The economy is ROARING and the Penny Slots are BOOMING!

[Ripley]

I just spent a couple of days in Biloxi (Vegas of the South) and man oh man. Went to a few different casinos and since I was there last year... amazing how many new Penny, yes one cent slot machines have been installed.

I always thought the nickel slots were silly, but Damn. In the casinos I went into the crowds were mostly at the slots, only a couple of craps tables and blackjack tables had people playing. And most of those table folks were the guys with gold neck chains nestled on their gorilla hairy chests showing through their fancy button-down shirts unbuttoned down to their mid chest with a dick-image-propper-upper absurdly blonde, absurdly shaped (think upside down ladel), half-his-age, glassy eyed female in sequins clutching a bourbon and Virginia Slim in one hand, on his arm.

I went to one place called Boomtown. First floor, kind of slow. Basement only had people at the bar and sporadic gamblers. Second floor? Well, that is where the penny slot gazillion machines are and it was packed.

Very depressing. It's a supposedly free country and all (we're number 1!) and yet to see so many mostly senior citizens dressed in cheap made-in-China clothes, smoking Basic cigarettes, hitting that spin button incessantly made me kind of sick.

Penny slots are tools of the wicked. It's not only a marketing tool for getting people to play (hey...I can get one hundred spins on a dollar!) but a deceitful way to make them feel like they really aren't spending that much money. You see, once you sit down in front of a machine that says 1 cents on it, you realize quickly that unless you play all 25 lines at 20 coins a play, you'll never win more than 10 cents in an hour. So in essence, they are the same money suckers as the 25 cent or dollar machines.

But with that "feel good" idea that you only played penny slots.

I felt like an anthropologist walking amongst these people. The decline of American civilization.

I'm not against gambling, obviously, hey, I walked out of there with $50 surplus this year (25 cent video poker for me).... but the mood in these places was very depressing and sad this time.

With less discretionary spending money, the people who frequent casinos for entertainment value is really down. The rich shits will always be in the high dollar rooms (25$ slots) and high-stakes poker. And there has always been the poor and gambleholics who frequent these places. But in all five casinos I entered, the most people were congregated at the penny and nickle slots. And they were overwhelmingly shabbily dressed and OLD. Trying to win money for meds?

And another thing, with the closure of Keesler AFB in Biloxi, I guess I can expect to see more people at the penny slots in the future.

[liberal N proud]

1. Nickle and Penney Slots are to draw the Social Security crowd

they want to get those who don't have to spend what little they get on the chance that one in a billion hit.
Suck them dry of every last Penney!

[Newsjock]

2. Yes, those high-coin slots prey on the stupid

which, of course, isn't necessarily a bad thing.

You look at the controls on these things... there's a GIANT button that says "PLAY MAX COINS." It doesn't specify what "max" is. It's larger than all the other buttons on the panel.

On a 2-cent machine, with 25 lines and a 20-coin-per-line maximum, "MAX COINS" is 500 coins, or $10 a play. And I don't know how many times I've seen truly clueless people sit down at these things, pop in a $20, hit "MAX COINS" twice, and then look all confused as they wonder why the machine won't respond. They can't even figure out that they've spent their money in two stupid plays.

[Warpy]

3. I can never look at a room full of people playing slots without

thinking of Skinner boxes.

B.F. Skinner was the behavioral psychologist who was studying behavior modification through reward using pigeons pulling levers. One weekend (the story goes) he had a hot date and was low on pigeon pellets. He rigged his boxes to feed pellets at intervals instead of every time the pigeons pulled the lever. When he returned, he found a change in behavior: the pigeons were pulling the levers as fast as they could, often ignoring the pellets in the process.

You've got to admit the pigeon analogy is apt.

In any case, I played nickel slots when I was six and the bouncer wasn't looking. Ever since then it's seemed like a lot of work with little reward.

I know what you mean about the depressing aspect of the crowd. Your description of the aging player with the upside down ladle was beautiful!

[stevans_41902]

4. My boyfriend used to work at Harrahs and he said the vast majority

of money that they made was not from the high rollers but from those who played penny and nickel slots. I have been to the casino a few times since turning 21 and I'm amazed at the number of people who can't even afford to feed their children yet are putting $20 bills in the nickel slots and losing it all in a few mins. The sight that gets me worked up the most is pregnant women drinking beer, smoking, and playing the penny/nickel slots. Personally I think they are boring and a total waste of money - the few times you win something it is measely compared to what you put it. I am not against going every now and then, but there are the people who put themselves in massive debt trying to win back their losses, which at first are relitively small.

[Warpy]

5. A cousin worked in the acocunting office of a casino

that should remain nameless. They treated her rather badly and in retaliation she sent out the payout rates on the various slots. Nobody she sent the stuff out to bothered to make the trip to that particular casino, but everyone appreciated the gesture.

Those penny/nickel/dollar/five dollar machines had the worst payouts of all. What a surprise, right? Also, they were very careful which of the $10 and up slots had the higher payout rates, knowing the superstitious habits of gamblers well.

All the cheaper slots are pure sucker bait.

[LoZoccolo]

6. Hey now!

And most of those table folks were the guys with gold neck chains nestled on their gorilla hairy chests showing through their fancy button-down shirts unbuttoned down to their mid chest with a dick-image-propper-upper absurdly blonde, absurdly shaped (think upside down ladel), half-his-age, glassy eyed female in sequins clutching a bourbon and Virginia Slim in one hand, on his arm.

When I try to look twenty years into the future, I keep seeing something like that.