Paper short abstract:

Windfall male slot machine players in Papua New Guinea are bled just like anyone else. Their experience is of the joy of heavy transaction and lavish alcohol consumption, with loss as liberation from enduring obligation networks. How is this asymmetrical collaboration cordoned off as male 'play'?

Paper long abstract:

In Papua New Guinea regulators have raised the price of slot machines over the years as a deterrent (from £2.50 to £5 to £12.50 to £25), leaving only the cash-wealthy, mainly 'big men' and those men experiencing cash windfalls with access. In a country of proliferating transfers known to anthropologists as 'gift exchange,' and a pervasive card gambling culture that began with colonialism, slot machines are aspirational playthings. Having considered big men slots players in detail (Pickles 2013, forthcoming), here I think about players whose engagement with slots is sporadic and opportunistic, usually depending on seasonal cash crops. Often sophisticated card gamblers in their villages, these men have no hope of 'masterminding' the unfamiliar slots. High off their windfalls, village-based players focus on lavish alcohol consumption and forgetting their transactional responsibilities for a night.

The majority of today's computer-driven slot machines look traditional, with symbols apparently spinning and then slowing to a stop, but they now offer punters 7 different 'lines' they could win by - and often many more. Playing on many lines means disaggregating one's bet, while the singularity of the event means aggregate winnings and losses over different lines average out to a steady bleed. In an aesthetic just like their serious responsibilities back home, the slots drain their players' capital, but in this place of play, losses are untinged with the disappointed expectations of others. I argue that in spite of great personal cost, here men's play is primarily about transaction minus expectation.