I mentioned earlier that whenever we went to Las Vegas that we were mostly going to visit the in-laws. Still, whenever we were there we usually managed to find an evening or two where we’d go out to Sam’s Town to do a little gambling.
So one night Mary wasn’t feeling well but her mom wanted to go out, so the two of us headed over to Sam’s. She made a beeline to her favorite poker machine, and I sort of wandered around looking for something interesting. That’s when I found a brand new Monopoly slot machine.
Now, your basic generic slot machine has three rollers with a single horizontal line. Pull the lever (or press the button) and the rollers spin a while then stop – if the images lining up with the horizontal line match up in particular ways, you win something. After a while that (apparently) got too boring, because the machine makers fancied things up with multiple lines that gave more chances to win (provided you pumped more money into the machine.)
When that got too boring, they started making theme machines that incorporated more and more bizarre stuff that had no business on a slot machine. Monopoly was no exception. I stared at the “instructions” for a while, and popped a $10 into the slot and gave it a go. After a couple of rolls, some lights and stuff started flashing and the video screen showed a monopoly board and dice. (I was the shoe, apparently. I hate being the shoe.) I was invited to press buttons to roll the dice and my shoe proceeded around the board, accumulating credits as I went. Finally, it finished the video bit and started tallying up my winnings – I had won $80, even though I had no idea how!
After poking around elsewhere it was time to leave. When we got home I told Mary that I had won, but couldn’t adequately explain how the machine worked nor what I had done.
So the following night we decided to head back to Sam’s so Mary could have a night out, and she saw the same Monopoly game. She asked me again what I did, and again I couldn’t explain it. So I popped in another ten to show her what the game was like, and *BAM* I’m the shoe again. We won another $60.
Imagine how much better I could have done if I was the banker…