Updated: Has any Pea won anything substantial while gambling

I won $7500 in Albuquerque once. I was there for work for a few weeks and some colleagues from the bank we'd acquired wanted to go to the casino, so I played like $100 on the slots. Hit a small progressive jackpot on a $1 spin. The thing that sucked was it was early in my stay, I had all this cash, and the bank I worked for (and banked with) had no locations in the state, so I couldn't deposit it. It stressed me out to have so much cash on hand. I left most of it in the hotel safe, but even that wasn't comfortable for me.

This is the same story for DH's sister. Their dad was a huge gambler/poker player. Picture the backroom of the coffee shop where chain smoking Greeks played with car keys, deeds and businesses thrown on the table before dawn. He lost way more than he won.  

I have a coworker who has won really big money at the local casino. Unfortunately, she has probably lost at least twice the amount she won trying to win it. She’s been playing slots for as long as I’ve known her, more than 20 years, and I cringe to think of the money she has spent. COVID actually was good for her, as she wasn’t able to gamble for over a year, and is now happy to have some money in the bank and her bills paid. But I am afraid she may be backsliding….

A $100 victory in the office Super Bowl squares pool is my only claim to gambling fame.

Well now, don’t you love to hear that 

I don’t meet the $500 thread criteria but I’ll amuse y’all by dating myself.

I went to Vegas once. Once. Young and single with friends. Quickly won $100 in a slot machine. Announced I was stopping and wanted to take a walk or go shopping. My more experienced friends looked at me like I was daft and patiently explained that there was nowhere to walk and there were no stores. Too hot and nothing to see or do. (Late 1980s, definitely before retail mecca and fake European landmarks.)

I am not much for gambling.  I will play a few slots, but I struggled with being in the smokey casinos.  It really aggravated my asthma.  Many years ago we were driving back home from a Canada trip and we stopped to spend the night in Vegas.  My mom played the dollar slots and after about 15 minutes she started hitting a few payouts.  They just kept coming on that one machine until she finally hit a huge payout.  The bells flashing and noise of her win drew people from other areas to watch.  They were asking if they could touch her for good luck.  It was really entertaining.  I don't remember how much Mom won, but she came home with most of it.  I noticed that when Mom got up from that machine, they put an "out of order" thing over it.  I guess they thought it was paying off too often and they needed to fix it.  I preferred to play the nickel slots because I could play much longer without blowing through my allotted money so quickly.

I won $1500 on a Keno machine years ago. It came in handy, as we were going to Disney shortly after.

My sister-in-law won a cruise on a scratch-off I gave her for her birthday.

I've never really gone. We have a local race track/slots here, and as a thank you for helping renovate her new shop location, my friend took her family and DH and I for dinner & races one night. It included a $20 slots voucher in the package.

DH and I put $2 on a horse and won, so we kept the $2 aside and just played the winnings. We were up about $20 and quit. We went to the slots and I lost all of mine fairly quickly - NO idea what I was doing. DH won $16. That's it!

If I went again, I'd have to take a set amount and leave all debit/credit cards at home. I have a feeling I'd be "oh just one more time" and do that until I had no house left lol.

I won a Conway Twitty album!  Priceless!

I am a cheap gambler, but I do like to play video keno and bonus slots when I go. It's fun and if I go once per year with $50 or less I'm satisfied. One time I won $800 on video keno. I cashed out and put $5 back into the machine, just in case. I won another $345. That will never happen, again. I'd rather buy a cute purse then spend that much at a slot machine. I always know that if I play slots I'm going to lose my money. So, I don't bring much of it. When I win it's a shock. A friend is a compulsive gambler. I watched her lose her home. There's a fine line and for some people there's no such thing as a little bit of fun at the casino.

I wondered which way you were going to go. I know the closures are after the exit, but i-70 has to be such a mess lately.

I'd be going up through Nederlands if I were going.