Then I hit zero, and I stopped thinking it was stupid to pay real money for bundles of Casino World “gems,” which give you access to in-game boosters and bonus prizes. The only thing you have to care about, financially speaking, is maintaining that 11-figure sum, always on display in the corner of your screen.Įventually though, I hit a wall and started to bleed out, stuck on some algorithmic losing streak where I was betting bigger and bigger just to keep up. But even more important is the false sense of power that comes with the faux opulence of seeing your avatar in the finest Casino World couture, buying up megayacht charms, vampire castles, and alien laboratories without a second thought. Soon, you get used to beating impossible odds and play-acting the part of a billionaire high roller, betting millions of coins on one hand and enjoying the dopamine hit that comes with a tenfold return. Except the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino has nothing on Casino World, where you can gamble away fake “coins” on more than 40 free games, including Texas Hold’em, Keno, roulette, pai gow, fruit bingo, horse-race simulators, and slots galore.įor the price of a valid email address, you are given a starter bag of coins that quickly multiply through daily challenges, a healthy dose of “beginner’s luck,” and free “charms” that provide extra payouts whenever you win.

A “ social casino” that skirts online gambling laws by using play money, the desktop-based gaming site is best described as “Neopets” for QAnon conspiracy theorists and retirees that type in all caps, who’d otherwise be chain-smoking in front of a slot machine in Atlantic City. I joined Casino World earlier this year after I was unceremoniously laid off over text, mostly as a way to keep myself from drinking my feelings away.

And now, all I had to my name was an overdue rent payment, a $75 street-sweeping ticket, and a monthly VIP membership for Casino. But rather than buy food or pay rent, I’d spent that $5,000 on a bunch of gems with no real-world value. I’d started playing poker when the calendar said June and I knew I had enough saved up to survive for the next couple months while I looked for another job. So when an anthropomorphic firework said it was the Fourth of July, I panicked. I think it was a Sunday night, maybe early Monday morning, but meth makes timelines fuzzy and booze makes everything else a blur. On the third day of my gambling binge, a grandma dressed as a pharaoh said there would be purple unicorn charms at a graveyard.

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