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Little Las Vegas: just two years ago the town of Kingsville boasted more than a dozen eight-liner game rooms and had staked its claim as Texas's unofficial gambling capital--until the authorities showed up. Now locals are angling for another spin.

Article Excerpt
At about eleven o'clock on a Monday night in early November, more than two dozen men and women were sitting inside the Texas Internet Cafe, a cavernous, computer-filled room housed in an old movie theater in the South Texas town of Kingsville. It was a diverse group--black and white, Hispanic and Asian, middle-aged and ancient--and everyone was sitting in swivel chairs in front of computer monitors, many of them smoking cigarettes. They were all playing video slot-machine games stored on the cafe's seventy PCs, hoping to hit one more jackpot before closing time. ([paragraph]) The cafe sits near a Payless shoe store and an abandoned roller-skating rink in a commercial strip on the south side of town. I had arrived there myself a few hours earlier and had been greeted in the lobby by a sturdy, twenty something employee named Tim who had a scruffy beard and wore a Longhorns baseball cap. I handed him $5 and told him that it was my first time in the cafe. In exchange, he gave me a white plastic card that read "Hello Money Pre-Paid Phone Card." Then he led me into the heart of the game room, where we were surrounded by a bleeping, jingling, fun-house clatter.

We sat down at one of the computers, and Tim took the controls. From the Microsoft Windows desktop, he clicked on a star-shaped icon, which launched a menu featuring a dozen slot-like games. Roses to Riches. Formula Won Racing. Fiery 7's. Then he showed me how to swipe my phone card through a magnetic strip attached to the side of the monitor. The $5 I'd put on the card immediately appeared on the screen as five hundred "sweepstakes points," which Tim said I could wager on any of the games. If I ran out of points, I could add more money to my card using a handful of machines scattered throughout the room. If I wanted to claim my winnings, I should come see him up front.

Tim left, and I settled on a game called Texas Treasures, which required lining up five oil tycoons to win. I clicked the mouse, and the computer screen faded into a blur of symbols. After a few seconds, it slowed to a halt and I stared at the results: Let's see ... a couple of oil wells, some Longhorns, and a bull rider. Nothing. And for the next few hours, I sat there silently like everyone else, wielding my one-mouse bandit and...

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