They played in the hopes of winning gum that that they could later exchange for cash. These old-timey gamblers weren’t really playing just for the chance to win gum, though. The bell symbol represents the Bell Fruit Gum company, and “BAR” derives from the company’s logo. The fruits represented different flavors. This variety of machine once dispensed flavored gum rather than money. This is a holdover from how slot machines originally functioned. No such chance exists, says the rule, so leave - or, better yet, sit down and play, with your own money.

We suspect the rule mostly exists to deter loafers from wandering the casino without paying anything, seeking a chance to play for free. This law also might sound contrary to the casino’s interests, because if money’s sitting in a machine, the house is better off if someone plays it and likely now feels compelled to play more. If these prosecuted slots players won big jackpots, you might understand why a casino would fight to avoid having to pay up, but they didn’t. Legally (according to the law the casinos pushed for), that money belongs to the casino.Įmil Kalibradov/Unsplash Same with all money in your wallet (according to a new law still being drafted).

The offense is called “Fraud - Take Money Not Won,” and even picking up cash a vanished player dropped on the floor may get you convicted of it. Hundreds of people are convicted of this every year in Colorado alone. That meant a $500 fine, plus a criminal record and an indeterminable number of failed future background checks. They referred him to prosecutors, who convicted him of fraud. A little bit into this, security guards escorted him away. He put in $20 of his own on top of that to keep playing, and he hit the button for a few rounds. Werling went to a Denver casino and sat at a slot machine. 4 You Can Get Arrested for Playing a Machine Someone Else Put Money In Still, other facts about slots will make you even more angry. You don’t need to know any more than that to shake your fist at it in anger. It’s a machine that takes in money and rarely spits any back out. For comparison, the entire domestic box office might take in $10 billion in a good year (and hasn’t managed that for several years now). Slots in American casinos took in over $34 billion last year, more than everything else casinos do combined. And yet, slots are the most lucrative part of the casino. Everything at a casino is a fool’s game, unless you visit with the assumption that you plan to lose money, but slot machines have the added problem of not even being fun.

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