Si Redd is responsible for the majority of that clamor. As a game developer, his innovations include multi-coin play, multi-line payoffs, video table games and progressive jackpots. With gaming machines responsible for almost two-thirds of Nevada's gaming revenue, it would be fair to call Si Redd the Man.

Originally, Redd came to Nevada by way of Reno. His friend Bill O'Donnell offered him the Silver State distributorship for Bally, a maker of coin-operated games. With years of experience under his belt, Redd gladly accepted, especially to get away from the growing mob pressure to turn over his east coast coin-op interests.

The phone calls to Bally's headquarters started to come: Redd wanted multi-coin play, with the jackpot available only with maximum coins played; Redd wanted payoff on three lines, then five lines; Redd wanted more liberal payoffs on low denomination machines. Features that are as common as flashing lights and jackpot bells today were all developed under Redd's direction. By the time Bally bought back their distributorship, Redd was a multi-millionaire with an eye to the future.

Holding on to Bally's rights for video-based machines, Redd founded SIRCOMA and began developing video poker on old Pong machines. Soon the machines were everywhere, players often preferring the interactive game to the hum-drum yank of the slot machine. SIRCOMA became IGT, the dominant gaming machine manufacturer in the United States. The icing on the cake for Redd was his development of Megabucks, a national gaming lottery that spawned a craze for progressive machines evident in casinos across the country.

Redd sold his interest in IGT in 1986. Since then he developed and sold his Oasis resort-casino in Mesquite, Nevada, pursued philanthropy through gifts to the University of Nevada Las Vegas and his own Noah's Ark animal preservation project, just south of Las Vegas.