THOSE INFERNAL MACHINES: THE IN-BETWEEN
The bad, the in-between and the good
By Frank Scoblete
In the October issue I discussed the bad experiences many slot players have had in their attempts to conquer Lady Luck. This issue I’ll take you into the world of players who have had in-between experiences; kind of good, kind of bad at the casinos of their choice and perhaps not at the casino of her choice.
EDITH
I am from Long Island and I go to Atlantic City every other week. I give myself three-hundred dollars to play with on each trip and I play the quarter machines. I take my time and I have a great day and then I grab the bus and head home. My husband refuses to go with me because he thinks playing slot machines is dumb.
He bets on sports and has never had a winning year. He almost never has a winning week. But he criticizes me. So this time he decided to come.
That was the worst. I was up about two hundred dollars playing in a leisurely fashion and he comes over and asks me for some money. I ask him why does he need money? He tells me he lost five hundred dollars—that’s right five hundred dollars!—at craps.
I give him a hundred and he smirks at me. What’s wrong with a hundred? He says to give him two hundred and so I do. I mean, I am ahead right?
I play some more and I win about a hundred. I am ahead for the day three hundred dollars. Now I am wondering how hubby is doing. I go to the craps table and I look at the chips he has in front of him. Five whites and three reds. That’s twenty bucks.
He sees me and picks up his chips and we go to the cage. He has lost six hundred eighty dollars; I’ve won three hundred. On the bus ride home I am fuming; he is sleeping and snoring.
EILEEN
I have to tell you right off the bat that I have a terrible temper because there are so many stupid people in the world and I always seem to get them around me when I am at the casino.
So I am at this slot machine and I am about even. There is a woman to my right and a woman to my left. The casino is really crowded because it is triple-points day; a lot of women all over the place and some old men. Not much pickings there. The men all seemed on the verge of death.
So the women on either side of me are having a big discussion— talking right through me like I didn’t even exist. They aren’t interested in bringing me into the conversation. Seriously, what kind of manners do these ladies have?
So I ask them in a loud tone if they would like me to move so one of them can now sit next to the other? The woman on my left says, “No, your machine sucks.” So I turn to the woman on my right and ask her if she would like to move to my seat. “No, she” meaning the woman on my left, “said the machine sucks and I believe her.” So they stayed there and kept talking through me.
But I had the last laugh because I won a few hundred that afternoon and I made a point of telling them so. I liked the expression on their faces because they were both losing.
JAY
I had a day that started off great. I wasn’t winning jackpots but I was hitting those middle wins and consistently. I’d go down a little and then hit again and I was slowly inching up to what I thought would be my best day on the slots ever.
A lady came up behind me and tapped my shoulder. “This is my machine,” she said.
“Did you reserve this machine?” I asked. I looked on and around the machine to see if there were some kind of reserved sign. There wasn’t.
“Everyone knows this is my machine,” she insisted. “I was late today but I always play this machine.”
I am a gentleman and I got up and went to another machine. I had my misgivings about doing this, I mean I was having a good day, but the lady looked like one of these desperate types who has nothing to do in her life but play the slots; so, what the heck, I gave her the machine.
I went to another machine. To make a short story shorter, I got killed at the other machine. I lost everything I won except for about ten bucks. I quit. I didn’t want to go home the next morning having lost my total win.
I walked past the lady who had taken my machine—I was thinking of that first machine as “my machine”—and she was jumping up and down and she was telling everyone around her what a “lucky machine” she had!
That’s the closest I ever came to strangling someone.
Frank Scoblete’s newest books are I Am a Dice Controller: Inside the World of Advantage-Play Craps!, I Am a Card Counter: Inside the World of Advantage- Play Blackjack! and Confessions of a Wayward Catholic. Frank’s books are available on Amazon.com, Kindle, Barnes and Noble, and at bookstores.
