That's The Ticket!

This is just one of the many tickets I got out of the lucky, lucky machine I sat down in front of today. I usually always play the same kind of machine. And I look for two things.

First, it has to be the Double Diamond machine; the one with the traditional bars and cherries but also the diamonds, either facing up or down, that will "pop" to the pay line. I love it because it feels like I'm getting two spins in one! Just when I think it's lining up, a hair later, the diamond "pops" up or down to that line and often fills my pockets with money.

Second, I usually only play dollar slots. Sometimes I'll do quarters but since I never was a giant math whiz, I hate to keep track of the quarters; four credits equal a dollar, eighty credits equal twenty dollars. Feh! I like straight up dollar talk; one credit is one dollar. Nice and easy. I also almost always play the maximum coin allowed. In the Double Diamond it's usually two, but the one I play at Railroad Pass, which I have won on, plays three.

Tonight was a whole different ballgame though. When in Reno, if we're not staying at Boomtown in Sparks, we will go to Sierra Sid's which is at the T/A in Reno. In that place, I like to play the quarter Double Diamond. But instead of Sierra Sid's today, we went across the lot to Western Village Inn. Ed wanted to play blackjack so I found my machine and went to town.

I was doing pretty good until I saw the girl next to me win a thousand dollars on the machine she was on. I asked what she started with and she said one hundred. She sat down after me and I watched out of the corner of my eye as she started to rack up the money. After she hit the thousand, she cashed out and left. So I tried my hand at her machine

It was a machine called SEVENS; just line up the sevens and win. The max coin to play was three dollars, so that's what I played. Three sevens of any kind, thirty dollars. Three blue sevens, sixty dollars. Three green sevens, one hundred and fifty dollars. Three yellows, five hundred and the top dog was three red sevens which paid one thousand, one hundred ninety-nine dollars!

So I played. I started with twenty dollars and quickly got up to three hundred! I was in total shock. Then I hit six hundred. Then I came back down. Then up again! Then back down. Finally, I hit three yellows and got five hundred dollars! I was up around eight hundred dollars at this point. I thought I was going to get lucky so I kept playing, but once I got close to seven hundred, I decided to cash out - that's the ticket you see there.

Then I took one hundred dollars from that and started to play again. I hit the three green sevens twice, and a whole bunch of blues and multi-coloreds. I was up around three hundred, then five hundred, then six hundred again. I should have cashed out then, but I didn't. I had already put my starting money back in my purse so I was now playing with casino cash. It could have been mine but I was greedy; I wanted more.

I just figured if I could hit those three yellow sevens again, I'd stop. And if I hit the red, I'd for sure stop. But I kept going, winning and losing along the way. I switched machines, switched back. Played my double diamond and SEVENS side by side. I was totally on a roll! I even gave Ed some of my winnings to play with. He's usually the one to give me money to gamble with, so I felt like a big shot.

But ultimately, that beautiful seven hundred dollar ticket dwindled. I still went home with five hundred dollars, which means I came out ahead! And isn't that the whole point?

I'm super-excited because I love winning. It was even worth the DISGUSTING smoke I had to breathe in all night. The minute I got into the truck, Ed and I both stripped down, put our clothes in a plastic bag so I wouldn't smell the smoke in the truck and took showers ala Silkwood.

I just love that my game involves no skill; all I have to do is sit and press a button. Where else can you press a button and get five hundred dollars??


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