(Last part)
LOS ANGELES, California -- Would you believe that most of the players who frequent the casino resorts are the pensioners who can’t control the urge to play the slot machines? It’s like magnet that has put them in a bind for years.
Like the other gamblers, they share the same wish - to hit the jackpot in the lottery or in the casino. Although it is a game of chance, many are still putting their bets at the expense of getting mired in heavy debt.
“I knew of a friend who has been buried in debts because of gambling. Later on, he was kicked out of the apartment because he couldn’t pay the monthly rent anymore,” said Monique D., a single mother and a casino player who requested not to reveal her last name.
After a night’s charade, shifting from one slot machine to another, players return to the bus, where the same driver would drop them off at the same spot where they were picked up.
At dawn, across the parking lot of the supermarket, this writer could see them coming down one by one from the white bus looking like weary penguins - walking lazily, with their heads down. Perhaps, thinking about their losses from the previous night’s adventure.
While others walk towards their homes, others hop into their parked vehicles not far from the pick up point. Though some may suffer losses, a few would luckily hit the jackpot.
“I recalled a moment many years ago, when a player named ‘Maria’, a Hispanic senior citizen, was waiting for our bus when she decided to play a little bit more,” Paralejas narrated. Unexpectedly, she hit a jackpot of more than USD800,000.
Instead of boarding the bus for home, the casino management convinced her to stay for a couple of days more. She relented. But itching to reach home, she called up her relatives to pick her up. “Had she stayed for a few more days, all her winnings might have been exhausted because she’d be forced to play again and again,” Paralejas said.
She narrated that this tactic happened to a Cambodian player who won more than a million in jackpot. The casino told him to stay for a few more days until his winnings got depleted because he kept on playing, she said.
Sadly, some players are not that wise. Some of them would keep playing their favorite games until they exhausted the very last penny of all their winnings.
So why do some people get hooked on casino games?
“There is only one reason why people go to the casinos, and that is to make money,” said Earl Nishiyama, a retired Boeing employee and a resident of Rancho Palos Verdes.
“But what happens is that as they get hooked on the games they also begin to lose more,” he said.
Still some observers ask why gambling patrons travel all the way to Las Vegas or Pechanga when they can enjoy the casinos in Los Angeles?
In California, “the slot machines are the exclusive domain of the tribes in Indian reservations where casinos have sprouted over time,” Inarda shared in a conversation. “It’s different in Las Vegas where many casinos have continued to attract an undetermined number of gamblers daily.”
"The gambling environment can provide an escape from everyday life,” Samantha Gluck, a Houston-based journalist who specializes in health care trends, mental health and fitness, claimed in her health-related blog.
She added: “Whether it be the glitzy casino environment, a loud and exciting amusement arcade or even an online betting company, for the time that we are taking part, we can be surrounded by different people, different sounds and emotions, all of which stimulate and arouse our senses."
Gluck added that gambling is a human nature that provides excitement, especially if one is taking some risks.
Despite the negative drawbacks, it is still hard to comprehend as to why droves of people continuously make the long trip to where the “slot machines” are. (By Randy G. Altarejos)
(About the author: Randy G. Altarejos was a former editor of the Philippines News Agency. He is now based in Los Angeles, California.)
