Columnist Susan Snyder: Gamblers not sorry, Charlie

Friday, March 11, 2005 | 6:11 a.m.

Susan Snyder's column appears Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursday and Sundays. Reach her at snyder@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4082.

WEEKEND EDITION

March 12 - 13, 2005

It was dinner hour Thursday night, and Arizona Charlie's casino was packed.

"Who am I gonna give money to tonight?" a woman shouted over a microphone from the Keno area, where the cash drawing for the week's slot jackpot winners was about to happen. "How much money am I gonna give away tonight?"

They crowded the aisles around the drawing -- some standing on their own two feet, others leaning on canes and walkers to seated wheelchairs.

There was a line for the buffet, a line for the players card prize redemption center, lines for the cashier windows.

On a weeknight at dinnertime, a casino that sits between two of the most aggravating intersections on Decatur Boulevard was packed.

It's hard to believe that a Nevada lottery ticket under debate by state lawmakers this session could begin to make a dent in this.

"Niiiiice and slow, like nitro gylcerin," a patron of the Elbow Creek Bar said to a bartender who made a hilarious show out of bringing a him bottle of beer in slow motion.

A few mintues earlier, the guy had chided the bartender for jostling the beer so that it foamed out the top when opened. The bartender set the bottle on the counter this time, and twisted off the cap.

"Hey, that was something," the guy said to his buddies. "There wasn't even fuzz on it."

More laughter on both sides of the bar.

Behind them, an older woman stared intently at the pirate-theme slot machine she was playing. The red-coiled cord dangled from her frequent player's card, and her wheeled walker stood behind her chair.

She seemed oblivious to the shouting from the bar, the drawing announcer's banter, the slot machines' dinging and general mayhem going on around her.

But it likely brought her there. Given the choice of sitting home with television or getting dressed up and going out where there's stuff going on, many of us would choose the latter.

Over at Ten Penny Alley, the dollar that would buy a lottery ticket will pay for 100 hands of poker -- one at a time or all at once.

I sat down at a machine and stared at the choices. The guy to my right was tapping the keys with both hands as if playing a piano. I watched him without realizing I had leaned over a little too far. He stopped and peered over the top of his glasses.

"Sorry," I said. "It's amazing how many hands you were playing."

I smiled. He didn't.

Two machines away, Tammy La-Pointe was playing 100 hands at a time. She ordered a free Budweiser, then tapped the draw button.

"If there was a lottery, I'd probably still do this because I'm disabled, and there's nothing else to do," said La-Pointe, 46, who suffers from multiple sclerosis.

She no longer can tend bar and wait tables. Sitting around at home is awful, and playing slots gets her out of the house. LaPointe said she blows $5, maybe $10 every couple of months. At least this way, it takes half the night to do it. Lottery tickets don't last that long.

"I don't do this too often, because my (disability) check doesn't last that long," she said. "And maybe I'll win."

She won 92 cents. It wasn't a jackpot, but that wasn't the point.

"I have nothing else to do," she said.