I put a $5 bill in a penny slot machine called Epic Fortunes that features a smiling infant riding a red-crowned crane, bet all 500 credits, and lose the $5 in one pull. I try to ignore the incessant “Live!” exclamation point found on branding throughout the joint, but the marketing department is clearly proud of it. One is perched upside down on a disco ball. Masked dancers in feathery red outfits are stalking around the slots parlor on stilts and dangling from hoops atop brass poles. As I enter South Philly’s Live Casino & Hotel on opening night, I decide it’s $47 - $40 from the ATM and the $7 in my pocket. A few hard nights taught me a different approach: Decide ahead of time how much you can lose.
The first time I went to a casino, I drove all the way to Atlantic City with the windows down, smoking cigarettes and dreaming about how the money I was about to win would change my life. Now that we have two Philly casinos, what do we win? Illustration by Pete Ryan
