What started as innocent curiosity fast became a weekly ritual. After spending a few Friday lunchtimes ushering the weekend with a beer and some football highlights at the bar near work, I noticed the same faces glued to the flashing lights week after week with clockwork regularity. My five dollars never lasts long; it is simply an admission fee that allows me to watch the plague of hopelessness leak from these machines with every spin – a slow, incremental death.
The regulars often acknowledge me with a nod of recognition as I straddle the nearest vinyl stool. The fragile bond between problem gamblers is plain to see; an attempt to mask personal shame and loss with some sort of social interaction. They recognise me as one of their own during my occasional visits, but make no mistake about it – this is one lonely place. There’s the bubbly Filipino lady who is there almost daily and the tradesman who always has his Ute parked out front; yet it’s the two old ladies who wrench my gut the most.
"Free coffee! I'm losing money by not being here."
A large and lovely woman of about seventy, she sits there with a $50 note always at the ready. She generally has at least $100 in the machine, watching it tick away $1.50 at a time – her friend sits beside her doing the same. As her credit drops, she raises her bet to $3.00 each spin, her twitching jaw becomes more noticeable with each push of the button. Finally, her anxiety is quelled with the clattering of chimes and the promise of fifteen free spins. Within seconds she has winnings of over $150. Less than seven minutes later, she needed that extra $50 note…and she only just arrived.
One more individual is worthy of a mention: the barman who services the gaming longue. A young man of gentle demeanour, he treats me with the same tortured courtesy as the rest. The conflict in his eyes is plain to see as he nods politely at small talk about winnings and features from the same chicken battery of people seated at their empty troughs, nursing their soon-to-be empty wallets.
A friend once explained the mathematics of gambling to me after completing a subject on it at university. Poker machines (all casino games) are programmed* in such a way that if you play an infinite amount of times, the result will always be less than zero. In others words, if you keep play forever you are mathematically certain to lose. There is no if, but or whether – poker machines are designed to take your money and no amount of luck can help you.
When I tried to explain this to the dear lady before she put that extra $50 note in, she chuckled telling me not to be bad luck. The young barman hung his head and avoided eye contact. She always strokes her palm as if it she has some irritation – then I realised that she constantly rubs the corner of the machine in some sort of gambler’s ritual. Not only does she put her pension in this machine, she puts her blood into it as well as if it loves her back.
* ‘Designed’ sounded like too nice a word.
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