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The gambling industry has its sights on a new demographic: nerds. I'm not certain of this, but it was the thought that popped into my head when I noticed Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock staring at me from the side of a slot machine. In May, while attending the Canadian Gaming Summit in Montreal to conduct research for a series of articles I was writing on gambling, I spent an afternoon wandering around a showroom full of slot machines. In addition to the Star Trek model, there was a Bruce Lee slot machine, a Wizard of Oz slot machine and a Dean Martin Wild Party slot machine. There were machines decorated with pictures of wolves, pigs, Harry Houdini, martini glasses, dollar signs, Clint Eastwood, pirates, diamonds, The Monkees, treasure chests, Rolls-Royces, Tony Soprano and ample-bosomed women of various ethnicities. But no matter how the machines were tarted up, I couldn't help but notice they all basically worked the same. Push a button, things spin, lights flash, bells ring, things stop spinning -- game over. Sometimes you win. Most times you lose. This, apparently, is entertainment. I've long been curious about the appeal of gambling because I just don't get it. Casinos, to me, are gaudy palaces of excess. If I wanted to waste money in tacky surroundings, I'd sooner drop some coin for the gourmet fare at Hooters. I'm not a big fan of lotteries, either. Don't need a Mercedes. Don't want a McChâteau. Nor am I much for card games. OK, I confess, I play the occasional hand of Crazy Eights with my four-year-old daughter, who, more often than not, beats me like a dusty rug (I think she sneaks extra eights from her Dora the Explorer deck). Of all the forms of gambling, however, slot machines baffle me the most. Why are these things so popular? (In 2006-07, $3 billion of the $4.7 billion in gambling revenues collected by the Ontario government came from slots.) Is it really that much fun to watch cherries and sevens spin for a couple of hours? It's not as if, in the long run, you can come out ahead. Casino operators don't clutter their floors with slot machines because they're fans of Star Trek and Dirty Harry. In the over-the-top but honest words of one slot-machine maker, these devices are "powerful revenue-generating forces." How do you think casinos pay for those peeing cherub statues? Fortunately for me, the keynote speaker at the gaming conference on the day I attended was going to answer the question lodged in my noggin: Why do people love gambling so much? The speaker, Gary Loveman, runs U.S. gambling giant Harrah's Entertainment, Inc. He's a former Harvard professor with a PhD in economics from M.I.T. -- by all accounts, a smart dude. He was also a great speaker: confident, direct, funny. Expressing his distaste for dog racing, a popular form of gambling in the U.S., Mr. Loveman said even the dogs find it boring. Another thing I liked about Mr. Loveman was that he didn't pepper his speech with cheap praise for the gambling industry. Indeed, he criticized the industry, calling it profoundly uninnovative. To illustrate this point, he displayed a slide of a century-old slot machine next to a modern model. His take: not much difference. So I was confident that Mr. Loveman, who seemed like a straight-shooter, would enlighten me on the appeal of gambling. In fact, he said he had recently discussed that very topic with the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal. Gambling is fun, he told the crowd, because of the excitement of realizing an uncertain outcome. Funny, I expected the word "money" to appear in his answer. Uncertain outcomes provoke little anticipation when nothing's at stake. I later visited the Canadian Gaming Association's website, which, under a banner declaring "everybody wins," had a blurb about how Canadians gamble for fun, not money. If we don't gamble for money, I guess we play slots because we enjoy pushing buttons that activate bells and lights. Like toddlers. Except we do it while sipping martinis. But, hey, who am I to judge what people do in their spare time? I like to watch Adam Sandler movies (seen Happy Gilmore four times) so I'm hardly an expert on quality entertainment.
If the blinking LEDs and boop-beep-boops of a slot machine bring a smile to your face, by all means, play away. It's your money. And if nerds occasionally pull their noses from Klingon dictionaries to pump a few bucks into Star Trek slot machines, I wish them the best of luck. May they spin long and prosper.
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