My whole life I've been gambling at something. I gambled for baseball cards in elementary school in the early sixties. By the late sixties I was gambling at pool. But there was also another game I gambled at and had some success....that is, until they cut me off. It was an illegal pinball game, with no flippers, in Gonzales, Louisiana.
I had a friend, James. He and I both became quite adept at the game. I worked in a pool hall. He worked in the super market across the street. We both learned to play the game in the pool hall. The owner eventually cut us off from playing.
In the link, this guy does a pretty good job of explaining the game. He bet ten nickels to get the game up to where it is. But he doesn't have the money odds maxed out in the example. James and I kept betting a nickel at a time until we had all the screens open and the money odds maxed out. This generally cost well over a dollar.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kk2cd5g0yc
You got 5 balls. Our early strategy was to hit "two in the blue" which payed 600 credits, or $30. The key numbers were 13,16,17,20,21. And of those numbers 13 was the key number for us. It was the very first number we wanted to hit. If we hit that number on the first ball then all we had to do was hit 16,17, 20 or 21 on the second or third balls to get the $30 payoff. You had to make strategy decisions before shooting the 4th ball as to whether to continue for "two in the blue" or change up to try and hit something else....unless you hit the yellow rollover, which meant you could change the screen before shooting the 5th ball.
James and I got really good at hitting "two in the blue."
Not known by us at the time was a Supreme Court decision had ruled this game was a slot machine and thus, not a game of skill. The court should have had James and me come in an give them a demonstration of how to control the speed of the ball coming out of the shoot, and how to bump and nudge the machine, without tilting it, to control where the balls went, and where they landed.
When James and me ran into each other the conversation usually went went something like this:
"How much money you got?"
"5 dollars"
"I got 4 dollars, c'mon, let's go hit two in the blue."
We didn't win every time. But we damn sure showed a profit. Word eventually got around. We were getting cut off. We walked into one joint and the owner said:
"Hey, what the hell! You kids think I'm stupid? You can play, but see the sign on the machine? For amusement only kids. So go ahead and play, but you ain't gettin' paid off."
Then the inevitable happened. In another joint we hit two in the blue and tried to cash. The barmistress cussed us up and down:
"You *^(*$$*$(%$&*'s ain't gettin' paid no more in this town." She reached under the machine and clicked the credits off. "Now, get the hell outta here!"
Sometime after that the Feds came in, confiscated all the machines, and destroyed them.
So what's the rest of the story? At the time, James and me, the pre-imminent pinball hustlers of Gonzales, Louisiana....were just a couple of dumass 15 year old kids.
You bought rolls of nickels. You could play one nickel at a time or multiples of a nickel which
