. All Balloting Forms will then be sent to me.

Again, my crack crew (sounds strange) and I will count, validate and tabulate all the Ballot Forms. All 1st place votes will garner 5 points for the selected example. 2nd place examples will receive 3 points and 3rd place will get 2 points. All points for each example will be tallied and the top place finisher in each category will be identified as the Gold-place finisher. 2nd place will be the Silver-place finisher and 3rd place will be the Bronze-place finisher.

At this point in time the web-site will be modified to display only the Top Ten Finishers from the nomination phase.

However, the actual results (the winners) will remain secret until the night of the Convention Banquet (2003), at which time the winners will be announced in a ceremony. Representatives from the associated casino(s) of the Gold-place finishers will have been invited to attend to receive the award in-person.

Well, I think that about covers everything, but if you have any questions or comments, please feel free to ask away.

Jim Follis
COTY, TOTY, SSOTY and SCOTY Awards Chairman