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File This Under “Totally Missing the Point”

A man in Tampa, Florida, obviously needs to recheck his understanding of the definition of a slot machine. Carlos Gutierrez was arrested and held without bail last month after calling 911 twice to report that a slot machine stole his money. The St. Petersburg Times newspaper reported that Gutierrez was playing the slot games at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in early August when he became disgruntled and of the belief that the slot in question took his money. Forty-seven year old Gutierrez placed one 911 call from within the casino, and must have been blown off by the operator, because he then went outside the casino (which is run by the Seminole Indian tribe) and made another call to the emergency hotline. The new dispatcher was clearly not in the mood to take any nonsense, and called Tampa police to come and arrest Gutierrez for making a false 911 call. The Times story did not give any more details, so we may never know exactly what provoked Gutierrez, or what slot machine title he was playing at the time of the alleged “theft.”

Silly us! We thought that slot machines take peoples’ money as a matter of course. One might even say that being taken of one’s money is something like the POINT of gambling in general, and especially at online slot machines or the slot games housed at casinos like the Hard Rock. It’s the height of stupidity to get angry because a slot machine “took [your] money.” Gutierrez may have been better served by playing some of the “just for fun” (free, or practice) online slots offered at the many online casinos on the World Wide Web that cater to novices, or cheapskates like him!

Back to September 2008 Archive.