Lucky winner strikes gold
A man from California hit the jackpot at a local casino and won more than $1.6m (£1.2m) on a penny slot machine.
The gentleman, identified only as “Robert S.,” was playing the IGT Wheel of Fortune Ultra Wheels game at the Valley View Casino & Hotel in California when he struck gold, reports ABC 10 News.
Robert, who is planning to invest the money and retire early, said:
I’m still in shock. I couldn’t sleep for two days. I was up tossing and turning and thought they would call me and say the machine malfunctioned.
This is the latest winner in a long list of lucky players who have hit the jackpot. Earlier this week, it was reported that an unnamed Swedish slot player had bagged $2.8m (£2.1m) in winnings after playing a Mega Fortune Dreams game. The biggest slot payout from the game was in 2013 for $20m (£15.5m).
Elsewhere this month, an unnamed bingo player walked away with a record $162,511 (£126,000) jackpot from a Las Vegas casino.
Unfortunately, not everyone who initially wins at a casino gets to take their winnings home. This was the case for one woman after she had won at a slots machine at the MGM National Harbor Casino in Prince George’s County, Maryland in January.
However, due to a typo with the woman’s Social Security number, recorded by the casino staff, the unfortunate winner was left empty-handed when she left the casino. According to this report, some blamed the casino because it was the staff there who wrote the number down wrong.
Knowing when the fun stops
It’s not known how long each of these winners played for before hitting the jackpot. Nor is it known if they are frequent attendees of their local casinos, but in each case they were at the right place at the right time to strike it lucky.
Not everyone is that fortunate when it comes to gambling. As a result, there have been plenty of cases where people have lost money, often more than they can afford. For plenty of people, though, it’s hard to know when to stop as the next bet could be the one that changes their life for the better. It’s not always that way, though.
In one instance, a mother of two from New Zealand ignored the warning signs that her husband was a gambler. Consequently, over a ten-year period, her husband was able to conceal his problem, resulting in a gambling loss of NZ$200,000 (£101,000; $132,000) after taking out loans with ten finance companies. The impact meant that the family had to sell its home and the couple’s 20-year marriage broke down.
In another case, an accountant from the UK was jailed for five years in January after stealing £400,000 ($503,000) from her employers over a seven-year period to spend on gambling. In total, the woman was reported to have spent £1.2m ($1.5m) on online sports wagering from 2009 to 2016.