Thursday, January 09, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Mercury

Parlor games

Bingo continues to be a major draw for Las Vegas casinos

By Bob Shemeligian

Inside the bingo room of Texas Station, it's as still as an oil painting, and as quiet as the inside of a church during a silent invocation. The only sound is the steady, calm voice of a woman, whose image is on a monitor, methodically calling out number after number. The only motion from the rows of players seated at long rectangular tables is from their writing hands as they move their daubers over paper bingo sheets.

Some of them, as they get close to a bingo, with only one or two numbers left to be daubed, settle into a trance. Like lizards perched on desert rocks, they half-close their eyes and stay perfectly still. Others ritualistically move their daubers back and forth over the remaining numbers as the voice drones on. A few silently mouth the numbers they want to hear. Over and over, they whisper incantations to the bingo gods.

It's hard to believe that only a few feet away, on the other side of the heavy wooden and glass bingo room doors, lies the cacophony of the busy casino floor.

Finally, a player shouts "Bingo!" and the other players slump a bit, put down their daubers and wait for confirmation and the start of another game.

This scene is repeated every odd hour all afternoon and throughout the evening, mostly at locals casinos throughout Southern Nevada.

"It's very popular, both in Southern Nevada and throughout the world," says Don Carrier, publisher of the Bingo Bugle, a trade publication with a circulation of 115,000 in Nevada and California. "Bingo has a bigger attendance than organized baseball. It's huge, and the players are serious."

Very serious, confirms Mike Gilmartin, spokesman for Arizona Charlie's hotel-casino. "At some of these places you get the feeling that if you [wrongly] call out a bingo, you're taking your life in your hands," Gilmartin says. "It's like, release the hounds."

Carrier recalls one bingo game involving a man in a wheelchair with an oxygen tank. "He hit three bingos in one session," Carrier says. "After the third one, an old lady blurted out, `One more time, and I'm gonna crimp your hose.'"

While most bingo players are more gracious about losing, they all love the thrill of calling out "Bingo" and winning money. Bingo executives understand this, and they go to great lengths to lure these players. They run games that make little or no money. They offer free libations and even doughnuts. During holidays, they run promotions and offer free gifts.

Their ulterior motive: to drive casino traffic.

"It's a slot draw," says Dee Goss, bingo manager at the Castaways (the former Showboat).

Lyn Brown, bingo manager at the Suncoast, says players often play slots or table games between bingo sessions. "While bingo is more of a social event, the players are gamblers," she says.

But nowhere in the casino do they cater as much to players as they do in bingo rooms. "It's really a nice atmosphere," says Kimberly Payne, bingo manager at Arizona Charlie's on Decatur Boulevard. "They all know us and we know them. We form friendships and bonds. People plan everything around bingo. Newlyweds come in to play. I've even had one guy propose in the middle of a session."

So familiar are the players to staff workers, referred to in trade parlance as "bingo agents," that when a player doesn't show up for a few days, it's not unusual for an agent to call the player at home just to make sure everything is okay.

And sometimes, things aren't okay.

"I can't tell you how many funerals I've been to," says one agent, who asked to remain anonymous.

Bingo also has its distinct culture. The players commonly use terminology completely unfamiliar to the world outside the bingo parlor. Terms like "nine-away," "five-packs," "double hardway," "Texas T" and "into-games," are easily recognizable to veteran bingo players. So are the novelties, which include bingo cups, bingo key chains and even tidy bingo bags.

"In those bags you'll find all their lucky charms, their daubers, their water-base glue to hold the paper to the table so it doesn't move around when they daub the numbers," Carrier says. "I call them their bingo tools."

Among the most interesting bingo novelties are designer daubers, molded in a variety of forms, such as cute, smiling bulldogs or buff male cartoon characters wearing only briefs--nicknamed "Jock Boys" or "Romeos."

Most bingo players are older women. But even this aspect of the game--a game first played in 16th century Italy and popularized in America in 1929 by New York toy salesman Edwin Lowe--is changing. "We're seeing more men, and we're seeing a younger crowd," says Goss. "It's not just old ladies anymore."

Among the changes that are bringing in younger players is the introduction in recent years of electronic daubers that keep track of called numbers and alert the player to bingos and to possible bingos that could be one number away. But the biggest recent bingo innovation is bigger jackpots.

"With the progressive jackpots, you can win over $260,000 at a Station property," Carrier says. "That's not just a comfortable win. That's a life-changing win."

Weldon Russell, director of bingo, keno and poker for Station Casinos, says five Station Casinos offer a linked Jumbo Bingo Progressive jackpot that starts at $100,000 and often exceeds twice that amount.

"Eight sessions a day, they play for the Jumbo, and it can be hit at any time," Russell says. "Right now, it's sitting at over $250,000 and when it's hit, it comes back at $100,000. Where else can the player find such a bang for the buck?"

To keep the players in the Station bingo rooms, Russell has added electronic amenities from the electronic daubers to table-mount television screens to flat-screen bingo monitors on every wall. But these are not what interest Loretta Hawkins, a regular player.

"To me, this isn't gambling," says Hawkins, who carefully sets a little Buddha doll on the table in front her before she starts playing. "It's sitting down and relaxing. I really enjoy it."

Then there's Susie Weeks, another regular player who routinely puts in five late-afternoon bingo sessions.

"I enjoy the game, and I know most of the people," Weeks says as she meticulously daubs numbers on 12 bingo cards. "I could play 24, but I don't want to work so hard today."

Her companion, Roy Bushey, says, "I hope Susie bingos, because then you'll get to hear her bingo yell. It reverberates off the walls."