after all of three days’ hard work (lots of sitting around, sneaking off downtown to hunt for canned coffee, expensing two lavish kbbq dinners, pocketing some petty cash, sneaking snacks, attempting to get some side action selling stuff, nearly amputating my fingertip with a cheap boxcutter, etc. etc.) a colleague (my friend/business partner/former minecraft arch-nemesis) suggested that we head to a casino resort to relax for a day. i had no better plans and i was curious what it’s like since i’ve never really properly been to one, so i immediately assented.
outside of a few exceptions like the state of nevada (home to las vegas) and atlantic city, the only place you can find casinos in the united states is on indian reservations. this is because several decades ago, somebody very clever realized that since indian reservations are technically (semi-) sovereign land, they could make their own laws legalizing gambling and open up high-stakes bingo halls and then eventually casinos. while it is of course entirely within the powers of state and federal governments to shut it all down, i figure they decided to throw them a bone as an apology or reparations for all the, er, unpleasantness (genocide, etc.) in the past and let it slide (although not without skimming a cut of the takings in the form of taxes as always).
indian casinos are almost always out in the middle of nowhere or on the outskirts of town, since they have to be built on indian reservations. the government back in the day, of course, only set aside the crappiest leftover land for indian reservations, almost always unsuitable for any “honest” industry like agriculture, resource extraction, or tourism. however, you can put up a building suitable for housing slot machines almost anywhere, the only difficulty is finding a place to do so where it’s legal to put slot machines in the building. but if you find one of those rare legal spots, then if you built it, they will come. this is the only reason there is a bustling metropolis in the godforsaken barren wastes of nevada, land so worthless that it was selected as the optimal location for detonating some of the most powerful bombs ever created, as if in an attempt to do away with it entirely. it’s also not a coincidence that nevada’s two largest cities (las vegas and reno) are located right next to the border with california, as close as possible within nevada to california’s two biggest population centers (los angeles and the bay area respectively).
it is interesting to see how an arbitrary line in the desert can lead to radically different development on either side. at the exact point where interstate 15 (the main throughfare between los angeles and las vegas) crosses the border into nevada, the “town” of primm (as seen in fallout: new vegas) sprang up. the “town” consists of just three huge casinos, a mall, and accompanying massive parking lots, which end abruptly at the border line with california. on the california side? pure desert, with one exception: the parking lots jut out in one small place to encircle an establishment called the “lotto store”. ironically, the lottery, the only form of legal gambling in nearly every other state, is in fact illegal in nevada, so this is the closest location where las vegas residents can come to get in on those billion dollar powerball/mega millions jackpots. but i digress.
the result of their remoteness is that indian casinos feel like their own isolated little worlds that you have to journey out to. the rules are different in casinoworld: gambling is legal and encouraged, gambling is a dirty word and is insistently referred to as “gaming” instead, you can smoke indoors (possibly the only place in america where you still can, and everyone seems to certainly be taking advantage of it), prices in the stores and restaurants are jacked up since you have no other shopping options. unlike many establishments in the normal world these past couple of years, casinoworld does not appear to be understaffed. if anything, it’s overstaffed, staff hovering around everywhere not really doing anything. maybe this is part of a PR strategy: “we may be trafficking in sin but at least we create over 1000 menial service jobs for the local Economy”.
the interior of casinoworld is extremely stylish, classy, well-kept. this forms a dramatic contrast with the residents of casinoworld, who are almost universally unglamorous. the stereotypes that casinos are full of decrepit old boomers slowly leaking out their lifeforce and retirement money are so accurate that it borders on depressing. we were easily the youngest people around (besides some of the staff) by half a century. it's a little disturbing to think that if you leave the casino with any winnings, it is ultimately their money you are taking. however, since the boomers seem determined to live as long as possible clinging to their assets, it is perhaps our duty to perform a Generational Wealth Transfer by force through our ability to walk away from slot machines while still positive.
i wonder: why do they come here? it’s not like they need money (money is most useful and thus most valuable when you’re young), so any big wins inevitably go right back into the slot machines. the obvious conclusion is that they must be doing it out of boredom, for entertainment... i guess unfortunately they have not yet heard of video games (although of late video games have been doing their best to become gambling). when you retire in america, there are only a couple options: you can take up pickleball or golf, you can watch the news in the easy chair all day while sipping Bud Coors Light, you can live full-time on cruise ships, you can move to Florida, you can get dementia, or you can get really into slots. some do all at once. then one day, perhaps just when they have managed to forget it will, it ends. when we pulled up at the casino there was a fire truck and ambulance outside the main entrance. walking through later, a team of EMTs in casino uniforms surrounded somebody in a wheelchair on the gaming floor. i briefly wondered if they also have an on-site coroner or mortuary.
to put all that dismal stuff out of mind, it’s time for some hardcore “gaming”. all the chairs at slot machines are insanely comfortable, with a minimum of six inches of padding. they have been carefully designed, i am sure, in order to keep butts in seats with absolutely no discomfort for hours at a time. this is why i think that instead of all the meme racecar seat “gamer chairs” that have been endlessly shilled online by streamers and their ilk (and unfortunately bought by many hapless gamers), the real play is to try and get one of those casino chairs for your gaming “battlestation”. i would be looking for one myself right now if i hadn’t already secured an executive office chair with a broken recline that makes it lean back dangerously close to horizontal.
i noticed that slot machines seem to have really complicated payout rules, which you can always view by pressing the little “rules” button in the corner. most machines have at least thirty different “patterns” you can line up symbols on to win, and frankly it seems like a miracle that every spin doesn’t turn into at least a small winner. the really complicated rules usually come into play with earning bonus modes and what happens within them, which is usually how each type of slot machine distinguishes itself besides its graphic style. but of course, reading the rules and understanding how the game works is almost completely unnecessary because not only do you have no influence on the outcome besides choosing when to stop playing, the machine will also automatically calculate your payout after every spin. maybe to the uninitiated it can seem a little perplexing how playing slots for hours on end can be interesting or entertaining since it’s just pure luck and you can have no effect on the outcome (although this does not stop some from rubbing the screens and such for good luck). but i think i’ve figured it out, at least to some extent: it’s similar to why people watch sports even though they are arguably even more distant from any sort of influence on the outcome of a match (since you can't even stop your team from playing if they are losing too much). it's fun to get excited and root for something good to happen, like your team scoring or the slot reels coming up with something good, and especially thrilling when there's near misses like a close shot or the reels almost stopping on the jackpot.
i once read about another theory of why slots are so compelling to some people: it allows them to enter a state of “dark flow”, in which time melts away effortlessly but you haven’t particularly enjoyed yourself or produced anything like in a standard flow state. some have drawn comparisons to a state you can get into while playing certain video games, when you’re not really having fun and keep losing matches but you just can’t tear yourself away and always queue up for one more match until it’s 5 am and the sun is starting to come up and you feel awful and drained. staring at the crisp bright colorful digital reels spinning on and on as i continued losing (and therefore nothing exciting was happening on screen or in my mind), i could definitely feel myself going into a sort of mild trance. even while watching my friends play and rooting for them, i noticed that time seemed to move a lot faster than expected, and before i knew it i’d stayed up way past my normal bedtime watching to see if my friend would be able to trigger another fever and get another big win. i have heard that casinos are deliberately designed to make you lose track of time by having no windows or clocks, and most are also open 24 hours so you can easily find yourself gambling away into the wee hours of the morning.
the real psychological tricks, though, are implemented within the slot machines themselves to make them maximally addictive (here, again, the dangers of optimalism). i’ve noticed that more modern slot machines spice things up by adding special “fever” or “bonus” modes that you can get into by getting certain lucky spins, although you can pretty much always get one if you play one machine long enough (i think they are programmed this way, you either get it right away or after a while). the fever modes are very satisfying and offer a lot of excitement with thrilling music, lights, and of course more chances to win. they almost always involve a bunch of “free” spins and ways to win bigger payouts like multipliers or removal of low-value symbols from the reels. usually, the chance to roll for jackpots is locked behind the fever/bonus mode as well. it feels as if the real big wins come only within the fever modes, so sometimes it feels like you’re mindlessly spinning not even to line up anything for a big win, but just to enter bonus mode. it feels like you spend a while just bleeding money on endless fruitless spins, and then finally you’d go into fever mode and make a bunch of money at once. it always feels like you’re making back all your money and then some and that’s certainly what it seemed like watching my friends, but i thing that this has to be part of the trick, just an illusion. perhaps it is possible to win and walk away with money in the short term, but on a long enough time horizon, those short-term wins are designed to turn into long-term losses. if the house edge is subtle enough, only a few percent, it can be invisible to those who don’t keep meticulous records, or those able to delude themselves just enough.
for some inscrutable reason that i am yet to determine, approximately half of the slot machines in the casino had themes that i can only describe as "oriental". amusingly, some of them are made by our friends at konami, responsible for other dubious money pits like modern dance dance revolution. the other half seem to all be part of the formidable “buffalo” franchise, a vaguely-frontier themed slot machine which seems to be the most promiscuous brand in the industry. i saw buffalo classic machines, buffalo deluxe, buffalo gold, buffalo diamond, buffalo strike, buffalo ascension, etc. my other colleague on the trip, pokemon card entrepreneur mustassy, absolutely swore by buffalo gold specifically, which he said he’d won a hundred bucks off of while at the las vegas airport once (yes, they have slot machines in the airport there). the main distinguishing feature of buffalo was that the machine would yell “BUFFALO!” whenever you’d line up enough of them to win, which endlessly amused mustassy. buffalo gold’s bonus mode seemed to be particularly generous, gradually removing less valuable symbols and doling out a good bounty of multipliers and extra free spins.
mustassy may have genuinely been on to something with buffalo gold, because he would always disappear for 20 minutes and i would always expect him to come back having lost everything but instead he’d come back grinning and showing off another hundred bucks of winnings. at one point i caught up with him and he was on an outrageous win streak after having been down for a while, he was deep in bonus mode and it just kept giving him multipliers and free spins until he got up to like 80 total free spins winning almost ten bucks per spin, and eventually paying out something like four hundred dollars from that one bonus mode alone. he’d even attracted a spectator, an old asian dude playing the buffalo machine next to him who spent more time looking over at mustassy’s screen than his own. this was a weird thing that tended to happen if you went on a big win streak, random casino patrons stopping behind you and watching for a while. i’m not sure if they expected a potential handout or just found it interesting/thrilling to watch even when a stranger was winning big money. in the end, mustassy turned $200 into around $600 playing mostly buffalo gold, although at one point right when we were about to leave he had been up to $800 and blew almost $200 on a special machine that allowed you to play 4 simultaneous games of buffalo gold (at 4x the cost, of course). this happened right when i was beginning to wonder how they ever made any money if buffalo gold was that loose.
my friend/business partner/former minecraft arch-nemesis, on the other hand, was partial to this enormous “wheel of fortune” slot machine. the screen was at least 12 feet tall and the seat in front of it was extra long, practically a small couch, which i appreciated since it let me comfortably sit right next to him spectating while he played. all the symbols in the game were horrifically cheesy “rich people” things like a yacht, private jet, glass of champagne, and the main gimmick was that if this special “high roller” thing came up, the reel it came up on would increase in height by one. i guess this was a method of keeping people playing, because if you manage to play long enough to grow a reel to the top, you’d be able to spin the eponymous “wheel” for a bonus. the sectors on the virtual wheel were all the same size so you’d assume landing in each area would be equally likely, but after watching long enough i’m pretty sure that was absolute bullshit because every single time it would manage to land on the lowest or second-lowest value. he was down for a while and then would hit the bonus mode and go up again, and finally ended up cashing out while at $400 after initially putting in $200.
what about me? financially i’m extremely risk averse and also wary of slot machine trickery, so i ended up only putting in a Grand Total of $2 of my own money into the machines, consisting of the two smallest bills in my wallet. unfortunately almost every slot machine in the casino was too high stakes for me, requiring minimum bets of at least 50 cents, and i kept wondering “whatever happened to good ol' penny slots”. another thing ruined by inflation, probably. eventually i found a particular machine that would take a significantly lower bet, only 5 cents, and using $10 of free credit from joining the casino loyalty program and signing away some personal info and possibly prima noctis rights to my firstborn, i managed to ride it all the way up to a Vast Fortune of $16 before slowly losing it all over the course of an hour or two. after that i mostly watched my friends play and scavenged a couple cents left on machines that required higher minimum bets and took them over to my super low stakes machine to immediately lose them. “they just don’t want to see the little guy win,” i continually grumbled.