The Past Once More

25 August 2022

By Royal Flushes

CINDY: We went to Vegas and that became one of our yearly destinations. What else?

ABBY: I liked the bucket with coins. I preferred that even though your hands became silver at times.

CINDY: I felt I was playing for real money then, silver or not.

ABBY: When the coins came out of the machine and the player was tired and quit, sometimes they left coins in the tray. If it was really late, it was possible that no one would play that machine during the rest of the night and in the very early morning the people known as the “silver miners” would make the rounds trying to find leftover coins.

CINDY: I know they made some money back then. The casinos had some guards who might hassle them from time to time but generally the silver miners were ignored. These folks were a whole class of casino people. I kind of miss them.

ABBY: They aren’t around anymore. The old world ends when the new one begins.

CINDY: Yes, the old-world ends. Isn’t that always so?

ABBY: I think we now go to the casinos for shows and dinners as well as the gambling, where before the gambling dominated. The gambling was better except for a few games such as craps.

CINDY: Craps seems to be a better game now with much higher “odds bets” than ever before.

ABBY: Didn’t Tunica, Mississippi, offer 100X odds on some of their games? I mean that was revolutionary, if you could afford it. Five dollars on the Pass or Come with $500 in odds, my lord!

CINDY: Didn’t we play there for about five days and no one came even close to taking those kinds of odds but still, it did feel amazing to just see that 100X odds on the table sign.

ABBY: Now at craps you have some bets that are even worse than the Any-Seven. That’s not a good evolution for the game.

CINDY: True. You have the "fire bet” that comes in with a house edge between 20 and 25 percent. Make that bet enough and it can really hurt you.

ABBY: The new card games come in with higher house edges as well.

CINDY: Maybe it is this: Are today’s casino players better or worse players than the players of the past? Maybe that’s why they play games that are not of the highest quality? I mean, think of this. Players who enjoy playing the computerized table games, basically slot machines using the table games as their basic image.

ABBY: Maybe the slot machines will ultimately take over everything in the casino. Sad to think of the table-games becoming nothing more than another type of slot machine game.

CINDY: Think of all the casino personnel who will lose their jobs as the computers and machines take over. I sound like a Luddite in this.

ABBY: More and more people out in the workforce with some jobs not available anymore. There aren’t many blacksmiths anymore. I guess that's progress.

CINDY: What about the poor change lady at the slot machines? That’s a whole class that has diminished a lot.

ABBY: I remember some of them would tell you quietly which machines were due to hit. Of course, they weren’t due to hit but if a machine did hit, the player might just tip that change lady.

CINDY: But we still love going to the casinos, don't we?

ABBY: Correct!