UNCASVILLE, Conn. -- Walk into Mohegan Sun on a Saturday afternoon. Take a few moments to acclimate yourself to the cavernous rooms, the darkness punctuated by colorful lights, the smell of smoke. You'll notice an incessant pinging and humming, underscored by the sort of steady murmur created by vast numbers of people gathered under one, expansive roof. To the uninitiated, it's like entering a foreign country whose customs are baffling, disorienting, intimidating, and noisy as well.
Look carefully and you'll see many people sitting blank-faced in front of slot and video poker machines, repeatedly inserting coins and pushing a button over and over again. Some of these people are seemingly tethered to their machines by a curly cord; in truth, they have inserted their Player's Club cards into the machine, thereby earning credits for every penny they spend, which they can later redeem for meals, shows, even gasoline. They've put the other end of the cord in their pockets so they won't forget their cards when they leave. It appears as if each person is leashed to an electronic pet that is insatiably hungry for coins. Or is it the other way around: the machine as master, man as obsequious servant?
Bo Bernhard, assistant professor of sociology and hotel management at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, says casino gambling has gone ''from the shady past to the mainstream." His own great-great-grandfather was chased out of Texas decades ago for running an illegal casino. (He moved to Las Vegas.) Now casinos are run by, as Bernhard puts it, MBAs and men in suits. He says Vegas has become the single most popular tourist destination in the country.
As Rachel Volberg writes in ''When the Chips are Down: Problem Gambling in America" (Century Foundation, $13.95), since the 1970s, ''we have gone from a nation in which legal gambling activity was extremely rare . . . to a nation in which legal gambling, in one form or another, is permitted in all but two states," Utah and Hawaii. ''Today, tens of millions of citizens engage in some form of legal gambling every day."Gamblers' demographics also are all over the map. At Mohegan Sun, for example, people of all colors, ages, sizes, and physical abilities are at the machines and tables.
According to the American Gaming Association website, dice have been recovered from Egyptian tombs, and the Chinese, Japanese, Greeks, and Romans were playing games of skill and chance for amusement as long ago as 2300 BC.
In the late 1990s, Congress created the National Gambling Impact Study Commission and charged it with conducting a comprehensive study of the social and economic implications of gambling in the United States. The commission, which published its final report in 1999, found that 86 percent of Americans reported having gambled at least once, and 68 percent said they had gambled within the previous year. Why? What's the appeal? And what constitutes gambling, anyway?
Bernhard, who teaches the sociology of gambling and who cofounded The Problem Gambling Center in Nevada, defines gambling as an act that ''involves risking something of value on an event whose outcome is in doubt." Thus, some would argue that having money in the stock market or real estate -- or almost any investment -- is gambling. He says casino gambling is popular because there's ''power packed into a mini-moment" before the player finds out if he's won or lost.
''So much of what we find fun hinges on this sort of moment," Bernhard says, including watching a movie or reading a book. Risking something of value on a game (or any other activity) ''increases the intensity and power of the moment," he says. These days, legalized gambling includes bingo, Internet gambling, state lotteries, casinos, sports wagering, and pari-mutuel wagering (horse racing, the greyhound industry, and jai alai, for example).
For most people, including Mohegan Sun regulars Hilda Williams of Windsor, Conn., and Fred Gallagher of Portsmouth, N.H., casino gambling is pure fun.
''It's just recreation," says Williams, who, after winning $130 at the slots on a recent Saturday, says she probably will keep playing until she loses it again. She comes to Mohegan Sun a couple of times a year with a specified amount of money to spend. When it's gone, so is she. ''This building wasn't built on winners," she says.
Gallagher, who leaves his home at 4 a.m. three to four times a year to drive to Mohegan Sun, agrees. By the time he cashes in his chips on this visit, the free breakfast he had (thanks to his Player's Club Card) has fueled him through nearly six hours at the slot machines. Unlike most trips, when he loses all of the $150 he comes with, sometimes in just an hour, he's lost only $28 this time, which he considers a pretty lucky day. As does Williams, he leaves either when he's had enough or when he's lost the quarters he collects in a jar at home specifically for these trips.
For John Montanaro of Belmont, it's the social aspect of playing blackjack or poker at tables that he finds appealing.
''It's like going out to a bar for dinner," Montanaro says. ''It's like going to the ballpark or the zoo or the circus. I go knowing I'm gonna spend 200 bucks, then I leave." He has been to Las Vegas twice, and is planning another trip there soon. ''The last time, I played for six hours and lost $30, plus I got free drinks, so I broke even. It was the best 30 bucks I could've spent."
Of course, not everyone is as lucky as these three players, who, when they have finished playing, are able to walk away without a backward glance. As Williams and Montanaro acknowledge, gambling is addictive. In other words, for everyone, it's not just benign entertainment.
According to Bernhard, only 1 or 2 percent of the population (or about 3 million people) can be considered ''problem" or ''pathological" gamblers. Still, the National Gambling Impact Study reported that 15 million more people are at risk for becoming problem gamblers. The report concludes, however, that ''the actual prevalence rates may be much higher," since one trait that defines problem gamblers is that they conceal the extent of their gambling. These statistics look even worse for those living within 50 miles of a casino, says Bernhard, since the number of problem gamblers increases after the introduction nearby of casino gambling.
Luckily for most people, casino gambling remains a recreational activity. As Bernhard says, ''All products hurt some of their customer base some of the time. Think of cars. But hopefully, as a society, you end up at a consensus of what's an acceptable level of harm."
He adds that having a problem-gambling treatment facility in casino towns is like having a hospital at the bottom of a ski slope: It just makes sense. Bringing casino gambling to a town means you end up with predictable problems, and, he says, ''you need to make sure you're addressing that."
Whenever billions of dollars are at stake, as is the case in casino gambling, tempers will flare among those who take either side of an issue. Whether for good or ill, though, gambling has been around for thousands of years, and it's not going away. When it comes to casino gambling, there is one unassailable truth: Casinos don't discriminate. They'll take money from anyone.
Betsy Block is a freelance writer in Arlington.
