Casino conversations

14 April 2016

By John Grochowski

The bulk of player interactions in casinos are of the mundane variety – table players talking about where they’re from during a shuffle, or slot players asking if a machine is taken.

But with so many players passing through casinos every day, there are bound to be a few conversations that go down a not-so-beaten path. A few readers have shared their tales from the odd side:

BURT: There was a line at the cashier’s cage. I had a few hundred dollars in chips from the craps table. The man in front of me had buckets of coins from the slots, and so did the guy in front of him, who was waiting for one more player to finish his business at the front.

The guy right in front of me nudged the other slot guy in front of him and said, “You know, you could do that over there, and pointed to a self-serve change counter." The one in front said, “I could, but then, so could you.”

The one who instigated the exchange glared at the other one and mumbled an expletive. The one in front glared back.

I thought there was going to be a fight. Fortunately, space at the cage opened right then and the guy in front, the one who had been called the nasty name, decided just to drop it and get his change counted.

The instigator looked back at me and said, “Can you believe that guy?” I just shrugged and didn’t say anything. Maybe I missed something, but I still don’t see what he had to be upset about.

WILL: OK, this is a little weird. Dude sits down at a blackjack table, and pulls out to $50 bills. He turns to me and says, “Can you give me a hundred for two fifties?” I said no, so he asked the other players, who also said no. The dealer said she could take the $50s for chips or he could change them at the cage.

He said, “I just hate playing with $50 bills,” and he left. I don’t know if he went to the cage after that to change them, but he never came back to the table. All of us there talked about whether he was trying to palm off counterfeits, but maybe he just thought the bills were unlucky. Who knows?

BETH: I was having a really good run on an 8/5 Bonus Poker machine. I’d hit the four aces, and had four 3s and a couple of other fours-of-a-kind, all in barely more than an hour.
An older lady came up and said, “You’re on my machine.” I said, “No, this is my machine. I’ve been here more than an hour.”

She said, “You are. You’re on MY MACHINE. I come here every day and I always play this machine.”

I told her maybe she could play this one later, but right now I was playing it.

She started yelling something about kids always thinking they could just do what they want and walked off. It was kind of flattering when I think about it. I’m well into my 50s and no kid, but she had to be in her 80s or close to it.

She didn’t let it drop, though. She came back with a slot attendant who said, “This lady said you took her machine.”

I explained that I’d been playing for more than an hour, that I hadn’t thrown anyone out of their chair. He told the woman, “Sorry, this machine is taken right now,” and she went away screaming about wanting to see a manager.

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