However, I was stunned when I found out that the shooter had actually ordered my book, Tax Help for Gamblers. This was a connection I never expected.

This publicized fact, plus writings and comments on my public Jean Scott Facebook page, brought reporters calling for several days, wanting any little bit of information I could give them.  I had no personal details about the shooter, but I could give them some general material about taxes.  There had been some stories – rumors? – that he had reported  5 million dollars in gambling “winnings” on a tax return one year.  I explained that this sum was likely the total of his many W-2G jackpots resulting from frequent play at high denominations. This is usually a gross amount, not a net profit amount, and will be offset by a deduction of losses.  Actually the tax return might not show if you were a net loser, since you can only deduct your losses up to the amount of your wins.

I also had to explain the details of video poker to some of the reporters, many who are not casino gamblers themselves.  There has been a lot of misinformation being put out by uninformed reporters.  If you want to find out more details, accurate ones, about the shooter’s gambling life, I suggest you read the blog Anthony Curtis wrote on this website.  There is also a very interesting discussion in the “Comments” that follow that blog.

Of course we heard about the awful events very soon since my phone woke us up in the middle of Sunday night with a flood of pinging messages asking if we were okay.  We turned on the TV and followed the news closely until we returned home Tuesday.

We were shocked when we heard the details that the shooter was an avid video poker player, one who played in a similar way we do, figuring the math odds to choose good machine schedules, taking advantage of bonus benefits, and utilizing the comp system.  It made the whole thing even more personal for us when we learned that he was a CZR’s player who had attained the highest players-club level of 7 Star.  We were staying at Harrah’s Tahoe as a free fully comped trip because we both also were 7 Stars!

Right now there seems to be no evidence that the shooter’s  deadly motivation was connected to his choice of gambling as an activity he avidly pursued, i.e., that he was losing or going broke and that triggered violent action.  Although he used a casino as his crime base, he targeted not casino employees but a wholly different group of people, country music fans.  And this added more to the confounding unknown motivation since his family said that he had always liked country music.  This incident reinforces the fact that people of all different types and from varied circumstances can commit violent crime, whether there is one victim or many: no matter what job or hobby or interests they have, whether they are rich or poor, no matter what ethnicity or religion or political beliefs, whether they suffer from a known or obvious mental problem or seem perfectly “normal.”  And sometimes there is just no answer to “Why?”

Some people are asking Brad and me if we knew the shooter because they know that we might have played in the same casinos or participated in some of the same activities he did.  We haven’t played on the Vegas Strip for the last couple of years, sticking mostly to the off-Strip casinos that attract mostly locals.  But for many years we did play in the Strip high-limit areas, at the higher denominations that generated invitations to big-money tournament and drawings.  We don’t know how long he had been gambling at the high level and at which casinos and whether our paths might have crossed.  But we do not remember ever seeing him.

We feel the same sadness that permeates our whole city, but we rejoice in the positive surge within the community to pull together and try to make something positive come out of this terrible tragedy.  Our country is so divided these days; it is so inspiring to hear stories how people were so quick to help others, during and after the bloodbath – police and civilians,  white and  people of color.  No one asked someone in need if they were liberals or conservatives, Democrats or Republicans. Why does it take a disaster to unite as fellow human beings?

I have been gambling in casino with successful results for 33 years. Do I no longer need to read about this activity to continue being successful? Do I “know it all” by now?

The short and sweet answer to those questions: I spend just as much time researching and studying now as I did back when I first started. In fact, perhaps more! Although there is more information available now with the ever-expanding Internet, a wise gambler needs so much more to cope with a much more challenging casino environment.

Of course, I myself continue to add to this Internet flood of information available to gamblers. My latest contribution has been added to the very extensive American Casino Guide YouTube video series. In this interview, I talk about my new book, The Frugal Gambler Casino Guide, and the new focus I have in helping recreational players lose less and thus stretch their bankroll for longer casino entertainment time.

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Here are some interesting gambling articles I have read recently.

1.  Do you wonder how hackers have been able to manipulate slot machines to “pay on demand”? Read here about how criminals are working to foil the casino’s game security measures.

2.  Do you remember playing the horserace games in casinos – or the ones that raced camels at the Luxor?    Mark of Mark’s Las Vegas does and he gives a link to the R-J article that reminisces about this game.

3.  Here is an excellent article about the numerous ways you can get an edge in blackjack.  The only objection I have to this article is the title, “Beating Blackjack is Easy.” Perhaps this is a tongue-in-cheek title to catch our attention? Beating any game in a casino is never easy; it is one of the hardest tasks you will ever undertake. However, this article does give a very complete picture of the possible ways to take on this task and perhaps be successful.

4.  My good friend John Grochowski can always be counted on to give very complete and accurate gambling information in whatever he writes. A good example is his recent article about new video poker games. While you are at this site, look around and you will find many helpful and interesting articles on various casino games and other gambling topics. I have contributed some articles here myself. You will recognize many of the authors as well-known experts in their field.

Fortunately no one was hurt.  But we wondered if the man had been detained and whether he could be arrested and charged with some crime.  An employee said he fled across the parking lot as soon as he exited the casino and “got away.”  Who knows if he could have faced charges – perhaps he could have sued the casino for a faulty door? 

Q:  Can the casino void a ticket if it isn’t cashed before the casino is notified of your loss?

A:  The good news is that yes they can.  The bad news is that this rarely happens – the person who takes the ticket is going to be extremely fast on the cashout and is usually long gone when the casino finally traces the ticket.

Q:  Did I miss it, or did you intentionally omit the name of the casino?

A:  No, you didn’t miss it.  I intentionally did not identify the casino where this happened.  I would have liked to publically thank this casino, since many…even most casinos are not willing to take this much time and effort to help customers in these circumstances.  However, I didn’t want to get them into any trouble just in case legal considerations might have arisen in the future.  This is a very gray area and you never can be sure when lawsuits can pop up.

Q:  Do you think that the lady who cashed out the ticket will be allowed back in that casino, or if a gaming agent was there, do you think they’ll ban her from other casinos?

A: Since she returned the money, I’m sure she wasn’t banned from this casino or any other.  She is a good customer at this casino, not someone on the property with criminal intent.  Again, this is a very gray area, perhaps more of an ethical issue than a legal one.

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As I mentioned in previous discussions, how a casino treats incidents such as this depends on casino policies and state laws – and because of the varying details must be looked at on a case-by-case basis.  One of the most interesting stories I’ve ever read about on this subject took place in Michigan several years ago.  A 72-year-old lady found a 5-cent token in a slot machine tray and decided to keep it after looking around and finding no one who looked like they might have lost it.  Well, the casino went into overdrive, surrounding her, detaining and interrogating her, and then ejecting her where she had to wait in the hot sun without any food.  Needless to say, she went to court.  The casino said she had engaged in a practice disallowed by the casino known as “slot-walking” (deliberately scouting the machines for money or TITO tickets inadvertently left behind).  They contented abandoned money belonged to them and the lady had “stolen” the token.  The court did not buy that argument.  The lady won her lawsuit and was awarded $600,000 in punitive damages.  If you want to know more of the extremely interesting details of this case, go to http://tinyurl.com/926e5mf  or  Google Romanski v. Detroit Entertainment.   

Just what is the law on lost-and-found money in a casino?

It seems that there is no definitive answer, despite input from people who have actually had these experiences, the opinions of lawyers, and reported actions of casino executives.  Like so many issues connected with casinos, it seems the standard answer is “it depends.”

First, it depends on the state where you “lose” the money. Some states have laws that give specific details about these sorts of incidents.  In fact, one time I saw a sign in a casino – but I forget what state this was in – that explained something about found money not belonging to people who had not put money at risk in the first place.  Our incident is an example of this.  The person who cashed out our $1510 ticket had not put any money in the machine in the first place.  (A side comment here:  A casino visitor whose main purpose is to look for credits left on machines – and there are more “pros” with this “job” than you might think – would never just cash out a ticket like the person who took ours.  They would always sit down at the machine and put in some money – they have tickets of small amounts readily stashed in their pockets.  Then they would usually play at least one hand, often just one coin at the lowest denomination, before cashing out.  This muddies the water a bit if the casino is trying to track things and gives the person a little more time to go to a kiosk and cash out and make his escape.  This tactic also gives them a “defense”:  “I didn’t notice there were already credits on the machine when I started playing!”)

Now, speaking specifically of the laws of Nevada.   No two cases are exactly the same, so as usual the devil is in the details.  One lawyer commented, “It is not always reliable to research legal issues on the Internet. You might find a statute that a court has interpreted differently or miss other statutes that control over the one you found.” Another  lawyer, who specializes in gaming litigation, said that he believes that as long as the machine with credits has been abandoned, the other party can cash out the machine without violating Nevada law. However, he cautioned that the other party cashing out must not have a reasonable belief that the player will return.

This opinion addresses the difference between “finders-keepers” and definitive criminal action.  We had experience with the latter some years ago at a Strip casino.  I was standing at my machine talking with a friend, with my back to the cash-out button which was on the aisle side of the machine.  A very smooth crook came along and pushed the button, grabbed the ticket, and walked away, all so quickly and quietly that I didn’t see or hear a thing.  In fact, I didn’t notice anything wrong until a couple of minute later when I sat down and started to play and then realized that I didn’t have any credits.  That incident didn’t turn out as well as this last one of ours.  They traced the ticket, but it was cashed at a kiosk within a couple of minutes and the perp was long gone.  The casino never offered to check video tapes, so it was losers-weepers for us.

Nevada casinos generally seem  to think and act as if the law is cut and dried about incidents like ours, but some lawyers feel that people charged with a felony could perhaps persuade a court that what they did was not a crime.  However, the expense of such a fight might make someone decide that it was better to just pay back the money rather than risk being charged.  On some issues, like losing money or chips on the casino floor or accidentally leaving credits on a machine when the casino doesn’t choose to pursue criminal charges, you might have a civil legal matter.  However, again, there is expense in this and casinos may not always want to help you, i.e., by providing video tapes that might show you who took your moey.

So many “depends”!! The state?  The exact details?  The casino policies?  Interpretations of laws?  All I know for sure is that I don’t want to ever get mixed up in these “depends” again – so I am going to be more careful in the future!

In my next entry, I will answer some of your questions about this incident so if you are still puzzling over anything, put it in the comments and I’ll try to address it.

My worse habit is turning around to talk to someone I know – which happens a lot.  That once caused me to lose a fairly large sum at Caesars because I was on a machine right by the aisle and a quick-thinking thief could push the cashout button and swoop up a ticket almost without stopping.

More common is the problem of forgetting to cash out a ticket when you leave a machine.  Back when you had buckets of coins, you were less likely to forget them, but since TITO, this has plagued many gamblers, even long-time experienced ones.  Often this happens, as it did to me once, when you are ready to leave anyway, but you hit a hand-pay jackpot.  After they pay you for this, you might not think to check to see that you still have credits to collect.  This is such a common occurrence that in many casinos, I have had employees pay me and then remind me of the credits still left on the machine.

A casino can be a very chaotic place, and it is very easily to be distracted.  And because we are human, it is inevitable that we will sometimes be forgetful or momentarily sidetracked.   I had a bad headache when this week’s loss happened at the Palms and that probably contributed to my decrease in alertness.  

Some have suggested that it was good that I wrote about this incident, that it could be a lesson for all of us.  I hope that  hearing my story and so many others related in the comments will bring this danger to the front of the minds of all the readers.  That is a good thing – we all need to be reminded to stay alert!

Brad and I walked into the Palms.  I had gotten a postcard for a good promotion – one that was open only to those who got the card – and I saw 2 open machines at the bank of the popular quarter Ten Play 9/6 JoB.  Lucky break, I thought, since these are usually full when a promo is going on.

I pulled out a  ticket voucher I hadn’t cashed in from yesterday – some odd amount around $450 – I didn’t look at it carefully because I would write down the exact amount when I put it in the machine.  I waved it to Brad, who was just around the corner on the other side of the bank – and said I would use it to start playing and he could put new money into his machine.  I thought I then inserted the ticket into my machine but I was slightly distracted because I was also downloading two sets of free play – one from a promotion and one redeeming my points.  During this time I was standing right by my machine, trying to get organized.  Finally after a couple minutes, I sat down at the machine to begin to play when I noticed there were only credits from my free play downloads, no credits from the $450+ ticket.  I looked in my purse; maybe I hadn’t actually put it into the machine yet. 

No ticket.

Hummmm…..I must have put it in and the machine didn’t register it.  Okay, no problem.  I’ll call a slot floorperson and they can open up the machine and find my ticket.  But they couldn’t find it.

Okay, they would check to see if the ticket recorded on the machine’s internal records but just didn’t give me the credits for some reason.  No record.  By this time I was questioning my sanity.  I knew I had the ticket a few minutes before.  I had showed it to Brad.

I  – and the slot supervisor – wondered if I had inserted it, the machine rejected it, and I didn’t notice it had come back – and someone had snatched it.  But that didn’t seem likely.  I was standing right in front of the machine and would have seen that.

The supervisor finally asked when I had cashed out that ticket the day before.  Fortunately I knew the approximate time I had quit playing and showed them the machine where I had cashed it out.  They were able to check their computers to get the ticket number and found out that it had been put into a cashout kiosk just a minute or so after I realized it was not in my machine.

Surveillance solved the mystery with their videos: me at my machine where I had dropped the ticket and a man had immediately swooped it up from the floor right beside me; then the man cashing out at a kiosk on the other side of the casino; and then his quick exit out of the casino.

Wow!  All this took was a few seconds of distraction by me to drop the ticket and then not notice a man bend down so close to me.

Since security has photos of this thief, they said they will keep a lookout for him, but I think it is a stretch to think he will ever be apprehended.  Although I certainly appreciated how quickly everyone worked and that all the employees were very kind and sympathetic about this incident, I didn’t expect any monetary reimbursement from the casino.  After all, it was my own fault – I dropped the ticket.  However, I was pleasantly surprised when the supervisor came back and said she had put $200 in free play on my card.  I thought that was a good public relations move and it did make me feel better.

However, I have decided not to mourn this loss  – I have lost more in two minutes on an ugly-acting VP machine.  Instead I look on this as a learning experience – to stay more alert and careful when I am in a casino and handling money.  And it could have been worse, since I have handled much bigger tickets than this! 

But the thing that makes me feel the best about this is that I have imagined the thief as a usually very honest hard-working husband and father who has lost his job and his house is in foreclosure and he doesn’t know how he is going to be able to support his family.  A dire time has made him discouraged and desperate.  Perhaps finding this $450+ will be the event that will lift his spirits and he will be able to think more positive and things will turn around for him.

I hope so!  But in the meantime I prefer to do charity work on my own terms so I will definitely be more careful when I am in a casino!