[ Home ]

[ Slots News ]

He Must Have Met the Wizard

It wasn’t a yellow brick road that led Richard Williamson to the fortune of his dreams. Rather, it was a humble penny slot machine terminal at the Eagle Mountain Casino in Porterville, California. Williamson, a retired veteran of the United States Army, passed into the annals of casino gambling fame after winning the awe-inspiring fortune of one million thirty-one thousand four hundred twenty-five dollars on a Wizard of Oz-themed punter at the casino where he said that he likes to spend his free time and pocket change every once and a while.

Williamson said that he was “shocked” to hear the celebratory strains of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” issuing from the slot machine, and light flashing on the terminal when the five progressive symbols lined up to herald his win. A public relations coordinator for the casino, Jim Valencia, said Williamson told him that he had to look twice and then three times at the slot game to realize that he had really won!

Williamson’s is a tale about following one’s gut instincts. Apparently, he was down to his last credits on the slot machine, and was considering moving on. He says that he just “had a gut feeling” that his luck was about to change, so he fed another twenty dollars into the machine. One spin proved fruitless, but the second was the one that changed his life forever! This is also a fable about playing the max bet – Williamson’s progressive jackpot haul would not have been nearly as impressive if he were not playing the maximum three dollars per spin. The vet says that he is planning on paying off both his and his son’s home mortgage and moving the family to Montana with his earnings.

Back to February 2009 Archive.