Sometimes you should be suspicious if people are hovering around you while
you are playing - they could be thieves. If you have just won a jackpot and
someone suddenly comes up and starts talking to you, it could be a ploy to
distract you while a confederate takes your coins. With the new ticket machines,
you have to watch out for people distracting you and then hitting the button to
withdraw your ticket. I've seen a trick where someone puts in a few cents on
a machine at the end of the aisle, while you are concentrating on your
machine. Then they leave, and you then notice that a ticket has been printed out and
is sticking out of a machine. If you go for it, you leave your own machine
unoccupied, and a confederate (or same person) could pop in and take your
ticket! One time I was sitting with several cups on my machine and a man came
over and offered more cups and before I could stop him, he had grabbed one of my
cups and started pouring the coins into the bigger cup he was "offering" as a
help. I grabbed his arm (really firmly - perhaps painfully) and told him to
drop all the coins, including the ones that he was "helpfully" holding in his
hand, intending to take!
So if people are standing too close, you may have good reason to be
suspicious of them.
Of course there are sometimes people who stand behind you innocently enough,
but then they start talking to you, distracting you and slowing you down from
your game. These can be annoying (and are sometimes bored slot attendants).
I don't like to have people staring, without any seemingly real purpose, even
if at a distance of 10 feet, because they may be watching for an opportunity
to grab my money. I often play $1 slots and put in quite a few hundred
dollar bills, and carry more.
At the Palms where I like to play, I have seen the same guy sitting at my row
of machines for hours, on quite a few occasions. He isn't playing at all.
He talks to everyone, and the drink girls and slot machine attendants all seem
to know him, because apparently he sits there a lot. Strangely, they even get
him lots of free drinks. One annoying thing about him is that he is very
talkative, and always giving people advice on which machine is "going to hit," and
so on. I wondered if he is giving advice to people to play this or that
machine, because he is hoping that they may tip him if they win when they play the
machine he suggests. Or maybe he just likes the free drinks. Personally I
don't like this guy sitting there for hours without playing, because to me this
is suspicious behavior. Whether he is a thief, a boozer getting free booze,
or merely a bored person who loves to watch people in the casino, I don't know,
but I don't like this guy sitting around. I complained to slot personnel
about him, twice, saying that I don't like to sit there pumping in the hundreds
and having this guy watching me, since he obviously isn't playing, but the slot
personnel totally ignored me. He apparently loves to sit on the row where
the machines I like are. The result is that I no longer play in this area if
the guy is there. What I really don't understand is why the casino gives him
free drinks without play. Probably the guy is harmless, but he is annoying.
(And he is annoying to me whether I am winning or losing by the way.)
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