I'm Not a Gambling Addict...Am I?

How could I lose on a machine based on my favourite movie? I discovered this flashing spectacle of raz-ma-taz on my first visit to a casino and I couldn't wait to feed it a twenty dollar bill.

Once I hit the bet button, Toto barked encouragingly, the lion talked directly to me and the ruby red slippers danced around the screen. I just knew big things were going to happen - money, fame, magic.

Every year when I was a kid, The Wizard of Oz played at Christmastime on 1 of the 2 channels we got. In the days before VCRs, I had to wait a whole year to watch the great and powerful Oz rise again. And because we had a b&w TV, the whole rainbow explosion that happens when Dorothy opens that sepia door was lost on me. But all the magic was there anyway.

As I sat before the colourful, whirring screen of The Wizard of Oz slot, I felt that enchantment again. Even the witch's cackle gave me a thrill. And when the slippers lined up just so, I'd win a few bucks and hear a refrain from Somewhere Over the Rainbow. What fresh heaven was this?

Glinda waved her sparkly wand back and forth as I hit the bet button again.

Lines delivered in familiar voices repeated at various junctures in the game, but one bit of dialogue I didn't hear was “There’s no place like home.” The casino does not want you going home. It does not want you realizing that heart is what matters most in life, not winning a couple of bucks.

And you certainly won’t hear: “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!” The gambling house is all about that man - only, the casino-man-behind-the-curtain doesn't have a soul, like Professor Marvel did.

One of my favourite authors was a gambling addict. One time, Fyodor Dostoeyvsky, having lost a great deal at the casinos, made a bet with the publisher Stellovsky: the latter would pay off all of Fyodor's debts (about $80,000) if he could write a novel for him in record time. If he couldn't, Stellovsky would get the rights to all his past & future works for nine years.

On my first few visits to the casino I let intuition guide me. I always came out ahead. But soon, fear crept in, and I began to lose my ability to distinguish my intuitive signs (if that's what they really were) from the cacaphony of signals ringing throughout the room. I found myself resorting to incantations, muttered under my breath. And I started losing.

So, on my next visit, I tried a new approach: a hyper positive attitude, a winning costume, a champion stance; confidence is key - these machines know a master when they see one. I won and lost, won again, lost again.

I was surprised (but shouldn't have been) to find that Dostoeyvsky also believed in a "system" he'd developed for winning.

He wrote: "...I possess the secret of how to win instead of losing. I really do know the secret - it is terribly silly and simple, merely a matter of keeping oneself under constant control and never getting excited, no matter how the game shifts. That's all there is to it - you just can't lose that way and are sure to win."

In the early 1860s, Fyodor fell in love with the roulette wheel. First encountered at the spa casinos along the Rhine, it was love at first sight and he betted more and more money on his beloved. One day, he won 12,000 francs (about $50,000) then lost it all on the next spin.

Having made the bet with Stellovsky, Dostoeyvsky left the crucial novel-writing to the last month before the deadline. Then he went with an idea he'd had upon first becoming enamoured with the wheel.

He wrote "The Gambler" in 26 days and won the bet.

Taking a break from the Oz slot, I ventured into the world of Sex and the City. It was the wee hours and I was 100% sure this machine was going to blow up any moment with my victorious winnings. Mr. Big himself would pop out of the screen and Carrie and the girls would emerge from corners of the room. Champagne would flow and money would rain down on me: Friend, I really thought this machine would come in for me.

It didn't.

But, on my last pennies, with Mr Big murmuring “That’s fantastic, kiddo” in my surround-sound ears, I got the idea for my novel - The Gorgeous Girls - which would subsequently be published by Harper Collins.

I left the hotel the next day with a novel idea and a gambling hangover. It's not like I ever lost a lot of money - I never had that much to play with - but the expectation and the whirring defeat put me into a funk, and I wanted to get as far away as I could from Samantha and her shoes, Charlotte and her engagement ring - and the flying monkeys.

I'm not an addict. But I can see how easily I could be. With that in mind, I enjoy the occasional trip to a casino, maybe once a year, but now I don't get as excited or as mystical when I play. I have a little fun (on a budget) and then I go home, where beloved humans and pets await.

After all, there’s no place like home.

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