Slot Machine Gambler Walks Off With Game

Slots are said to be the cause of numerous social ills and issues but for one man in Zambia it was just his money he wanted back from the machine

Gambling machines have always been somewhat controversial however much glamorous pictures of casino floors full of them can be made to look with sumptuous looking decor and tactically placed attractive people. One either finds them a fascinating, simple way of enjoying the risk and reward of gambling, or as a faceless monolith whose flashing lights and bleeping noises are mirthless laughter in your face. This is a seesaw of opinion that tends to be based on whether you’re winning or not at the time someone asks you about them.

In recent years US gambling laws have become more and more liberalized as state after state chases the tax revenues we gamblers can provide for their coffers, with many adding the slot machine fields of casino gambling to their regions in an attempt to stop that gambling dollar going across state lines, and so it’s probably no surprise that the US was where the slot machine, sometimes called a fruit machine in the UK, came from originally. Of course like all true inventions it didn’t just crop up, there were forerunners.

In 1891 Sittman & Pitt of Brooklyn, New York put together a gambling machine that held five drums displaying fifty playing cards with the win lines consisting of poker hands with play including the “hold” feature we know so well today. Payouts were by the management – usually drinks and cigars given the stake was just a nickel – but the essence of the machine was there. The first true slot machine, however, was developed on the other side of the country by Charles Fey of San Francisco, California around 1890.

One of the reasons the Sittman & Pitt machine required payouts by staff was that the huge number of winning combinations made an automated payout system all but impossibly complex to contrive mechanically, Fey developed a much simpler system. Three spinning drums displaying a range of 5 symbols (including the Liberty Bell) made reading a win far easier and this meant the machine could pay out cash to the lucky winners, up to fifty cents for three bells. The machines instant popularity is indicated by just how much and by how many it was then copied.

Bell Machines Ring Up The Cash

These “Bell machines” as they were known at the time introduced all sorts of variations on the theme with some rewarding players in cash, others in gum or other small gifts, and their popularity (despite some states banning them) was overwhelming. The evolution of the machine then slowed considerably limited by the available technology of the time, until the 1960s when Bally created the first true electromagnetic slot machine, Money Honey which introduced some important features previously unavailable to the manufacturers.

Zambian Man Lifts Slot Machine

• Slot machines invented at the end of the 19th century
• Became forerunner of today’s mobile casino gambling
• Man arrested for stealing slot machine

The most salient was the ability for the machine to have a bottomless hopper and thus be able to make larger payouts – of up to five hundred coins – without the need for an attendant. This made for far easier operation of large numbers of machines and thus the slot machine world went electric beginning, some would argue, the fascination with electronic games that led to the computer games industry of today, the move to electronics also did away with the need for a lever, meaning more machines could fit into less space which casino managers loved.

In California around 1976 the Las Vegas based Fortune Coin Co. developed a video slot machine for the first time and put it on trial in the Las Vegas Hilton Hotel. Using a nineteen inch screen and some (by today’s standards) very basic logic boards the machine was approved by the Nevada State Gambling Commission and the technology bought out by International Gaming Technology just two years later. These days, of course, machines come with second screens or even bonus games echoing the pinball bonuses of the past.

There are no end to the varieties of games now on offer, with modern computers able to render any game in stunning graphics and with a variety of audio accompaniment, they come with touch screen controls and some even involve elements of skill alongside the far more traditional reliance of a player on sheer luck to win. Indeed some machines are sophisticated enough to give the illusion of a skill requirement despite there being none, a point of contention that has sometimes hit the headlines of the gambling news sites.

Crack Cocaine Of Gambling

With the density of machines often skewed to be more heavy in poorer areas, and some machines giving people the ability to stake large sums in quick succession, some of the anti-gambling lobby have taken to calling them the “crack cocaine of gambling” – especially in their fixed odds betting terminal incarnation, and there has also been a good deal of muttering from local authorities in the UK about how the machines contribute to problem gambling and social disorder citing alarming figures of the number of police call outs to the establishments housing the machines.

Whether or not these machines are a good thing remains a matter of debate and those of us that prefer to use online gambling sites in the US rather than the physical slot machines of casinos, racinos and riverboats, are left a little bemused by the fascination with these now all but antiquated game delivery systems. However many people remain firm fans, and indeed they’ve spread across the world to far off destinations and locations. Indeed it was in Zambia recently that an irate loser decided the machine had swallowed enough of his money and he wanted it back.

In what is perhaps a feat of extreme strength through anger the gambler, one Lazzo by name, physically picked up the machine, placed it upon his shoulder and in front of a stunned crowd, walked out of the establishment and turned for home. He was, it is said, planning to dismantle the machine to regain his lost stake. It will come as no surprise to learn that the authorities were alerted to this brazen crime and the would-be slot machine robber arrested at his home before he’d got so much as a screw out of the machine.

We have yet to see this happen in Vegas, Macau or even Manchester, and we warn all readers that attempting to lift a slot machine onto your shoulder can cause severe back injury, the necessity for a hip replacement and possible incarceration afterward. It remains to be seen if the anti-social behavior so often bleated about by those set against gambling ever reaches Zambian levels in the rest of the world, but I won’t be the one to tell the angry man to put the machine down and come quietly, oh no, not me.