Losing it

Million-dollar MegaJackpots. High-stakes poker. New England gambling has come a long way from bingo. The Phoenix sent Chris Wright into the fray to find out just how far. Illustration by Kevin Banks.

by Chris Wright

WE BEAT THE rush hour. Nina, Kevin, and I are bombing down the Pike on a Friday evening, oblivious to the trees, rest stops, and chimney stacks flashing by. We're packing plastic -- BankBoston, Mastercard, American Express -- heading for the Sun. The Mohegan Sun casino, in Connecticut, the third-largest casino in America, the newest of the New England gambling dens. As we cross the border we swear we can already feel the action pulsing.

Impatience sets in. It might not be Nevada, but under the right conditions Connecticut can seem boundless, hypnotically incremental: Exit 97 . . . Exit 96 . . . Exit 95 . . . . "Are we there yet?" asks Nina, whiningly. Kevin has taken to kicking the back of my seat. But who's complaining? At least these days you don't have to go all the way to Vegas to journey into the dark heart of the American Dream.

Action
Did I say heart? Sorry, pacemaker.

As it turns out, the real action is to be found in the casino's multilevel, multidimensional parking lot. It is a Kafkaesque monstrosity, a demolition derby for over-60s, a game of maniacal musical chairs. Back and forth. Up and down. We must have driven past one car at least seven times -- a lumbering gray Buick, its driver so small that you could barely see the shiny patina of his head. Nope, big old American bonecrushers don't stand a chance in here. The last time we see the Buick, it's nudging its front end into a two-inch crevice in the wall, an Infiniti behind it whining with impatience.

But who cares? We're driving a compact, and after a mere thirty or so circuits we're able to find a spot.

Getting in
The outside of this place deserves a mention. Pocahontas + Neiman Marcus = Mohegan Sun. There.

The first thing we see when we step inside is a man and woman, middle-aged, seated in a pair of complimentary casino wheelchairs, having their bloodied heads tended to by worried-looking staff. (Chasing the same parking spot? The same quarter rolling across the floor?) Otherwise, it isn't quite the vast

Gomorrah we had anticipated. "It's mally," says Kevin, displaying his impeccable way with words. "I feel like I could buy a pair of shoes here."

Amid all the glass and tile are a few perfunctory gestures toward a rugged Native American theme: huge logs lashed together with thick twine provide imaginary structural support; arrows bristle overhead, as if caught in mid-flight, directing us to ATMs, credit windows, and bathrooms. A few huge pine trees sprout incongruously from the center of the lobby, encased in the immense room like insects trapped under a cup. We swarm toward the casino floor, drawn by the chaos of buzzers and bells and clattering coins and chips and mumbling voices. We're in.

On the floor
Easy, easy. You don't want to start too fast. There's a word in gamble-speak: to "steam." It goes something like this: you want a bit of fun, and of course you want to make some money, but you lose some early on. You're down, so you want to win back what you've lost, but you don't. You lose. Unlucky. Now you're down a bundle, and now you really want to win even a portion of your money back, but you don't, you lose again, an appalling stroke of luck and you're acting crazy -- the rent, the vacation, the fucking mortgage, and now you need to win, you have to, and you have to play until you do, but you don't. And, of course, your luck has to change sooner or later, doesn't it? Now you're steaming.

So you want to take it slow at first. We stop off at the Bow & Arrow bar for a round of G&Ts.

In the bar
Gulp.

On the floor
A battalion of stiff-backed security guys observe our entrance with thinly veiled distaste. They are wired up, decked out in so many headsets, microphones, and walkie-talkies you can hear them fizz. "Radioheads," I mumble as we walk by, at once stirred by my own daring and puzzled by my choice of insult.

We each procure a $10 roll of quarters and join the throng at the slots. Heavy-lidded, liver-spotted men wearing three-button shirts ramble about taking sips of their "free" drinks, each of which probably cost enough in bets to buy a case of Absolut. Blobby women -- hard to see where their seats begin and they end -- play 17 machines simultaneously. "I need a hit," says one map-faced woman to no one in particular, gazing into the reels as if they housed an oracle. "I need a drink," says Kevin, and we scout around for one of the waitress-squaws roaming the place.

Three-wheeled Larks give way to each other at junctions. A man attached to some kind of portable dialysis machine feeds the slots with mechanical gusto. Pink and blue pastels explode across the scene. A palace of greed and lust? More like an Orthopedic Bed Users of America convention.

But who notices the details when you come face to face with fate?

Fate
Are you a winner or a loser? Tricky question. Many of us try to answer it by measuring the gap between the reality of our lives and our expectations, and even then it's a tough nut to crack. But playing the slots removes all equivocation -- the language of jangling bells and a rush of coins cannot be misunderstood, nor can the silence of failure. Everyone wants to feel like a winner. But what if you're running out of time, locked in a listless marriage, attached to a mechanical kidney -- how could you possibly count yourself lucky other than through that convergence of sevens or bars or cherries?

A winner: four middle-aged women stand by as their friend hits big on the Wheel of Fortune -- $1000! Their hooting and whooping turns every neck within a hundred yards, and draws looks of blunt resentment from neighboring slots.

Grudgery
If you stay long enough on one slot, it's yours.

Some players have debit cards plugged into their machines, spiral wires extending from pocket to slot, like umbilical cords. As I sit down beside one tobacco-stained guy, there is a palpable grudgery; he peers at my reels from the corners of his eyes, the way one man might watch another dancing with a beautiful woman -- appalled by the prospect of someone other than himself getting lucky. "I'm playing that one," he spits at Nina as she tries to take her place on his other side.

Lucky? Cherry-Bar-Seven. Bar-Bar-Lemon. We drop a quick $30 and make our way over to the tables.

The tables
Stacks of chips, the satisfying clicks and rattles. Massive stakes slide unfathomably around the Paigow Poker table. Chain-smoking men squint at fistfuls of cards and relinquish mountains of money without batting an eyelash or raising an eyelid. "Chin the square with a black drake," they say. "Block the diamond rung on a flat rope." Or something. It often seems that the higher the stakes, the less emotive the bettor. The Paigow Poker table, the baccarat table, the high-stakes blackjack table -- these are the tables filled with the Nonchalant. Lose the kids' college fund? Light another butt. Win $50,000? Have another plate of nuts and get on with it.

A quick spin on the roulette table leaves us a little poorer. We wend our way to the $5 blackjack tables and cash a twenty.

Blackjack
There are three basic types of blackjack dealer:

1) The Chatterer effusively apologizes or congratulates you, depending on your luck.

2) The Resenter doesn't give a shit, deals the cards, and maintains the same bored scowl no matter what.

3) The Surly Guy takes all your money and looks down your girlfriend's shirt.

We find ourselves a resenter, a woman. Or maybe she's just trying to fit in; it's like Appomattox at this table. As I sit down, people shift uneasily in their seats, shoot glances of antipathy and mistrust. "Don't touch the cards," snaps the dealer after I fidget with a miserable three of diamonds. A pear-shaped guy to my left (a Farm Aid recipient, by the look of things) glares from under the peak of his grimy cap. "Yeah, idiot, don't touch the cards," imply his narrowed, slightly crossed eyes.

You can't blame him. Gambling is a frighteningly random undertaking, and players are very particular about getting the dynamics in order, to help them keep things under control.

Ritual
Forget the Bible Belt. Casinos are the last pockets of superstition and mysticism in modern America.

We live in a secular society -- even those who profess a belief in an all-powerful God don't really feel that their prayers will be answered. Not really. But here our intricate little rituals seem to have an immediate effect, practical and visible. People chant and mumble, wear polka-dot undies, hang their firstborn's boots around their neck. They fret about where they put their smokes, how they hold their cards, when they sip their drink, what they drink, what they eat beforehand, how they sit, how they wear their hair, when they talk, smile, piss, and breathe. People get tetchy when their rites are violated. And then there's me, arriving unannounced, fiddling with the damn cards.

Still, the people at my table needn't have worried. Twenty bucks is soon lost -- bang-bang-bang-bang and off to the bar.

Losing
It's a lot easier to lose money at a casino than it is to win it. Ching!

Almost everybody loses, and everybody handles losing differently. The Nonchalant Type slides money around for exercise. The Living Dead are similar except for a single detail: they let out an unearthly little howl when they lose more than $10. There's the Desperate Couple -- "Steve/Julie, stop, that's two hundred dollars! Please, stop." Please, stop: notice the comma, the calming comma. But Steve and Julie, of course, are steaming (see above), and they can't stop.

Then there is He Who is Down to His Last Few Dollars. Painfully easy to spot, trying to look nonchalant, but sweating too much to be convincing, running his fingers through his hair, fingering his dwindling pile of chips. "Hit me." Wallop. Bust. He Who is Down to His Last Few Dollars is likely to take advantage of the casino's gratis Euthanasia Service. (Ha ha.) But there is a flip side to despair. He Who is Down to His Last Few Dollars has the potential to get the biggest, baddest, most glorious rush in all gambledom. To be down to your last few dollars and then get the big win. That's the shot. That's what it's all about.

We who haven't lost enough yet, we simply go to the bar.

In the bar
Aahh.

Even with the multiple screens showing nonstop sports, with the security personnel staring us down (maybe they think our scribblings and jottings mean we have a system), even with the $4.50 G&Ts and the lack of complimentary pretzels, the Bow & Arrow offers us welcome respite from the bloodletting of the main floor. Here we are able to put our feet up, kick back, and . . .

A heavyset security guy makes a sudden move toward us, closing in at an alarming rate. He's charging like a fucking rhinoceros. And then he just stops, steam coming out of his nostrils, and turns back towards his fellow rhinos.

Whatever he's trying to do, it doesn't work. Or at least nobody collapses to the floor in fear.

"I feel a win coming on," I chirp, not quite convincing myself.

Nina nudges me with an elbow and nods at Kevin, who has a strange expression on his face, like he just swallowed a peanut. "Let's go," he says. Once more into the fray.

Que será será

Whatever will be, will be. It's a comforting notion, that we can put our lives on autopilot, perhaps take a little snooze as we hurtle unerringly toward our predestination. Very nice -- until the illusion is shattered when you run head-on into a great big chunk of What Would Have Been.

Crash!
Playing the 25-cent slots is one surefire way of keeping your losses to a minimum.

Still, if you play the five-quarter maximum, you can drop five bucks in 30 seconds. And if you're playing the five-quarter slot, you have to play five quarters: each additional coin will buy you another possible way for the three reels to yield a win (the symbols can match up straight across, on the diagonal, and so on). To play anything less than five quarters can leave you haunted by what would have been.

Clear? Let me apply the principle: during a weak moment I play three quarters instead of five, only to watch the 777

combination come up on the fourth-quarter bet. What would have been -- what should have been -- a 6000-quarter payout isn't. Kerthunk!

Momentum
Which means the machine's ready to pay out, right?

Right. I've taken to chasing the change trolleys up and down the aisles, charging Nina and Kevin with the care of my machine while I'm away. My machine. Where the hell am I? Where are those bloody change trolleys when you need them? Mohegan Sun employs 5400 people, and it takes me 10 minutes to find one of them. $20, $20, $20. Each roll seems to go faster than the last. A downhill roll, a ride on the steam train . . .

Suddenly Nina taps me on the shoulder. I jerk and gasp like a disturbed sleepwalker. "What time is it?" she asks, her eyes looking like two hot lumps of coal.

The time
Time is money.

It's a much-observed fact that casinos shun windows, clocks, or any other time-figuring-out device. There's a simple explanation: in here we don't measure time by traditional, temporal standards. In here we have a much more reliable gauge -- moolah. How long ago was it we were sitting in the bar? That was about $140 ago. How long since we arrived? Oh, $250. How long do we have left? About five bucks.

"What time is it?" Time to go.

Gone
Adrenaline. Your body is its own pusher.

The rush gone, the slump setting in, we wander through the mally lobby, out through the casino's front doors. Out here it's deathly quiet. We find the car (miraculously) and pull into the soggy Saturday morning. As we exit the Mohegan Sun compound, around the indoor-outdoor parking lots, via the tangle of little routes and roads, we pass a ramp looping back marked RETURN TO CASINO. Only now do I realize that we haven't had a bite in hours, and I'm starving. I look up at the moon, white and not quite perfectly round, like a new potato in the cabbage water of the sky.

Nina drives; streetlights flash by. Kevin and I sleep the whole way home.