Great balls of bingo: Players, venues keeping up with changing times

Monday, Oct. 1, 2001 | 8:10 a.m.

At 3 p.m. every day Martha Cowley breezes into the bingo room at Arizona Charlie's on 720 S. Decatur Blvd.

She's a one-person good-luck parade, wearing a red baseball cap covered with American flags and 20 troll dolls.

The dolls, worn to bring luck her way during bingo sessions, are covered in gold glitter. Five of them stand upright on the brim of her hat. The rest are affixed to its sides.

Cowley is a 40-year veteran of the game and seems to know all the other bingo players at Arizona Charlie's.

Similarly, Mary and Archie Ames have played bingo for years. They play five times a week at the hotel-casino, and bring their personalized and laminated "reserved cards" that they use to hold their places at their desired table during afternoon games.

Such unbridled enthusiasm for bingo isn't unusual in Las Vegas bingo halls, where thousands visit daily to play multiple sessions of the slow game of chance.

For some, bingo is cheap entertainment, where $4 will buy an hour's worth of daubing in a quiet room. It's a way to kill time, sip complimentary drinks and enjoy fellowship and structure during the long days of retirement.

For others, bingo is strictly about winning and finding ways to achieve good luck whether it comes by way of bringing a doll to use as a good-luck charm during a game, or several dolls that are strategically given to other bingo players as gifts (to encourage good karma).

There's hall loyalty: Players, particularly those at older establishments such as Arizona Charlie's and Castaways, swear their hall of choice, their "girls" (bingo-center employees) and their payouts are the best.

And there's fierce competition between casinos to draw in players.

Compared to other forms of gambling, casinos make little money from bingo itself, but generate revenue from players who also play slots and video poker and dine at the property's restaurants between bingo sessions.

No longer is bingo fortified only by older women playing an innocent game, bingo managers say.

More men and younger people are playing the game than in years past, and the financial gains are much higher than they used to be.

"The money is a way bigger draw than years ago," said Mary Sandlin, bingo manager at Arizona Charlie's, where more than $42,000 was paid in a "bonanza coverall" (a jackpot in which all numbers on a card must be covered) last week to one lucky player.

Sandlin has been working in local bingo rooms for more than a decade and has seen changes made to accommodate the game's growth.

"There are a lot of rooms now," Sandlin said, referring to local bingo halls. "It's hard to keep people at your place. If we didn't compete with the same kind of money, we'd have nobody.

"You have your loyals here. But if there's a hot ball (a progressive jackpot won on a specific number) somewhere, they'll go."

Of course, they always return.

"When they go to a room to play a big jackpot they feel out of place," Sandlin said. "It's almost like going to a hairdresser's. They're just very close with all the girls ... It's our biggest asset, customer service."

This is partly the reason why Mary Ames has been playing at Arizona Charlie's for years.

"We know all the girls," Ames said, referring to the bingo-center employees who stroll between the tables. "They're like family. They've grown up with us."

Big bingo business

Arizona Charlie's has offered bingo for nearly 12 years.

Because bingo's popularity has grown locally in recent years, the hotel moved its bingo room a year ago to a new location, on the second level of the casino in place of the defunct Palace Grand Ballroom, where it can seat up to 500 players.

Conversely, the bingo room at Castaways was recently reduced to accommodate smaller crowds. It once held 1,200 people and now seats 730 people.

"There are just a lot of bingo rooms in town," Laurine Miller, bingo swing shift supervisor at Castaways, said. "You just have too many choices."

Among the options are newer, state-of-the-art bingo rooms, such as the $1 million bingo room at Suncoast, which opened a year ago.

The room was designed to be aesthetically pleasing, quiet and comfortable. It seats up to 600 players, features the latest in bingo equipment and draws at least 1,500 players each day, according to bingo room manager Lyn Brown.

In keeping with the spirit of competition, Station Casinos in August linked the bingo rooms at its five area hotel-casinos to create a $100,000 "jumbo bingo progressive coverall" jackpot that has already paid out three times.

"Bingo is a very important component to our entertainment offerings," said Kevin Kelley, president of West Las Vegas operations for Station Casinos, adding that bingo, and the foot traffic it draws, is an important asset to being a successful casino.

Some bingo players at other halls say the are drawn occasionally to the progressive jackpots at Station Casinos as well as the GTI computerized bingo games the hotels offer.

The computers, manufactured by Reno's Game Tech International, have altered the sport aspect of bingo for those who choose to use them. They require very little participation by the bingo players, who can watch television or play solitaire on the screens while the game is being played.

Once the information is entered into the computer at the beginning of the bingo session, players don't even need to touch the computer. (The bingo room at Castaways also features the GTI computers.)

Technology vs. tradition

Nearly every bingo room in Las Vegas features TEDS -- hand-held computers that can hold up 150 cards at a time (although, to be fair to all participants, some bingo rooms limit players to between 45 and 60 cards).

Players only have to punch in the bingo numbers on a keypad.

But from one bingo room to the next bingo room, there's contention between players who use paper bingo cards and those who play TEDs.

"I really think the TEDs and the GTIs have ruined it for a lot of bingo players," said a player at Castaways, speaking on condition of anonymity. "For a lot of old-time bingo players, you don't win as much because of the odds."

Players who play paper cards say that electronic players have better odds of winning, because they are playing more cards at a time.

The man explained that before electronic bingo, he and his wife used to play bingo every night of the week. "Now," he said, "I'm down to three or four."

Yet slowly, the electronic games are becoming more popular, even among longtime players who are leaving paper cards behind.

"I won't daub anymore," said 60-year-old Richard Whiteside recently at Castaways, where he leaned back in his chair to watch his bingo games being played on the computer.

"I don't feel like I'm getting my value" with the dauber system, he said. With the computers, "I can play more cards and I've got a better chance of winning."

What about the recreational joy of daubing?

Whiteside rolls his eyes and smiles. "It amazes me that more people don't (play on the computer). It's so simple."

Bingo nation

There are about 50,000 different entities offering bingo in North America. Those include state-regulated charity bingo games, Nevada bingo rooms and games played on American-Indian reservations, said Bob Fulton, vice president of marketing for Ohio Arrow International Inc., which manufactures bingo equipment and supplies.

Though the size of Las Vegas' bingo rooms hardly compares to bingo halls on reservations, which often seat 2,000 players, the presentation of the Las Vegas rooms exceeds other bingo halls across the country, Fulton said.

"(Casinos have) made a major investment to create a nice environment for the bingo player," he said.

And Las Vegas bingo halls have their charm -- even though things can get rough when longtime players who have built their lives around the game fight for their special chairs, a long-standing issue within the bingo community.

At a recent session at Castaways, a melee broke out between two men in their early 70s. The conflict centered on who was first in line to buy his bingo cards.

Fortunately, hotel security arrived before the insults turned to punches. The men cooled off their tempers and were allowed to play.

"There will be a couple of ladies who are good friends," Castaway's Miller said. "They'll get in a tiff about something over bingo and that's the end of it."

But rarely does bickering ruin a game. For the most part, people are cordial, bingo managers say.

"There are people who have played here for 30 years, probably longer," Miller said. "There are people who play every day, and there are some who play every night of the week. They come and meet their friends and go have dinner together.

"(The players) treat us like their family," she added, explaining that she'll get phone calls from regulars who say, 'Hi, this is so and so. Don't worry about me. I won't be in tonight.'

"You get to know them over the years -- know their families," Miller said. "When their kids are in town, they come in, show off their kids. We go to funerals. I've been to several."

The Castaways' bingo room even draws out-of-state regulars, such as Yvonne Hall from Texas, who comes to Las Vegas every month to play bingo at the hotel-casino.

She said she plays bingo for the adrenaline rush. She met her husband at bingo, and joins local players and friends Deanna Smith and Gayle Young to chat (and party, a rarity at quiet bingo rooms) during sessions.

Is there bingo in Texas? "Yeah," Hall said. "But ... it ain't like it is here."

The payouts aren't as high, she said. And, despite the cutthroat competition at Castaways, she likes the friendly environment of the bingo room.

"These people in here are my family," Hall said. "I know everybody in this (room)." But she preferred the hotel's former 24-hour bingo schedule that was discontinued about five years ago.

"The wins were better. We used to hit $1,000 games. And all these die-hards that don't like noise would be home in bed," she said.

After someone shouted bingo from across the room, Hall turned to her friends and stated -- with a strain of sarcasm, disappointment and apathy all in one -- "My heart is broken. But I'm going to play another game."

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