I circumnavigate the casino floor a few more times, sweating inside my parka and double mask, then take the elevator back to the parking garage and go home. I take my last $2 to another slot - Mayan Chief Great Stacks - push the button a couple times, and cash out with a nine-cent keepsake. So I promptly lose $18 in a slot machine called Celestial Sun Riches.

I pull up to a video roulette machine, put in $20, play for five or six minutes, and walk away with my stake miraculously intact. Fox 29’s Chris O’Connell is doing a TV spot about the grand opening of Philly’s second casino, “bringing with it lots of much-needed jobs and lots of new energy to South Philly.” Charlie Manuel, the former Phillies manager, is leaving a private event at the Prime Rib, which won’t open to the public for a few more weeks. Some people are actually doing this, including a couple on a date and what appears to be a family. I try to get a gin and tonic at the center bar, but because of COVID, I have to sit at a table and eat a meal if I want a drink. It feels a little nicer than how I remember SugarHouse Casino in Fishtown, now known as Rivers. The center has a raised circular bar and layer-cake chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. It’s a big flat room filled with slot machines and table games, ringed by restaurants, a poker room, a discreet high-limit slot parlor, and more table-game parlors. I print out my ticket with a 30-cent balance and take a walk around. Mystical Unicorn swallows up $4.80, and I drain most of the remaining $10 on a machine called 8 Petals. I lose a dollar in a slot machine called Eagle Bucks and another on Buffalo Rush. I put a $5 bill in a penny slot machine called Epic Fortunes that features a smiling infant riding a red-crowned crane, bet all 500 credits, and lose the $5 in one pull. I try to ignore the incessant “Live!” exclamation point found on branding throughout the joint, but the marketing department is clearly proud of it. One is perched upside down on a disco ball. Masked dancers in feathery red outfits are stalking around the slots parlor on stilts and dangling from hoops atop brass poles. As I enter South Philly’s Live Casino & Hotel on opening night, I decide it’s $47 - $40 from the ATM and the $7 in my pocket. A few hard nights taught me a different approach: Decide ahead of time how much you can lose.

The first time I went to a casino, I drove all the way to Atlantic City with the windows down, smoking cigarettes and dreaming about how the money I was about to win would change my life. Now that we have two Philly casinos, what do we win? Illustration by Pete Ryan

Rivers philadelphia casino