What's that sound? It's For Amusement Only, the EM and Bingo Pinball Podcast. Welcome back to For Amusement Only. This is Nick Baldrige. Tonight my guest is Phil Bogoma, a bingo player in the Colorado area. And he is a man of some renown. He is published multiple times on Danny Leach's site, danny.cdyn.com. And his stories are endlessly fascinating for me. He's a man who has studied statistics, and he's very entertaining to talk to. So without further ado, here we go. First, I wanted to ask you what your age was, if I may. Yeah, sure. I'm 60 years old. I'll be 61 next month. All right. Yep. Now, I've read your stories on Danny Leach's site, and you sound like quite the bingo pinball player. Yeah, I was sort of an addict when I was a kid. but I started playing flipper machines here in Denver. About 1968, I moved out here from Maryland. My dad worked for Martin Marietta, and we got transferred out here, and I'd never seen a pinball machine before at all. And Maryland, I don't know if they must have had them everywhere, but if you were under 18, I don't think you could play them, so I never saw them. and once I came out here, I used to bowl a lot when I was a kid and so I'd go to these bowling alleys and they'd have pinball machines in there and so I started to get real interested in the flipper games initially and I did that for about three years until I got a driver's license and I had a little more freedom and I found a place called Centennial Billiards, which was out here in Littleton, Colorado, which is south of Denver, about 5, 10 miles south of Denver. And I walked into that place and it was a pool hall and so I went to play pool and I saw these weird looking machines. They didn't have any flipper machines, they just had, you know, holes. And I'm like, what are these things? So I got some nickels, and I started to play these games. And I noticed a bunch of older guys were hanging around. There were two games in there, I remember. It was a Silver Sails and a Carnival Queen. They were back-to-back. And a bunch of guys were hanging around this Carnival Queen game. And I saw this guy get a five and a line. and everybody was going crazy and they paid him out and I'm like, what had just happened? And so I was kind of interested in that because I saw some money changing hands. I was always kind of a numbers guy and I always liked to pay attention to probability and things like that when I was a kid. I used to shoot, well, not shoot craps, but I'd make games up with dice. And, you know, I knew all the probabilities of the dice. And, in fact, I took a lot of money from a kid when I was in about sixth grade, and he was in high school, and he insisted to me that the nine came up most in craps. And I said, no, no, it's the seven. And so I bought him. I said, well, roll 100 times. and so uh but anyway that that's going somewhere else anyway i was kind of interested in uh in the odds and and i saw these games and and of course i really like pinball so i started to play them and i played them every i started to play every day i'd go down to that place and uh and they didn't care they'd pay anybody it didn't matter to them they had games going on poker games, all kinds of stuff in that place. Yeah. And they didn't have to pay me very much because I didn't win very much. I was a lousy player. I didn't know what I was doing, and I didn't have a lot of money. So, you know, I couldn't put a lot of money in the games. I usually played three coins, and I would lose. I mean, you know, that's what most people do. but I was kind of persistent about it I refused to I like the play you were persistent at losing? no I was persistent at the whole thing yeah and so I just kept at it and you know what I never did beat them in that place never but they shut them down they raided the place because there was so much stuff going on yeah I wonder why Yeah. And I think those machines got busted up. I don't know for sure, but I saw, it's been so long ago, but I remember watching the television, and they did. They showed the cops busting up a bunch of machines, and I think that's part of where they came from, and it was painful to watch. But there was another bowling alley, maybe, I don't know, three, four miles away from that place, and it was called Sport Bowl. And maybe people from Denver might remember it. Now it's called Moe's Barbecue. It's the same building. It's on South Broadway here. And they, it turned out, had three bingos in there. They used to rotate them in and out. and I would have never known that it was a bowling alley. So, of course, I used to bowl. So I walked in there and I said, oh, boy, here we go. So I started to go in there all the time. And they were dimes instead of nickels, but I was a little bit older. In fact, by then I was probably starting college or between high school and college. I took a year off. And then I was still losing, but miraculously I met this guy, and his name was Mike Muldery, and he had been from Louisiana. And he'd been playing forever. He was probably in his mid-30s, and he lived up here now because he was an engineer at Martin Marietta here south of town, and he was going through a bunch of crap and getting a divorce and I think he lost interest in everything. And so he started to play the machines every day. And so I saw him in there every single day. And he started to take me under his wing and he would basically start chastising me and telling me how stupid I was and what I was doing wrong. Well, that's nice. And I listened to him because he was winning. And I figured, well, he knows what he's doing. I'm going to listen to this guy. And so he taught me. And, of course, the initial thing he taught me was just to learn how to play one coin at a time because your odds are better when you put one coin in. I explained that in one of the essays I wrote. I think that was so long ago. but you know if you put one coin in you get three to one and if you put two coins in even on a double jump it's like 2.67 to one or something like that I can't even remember what it is anymore but it goes down and down and so obviously unless you really know what you're doing or you know the machine you're playing you shouldn't do that especially when you don't have any money to lose so that's what I started to do and I started to win and they put me finally they put me on a well it was so funny because he taught me how to hit the machines really hard without tilting them and so I had these calluses on my hands just I'm sure anybody that did this I don't think I was unique but people that played these games would get these huge calluses on the palms of their hands, and I would smack that machine so hard. And then my brother's a physicist, and he was a flipper player, so he was kind of teaching me about the tilt and how it would react to the hips. And so I listened to him and I listened to this other guy, and I got to the point where I could really smack a machine around pretty well without tilting it. But the faster you hit it, I found out, the less you shake it, the faster you hit it. You've got to have your timing down to get that ball just right on that post when you hit it. But if you hit it fast, you can get away with an awful lot. And I started to do it. And luckily, the guy that owned that bowling alley, his name was Wes. And he, for some reason, he didn't kick me out of there. I mean, he didn't even tell me. He used to yell at me and tell me don't do it. And I said, well, he didn't even tell it to me. You know, I mean, I'm not telling it. I'm not hurting it. So he would let me do it. And finally, there were obviously a lot of guys come in there. All the guys that used to go at Centennial Billiards started to come at a sport ball. So I'd see these same guys in there. And there's a lot of stories about that. I don't know how many people have actually seen somebody throw a bowling ball through a back glass after they lost about $100 on a dime machine, but I have. That must have been interesting. Well, it was because you couldn't do anything to the guy. I mean, what the hell are you going to do to him? You can't, what, you're just going to call the cops? so he they just let him walk out and amazingly enough that guy had the balls to come back in there about two or three months later because he was so addicted to those games and you know it's like you can't come in here anymore but but they put me on a on an allowance finally and they They said, you can win $10 a day, and that's it. And so I would get, it wouldn't take me more than, you know, 50 cents to put in the machine to get started, and I'd win my $10. Wow. It wouldn't take me very long, and I'd leave. So $10 in 1976, that was, you know, that was a lot of money. My rent for a two-bedroom apartment was $190 a month, and I was pulling $310 out of the bingo machine. You were pretty good then, huh? Well, not good enough to pay my rent, I guess. I was going to school, and things were pretty good. That was a good time in my life. Then my mom and dad, I had been married when I was really young. I made a really stupid mistake and got married when I was 19. And that didn't work. And my mom and dad had moved back to Maryland because my dad kept getting moved all over the place because he was an engineer. And so I was kind of lonesome out here, so I decided to go back there. And I was going to actually go to school. I was going to go to the... Well, I was in school here anyway, but I was going to go to the University of Maryland back there. And the first thing that I found was all these bingo machines everywhere. They were everywhere. And, you know, what am I going to do? Play bingo or go to school? That was an easy decision. But then I went through the whole damn thing all over again. I couldn't win. Oh, really? Well, the machines in Maryland were different. The ones that I played out here, you know, the lockdown bars, they were the normal wood that you would see that would come on the machines when they're built from the factory. Nobody was ever jacking with them. And the legs were the original legs, and nobody was screwing with that stuff. Well, I went out there, and all the lockdown bars, they were shut up. And, you know, if you hit it wrong, you were going to cut your hand or hurt yourself. And then the way they had them reinforced, it was hard to shake them as much and get anything out of it, and you'd have to hit them a lot harder. But I had played a game in Vegas before. I'd been to Vegas to play, and I kind of seen something worse than that, because those machines, not only did they have the angular lockdowns, but they had the hoppers. and those things, you couldn't move them. You can't move the cabinet at all. No, and actually, they had some of them set up with the hoppers underneath and the machines, like, bolted to a wall. And not to the wall. They built, like, a cabinet or a shelf or something, and they take the cabinets and the playfield portion of the whole game, and they'd take the legs off and they'd bolt it down. Oh, okay. And then they'd put the hoppers underneath. And you couldn't move those things at all. It was impossible. That sounds like not very much fun. Well, it was. Well, of course it was fun. But I mean, you know. But I couldn't. Anyway, I'd seen worse. So I got to Maryland. I was losing again. and I sort of, I don't know, I can't stand that. And so I sort of ruminated about it, and I figured, well, I've got to do something different. All over the place in Maryland, where I played anyway, which was North Baltimore mainly, in Towson, Timonium, Lutherville, Cockeysville Parkville anybody from Maryland will know what I'm talking about and they were all apparently I noticed that all these machines and all these places were run by this they must have been run by the same guy because I kept seeing the same mechanic in all the places every place I went his name was Jimmy I remember it to this day and that tipped me off that you know there's not just the guys running these pool halls doing this. There's somebody that probably has control of all of them. And later on I found out who it was. I'm not sure what his connections are, so I'm not going to say what his name is. But he turned out to be a pretty nice guy, just probably involved in the mob somehow. I don't know that for sure, but I assume so. But anyway, I started to reassess things and how I was doing it there. And then I started to get really good again because I was playing eight hours a day at that point. Wow. Yeah. And I was thinking more, you know. A lot of bingo players, you'd see them and they'd just pump nickels in. And, you know, a lot of them would put, I'm going to play 20 coins, and that's what I do every time. Right. And it's stupid. It's stupid to do that because you have to pick your spots. Right. And so I guess I feel like maybe I'm a little more intelligent than most of the guys that went there. I'm not bragging or anything, but I just don't think that the most savory characters were in most of these places I was going. And so you know you got to outthink these machines too You can just one by brute force I mean there a huge thought process that goes into beating these things and and so you find a machine you know you can't I I couldn't walk up to any any machine in a place and when you have to get used to the machine the one machine exactly you find one you like and then you learn it and And at that point, you can pretty much control or know where the ball is going to go. But every machine is different, and you never know. But as I told you when I talked to you the other day, I always look for that left-side roll. I listened to that Dick Camp interview you did, and I think he did the same thing on those OK machines. because that's where the money is on the left side of the board. And every now and then you'd find one, you know, and I don't know why these guys weren't smart enough to set the machines where they didn't do that, but I was always happy. Now, I never put any nickels under the legs like some people did. You know, I saw people trying to cheat. I've seen people drill holes through the sides of the machines and put hangers in there and get the numbers. Flip the coin switch. Yeah, and that's the reason that John Youssi those metal side rails, the long metal side rails on some of the bingos. Yeah. They put them there because people were doing that. They were drilling through the sides, and that was to prevent that from happening. But I never felt like I'm – I never won that way, you know. That was no fun to me. that's like stealing and I don't do that but anyway I got pretty good I managed to get friendly with a lot of these guys and I never won you know you hear these ridiculous stories of people winning 100 bucks or 200 bucks a night and forget it I never could do that but I could pull money out of those machines and in the late 70s I'd pull enough money out to get by and actually make more than I could make working. And so that's what I was doing. Actually, I have a good story about... I had a friend that lived down in the Polish section in Baltimore. And Baltimore used to... I assume it's the same now, but they used to have a bar on every corner there. I mean, a neighborhood bar. And so, yeah, almost every corner. They had their row houses. And then, you know, the last one would have a bar. Down, downstairs or right in the side. And so we went into this one, and there were two guys sitting on the counter. I remember I walked in, and they had a can-can machine in there. And I said, oh, Jesus Christ, I like to play these games, you know. So I went and got, and he didn't even know who it was, my friend. His name was Stosh. He didn't know what it was because he didn't play. Well, I got a roll of nickels, and I had the thing up to 800 games in about 20 minutes. I hit a 600. Actually, it was a three in blue for the 600. I hit the 16 on the last shot, and all these old guys were standing around amazed. I'll never forget it. Because I said, well, did she cash out? Because the person that owned the bar and my friend said, I don't know. and so he went up to his friends and he said, do you know if she cashed his games? And these guys said, if she doesn't cash his games, we're going to carry the machine out of here. And so she paid me my 40 bucks and told me to get the hell out and never come back. That's the fastest I ever got banned out of anywhere. so this has come up before but what was the typical method for getting paid off well in the places I went it wasn't a big secret at least in Maryland you'd just go to the guy at the counter and they didn't have any switches in the back or anything like that they'd just pay the money right over the counter you didn't have to go to the back or anything I've read some of his stories about that. I've never had to do that. Every place I went was really wide open. I think it was really wide open back there. They had all kinds of games. They had slot machines in these places. It was a wild time. I mean, people were just, they just didn't care. So, and no hoppers. You know, you just turn the machine off, turn it back on after they looked at their games, and then they'd pay you. and most places back then they'd sell a bag of nickels, not a roll, but normally it would be a $5 bag of nickels, and I used to buy the nickels and then not use them all, and then I'd cash the games, and I'd buy more nickels, and then I wouldn't use any of them, and then and so i'd leave and they thought i'd spent more than i did and so they didn't really realize you know quite what i was coming out with it wasn't like i said it wasn't a fortune but you got to protect your territory too and so i'd always have a bunch of nickels hanging around the house but i don't even know what i did I must have cashed them in a bank at some point. I can't remember. But I think that was fairly common because I heard of another guy that used to do that too. So, you know, you do whatever you can. Anyway, so then I moved back to Denver from Maryland. I was there about two years when I came back out here. I was growing up. By then I was almost 24 years old, and I figured, gee, I've got to get on with my life here, you know. So I moved back here because I really liked Denver. And when I came back, they were still running the machines, but I'd gotten so good. And this is where I wrote you this email the other day. I'd gotten so good when I was in Maryland playing those machines that were so hard that I came back here and these machines were like so easy that it was nothing. I could win unbelievable amounts of games and so fast. And I'm not trying to sound like I'm bragging or anything because it's really not that big a freaking achievement. It's not like you're carrying cancer or anything. Right. you know but it did get to the point where and they and they finally they said that you know you can't you can't play here anymore at all or for money anyway because i i would get to the point where i could run the games up i i could get that game up to 900 every time when i know the time and um so and then they shut them down finally they were shutting the games down they had a Silver Sails, a Golden Gate, and maybe a Key... Nah, it wasn't... They used to flip them in and out. I can't remember what the third game was. I think it was a surf club. But I went in there one day, and they weren't there. And I said, what happened? Where are they? And he said, nobody plays them anymore. Nobody knows what they are. nobody's interested and I said well I want one of those games I want to buy one of those games because I want to keep playing you know and he said well the silver sales oh what a piece of crap it was beat up and broken back glass and terrible and the golden gate was okay but he wanted $800 for the Golden Gate and $400 for the Silver Sales. And I said, well, I couldn't afford $800. So I said, I'll take the Silver Sales. I can still play it. And so I brought it home and it didn't have a schematic. And, you know, there were some things that were wrong with it. It wasn't paying extra balls. That would be a challenge. Well, it was. You know, you couldn't get an extra ball. you could put as much money in there forever and you'd never get one. And so I took it home, and the first thing I did was brought it into my basement and opened it up to look at the back. I'd never really seen one. Even after all that time playing, you know, it's kind of secret. You can't. And I just said, Jesus, Hilton Jones, what am I doing? Because I don't have any ability like that, you know. I'm not really a guy that grew up working with my hands. And so I didn't have a schematic. And if I had one, I wouldn't have known what to do with it. So I started to just kind of look at things. And, you know, actually I figured out, I noticed that one of the slip wipers was broken on the spotting desk. and I said that doesn't look right and so I he was kind enough to give me a a parts not a whole machine but a parts back and that was from a key left so I took one off of there and I put it on and the extra balls started to work again what do you know I did something I actually did something right Well, I did it. I played that game for maybe a year and a half at home, and then I kind of lost interest in it. It was ugly, and the back glass was broken, and I couldn't find a back glass, and I didn't have a schematic anyway. And finally, you know, what really got me interested again is when the Internet came along. The first thing I started to do is I remember I was at work, and some guy told me, you know, you can look for things and find things on the Internet. And I was like, what's the Internet? And I found a back glass, finally, from a guy, amazingly enough, in Maryland. And he's pretty, I think he's in Jeffrey's book. His name is John Robin Ness. Yep. And he's in Glenn Burney. I think Glen Burnie, I don't know, somewhere south and he's a really nice guy I talked to him and we were figuring, how the heck are we going to get this thing out here well finally we took a chance and shipped it and it was a really nice glass and I put it in the game and then I thought, Jesus, that looks so good I've got to fix the rest of it so I started to do the cosmetics and the whole thing, and I learned a little bit about how to do the stencils and all of that. I put that game together, and I enjoyed that whole process so much that I transformed from a player into, I don't know what you call me now, a tankerer? I'm not really a restorer because I wouldn't even put myself in the same sentence with some of those guys like, well, I mean, like Steve. I mean, I saw that bounty. I've seen the work that Nick, that he does. I used to talk to Hugh all the time because I was into restoring the cards. That's how I, I think, as I recall, and I'm talking about Hugh Cone here. And if I recall, that's how I got in touch with him because I told him I was restoring the scorecards in Photoshop because I was learning how to do that because I couldn't stand those old cards. And then we started to do the back glasses and do the artwork for that. And then I just started to collect more and more and more of them. and every time I tried to sell one, somebody would call me and say, well, I've got three to sell myself. Do you want to buy them? My wife was going like, what are you doing? You told me that you were going to get rid of some of these things, and now you're coming home with more of them. Eventually, I took a storage unit, and I had games in there, and I had games in the basement and games in the garage. and most of them were junk, you know, and I needed to fix them all up, and I know I'm never going to get to them, but finally I did. I fixed a lot of them up, and I sold a lot of them to a guy here in Grand Lake, Colorado, which is up in the mountains. It's pretty far out. and he had two he had a house and a cabin two separate places and they were jam packed with pinball machines I mean everywhere pinball machines and slot machines some of the stuff you've never seen Nick you just wouldn't see this stuff the guy was almost 80 years old and he'd been collecting forever. And so that was kind of interesting, but he bought a lot of my games. I kind of got tired of it because I had to drive an hour and a half to get the games up to him, and then I had to set them up and make sure. He didn't even have electricity at the cabin. It was all run by a generator. Oh, it's in the middle of nowhere. But you'd never know. So he had, anyway, I ended up selling him about 15 or 16 games, I think. Yeah, well, I had 31 of them. And they've been pared down. But you need some interesting people. I sold one of the games. I had a Bright Lights. And I bought it from a guy here, and he said, wow, it doesn't seem like it works. It's always running. and I said, well, I think, you know, that's supposed to run like that all the time. And most of them, you know. But I didn't know because of the bright lights and I'd never seen one. They were hard to come by. I don't know how hard they are to come by now, but you couldn't find them. So I finally, I totally restored the bright lights back to the original condition. In fact, there was a, as I recall, I had posted on Hugh's forum for opinions on whether I should restore this, because it was in pretty good shape anyway, and there was some arguments going on about it, but I finally decided that I was going to restore it. And I sold that to a guy named Alan Brown, and he was an interesting guy because his brother is named Duncan Brown. have you ever heard of Duncan Brown? I don't think so I think he was either an engineer or a designer at one of the pinball and it might have been Williams pinball but by the time I had met Alan Duncan was designing the slot machines for WMS so it's just a small world I never met Duncan but I met Alan and that was kind of weird And he was sort of into the bingos but that just going off track I still have about well actually I told you I had seven games I got rid of one of them last Saturday. Well, I had told you I had two show times. Oh, that's right. What do I need two show times for? One for each hand. Well, and you know what I did with it? I used to move these machines all over the place, and I'd pick them up, and I couldn't move them because I'm, Jesus Christ, I'm 60. At that time, I was 50, and they need a young guy, so my daughter's boyfriend, and actually my granddaughter's father now is a fairly large guy. so I always used to just call him and say okay I need you to help me you know I'm going to be and he'd do it and he'd grump about it and finally he came down and you know he they're not married but he he came down to see my granddaughter last weekend and I said here this is for all the trouble that I gave you over all that time and he took the game that was pretty cool yeah so is he a player no no he's he's into antiques and he's you know to him this is just an antique i told him i said well i think it works because i've rehauled overhauled the whole thing i took it all apart i even showed him the pictures of the of the whole renovation on the thing and said but i haven't won it for a long time so if it doesn't work, just let me know and we'll come up here and get it running for you. That's pretty cool. I'm glad he took it. Now I have a Sea Island, a Bounty, a Bikini, Miss America 75, a Showtime, and I can't remember what other one is out there. See, they're stuck in the garage now. I've been working on my basement for almost a year. And I finally got the carpet down yesterday, so it's almost finished. I'm really psyched about it. And so are the machines going to be moved back in there? Yeah, I put special circuits down there for everything so I can do more. and I even went out and bought one of those multi-cade video games so people would have something normal to do when they come down there too. Not just the bingo nuts paradise there. No, no. So anyway, that's it in a nutshell for me. I don't know if you have any questions for me or anything, but I'm just addicted to it. Yeah, that's all right. So I guess my question, you've got three different Magic Screen games, right? Mm-hmm. What attracts you to those? Because obviously you like those quite a bit if you've got three. So what about it is so compelling to you? Well, I tell you, I've played the line games like, Oh, I just remembered the other game I have is a gay time. Oh, okay. That's a good game. Good game. That's a good game, yeah. I'm actually looking for one of those. I don't know how I forgot that one. Oh, are you looking for one? Really? No, no, I don't think I'll get rid of this one. It's in really good shape, really good shape. But I think the reason is because once I started playing those screen games, those were the ones that I could really hammer. I could win so much money on those. and of course you're going to play what you used to play I used to play a Key West I was never very much good at it in my opinion the Gay Time is a good game that's not a screen game the other one that I like is Beach Time but other than that I don't really have a lot of interest in the corner games or anything like that So the concept of the magic screen is it seems to me that there's way more combinations and way more. You've got to think more because, you know, when the screen shifts, the actual configuration of the sections changes too. So, you know, you might have that little U on the bottom for the red section, but then you only have three numbers. or you have numbers that you wouldn't even put there, but then you get a hit in like nobody ever played for a 15, 11, 22, and 13 in the yellow section, but if it came up, you know, that was pretty cool. Or sometimes you would actually say, well, look, I got a 13 here and I got a super section, so I'm going to put it in this weird. and this didn't seem to happen like that on the turn corners. You know, there were only so many options. Right. So that's what I kind of liked. And, of course, everybody likes the good old OK section. That's the best. Well, from your side. And I like the C island I have because it's got the H screen, so that was a good one. Right, so it moves an extra section. Yeah, right, right. So do you ever play for the skill shot on bounty? uh yeah i used to do that i used to do that when i played it in the uh in the pool halls i sure did oh yeah yeah uh-huh uh that's a a feature that's a lot of people really like that and i you know that's the thing i liked about the bounty more they've got that gimmick you know extra okay and super okay on there. But to me, that skill shot was the thing that I really liked about the bounty, as a matter of fact. Because the numbers are all hittable. They're right at the top. And they're not hard to hit. So I would hit them fairly often. And I made money on it or I wouldn't have done it. Right. Well, that's the nice thing is you get a guaranteed step, at least one, with every nickel. Yeah. It's kind of hard not to play for it. I'm right. I know. And it's brilliant. The guy that designed these things, Hooker, he was a smart guy, man. He didn't just know engineering. He knew psychology. And probability. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Just a ton of stuff. And, you know, they used to hire people to stand there and shoot the balls. And you probably know this, but they'd keep track of where they'd fall. And then he'd use those probabilities to factor into, you know, how he would design those circuits and actually where the numbers were on the board. So he was brilliant. I mean, the guy was just... Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, I'm fascinated by that because I would never be. I mean, I'm happy. I'm lucky I've done electrocute myself now when I work on these games. So far, I've avoided it. Well, that's good. Yeah, it's been 20, let's see, 33 years now I've owned these games. That was my next question. So that's good. Yes, sir. And so your first was the Silver Sails, right? Silver Sales. Right. Silver Sales. And did, I mean, those Silver Sales and Golden Gate are essentially the same game, correct? Right. Or are they exactly the same game? Some people say there's a difference, but if there is, I don't know what it is, because I think that, I can't remember which one came first, but I know that the first one, God, I can't remember which it was, but the second one that came, they used the cabinet from the first one. And sometimes you'll see them where there's stripped-out cabinets and you can see the paint from the original one. And, of course, the playfields, everything, even the back glasses, yeah, it's all the same. I think they're the same game. Unless there's any changes in the circuits, I don't know. I think this came up in discussion with Steve here a while ago, and I think he said that one of them has a different shaped cam that gives score extra step more often or something. If that's the case, I don't know. I wouldn't know that. I've never seen a Golden Gate, so. Oh, really? Well, I've seen them to play them, but I've never seen one opened up in the back. Gotcha. And you know what? If it were different, I wouldn't even notice. I don't know. Well, it sounds like you can win on them pretty consistently. Yeah. It wouldn't matter really at that stage. Usually that four extra steps thing was never used. I mean, the operators would cut that off. It wouldn't even be in play. You know, you could, only a few places I ever remember going and seeing that actually working. and I thought it was a mistake I thought, Jesus, this machine's broken look at it giving me all this stuff yeah, well I mean I didn't do it all the time but John Youssi a quadruple dump jump you know and you're like, whoa what in the hell is that didn't happen very often in fact you know, they cut wires and they cut features you know this, you work on these machines so you can see what they do to them. They cut off, especially like, I think the silver sails, he had cut off the two in blue, so there was nowhere to get up. That's nice. Yeah, there's just no way. And of course, I told you the extra balls. Now, he wasn't going to fix it. He didn't give a crap. People were putting money into it. I remember going, and this guy, I can't remember His name was, we called him the Goat. He was an insurance guy. He was an older guy. And he said, I'm going to see how much money it takes me to get an extra ball. I said, Goat, you're never going to get an extra ball. You're never going to get it. And he put a lot of money. He used to tell me, God, this place is expensive, Phil. It cost me $30 for a cup of coffee. he was a good guy he was a good guy i don't i think he's long gone now man he was probably 55 years old back then wow um are there any machines that you're on the lookout for you know not right now uh i can tell you what i won't do anymore is the 20 holders i don't like those. I read about your double up. I had a double up. I had driven to Albuquerque, New Mexico to get it with my son. And we drove it back up here and I fixed it. And I played it for a while, but it just didn't do anything for me. I don't know. I think it's how you're raised to tell the truth. And I'd seen those things in Maryland. I saw like Bahama Beach and Safari was a good one just because of that animal feature. But, nah. So, I don't know. I mean, I had a Lido, but I sold that one to a guy in South Carolina and I didn't even try to. He just offered me so much money for it, I couldn't turn it down. That's always nice. Yeah, the bikini's similar, Not quite the same. But it's got the futurity game. Yeah, this doesn't have the button for the red and yellow super sections like the Aledo does. That's basically the difference between the Bikini and the Aledo. But no, right now I just got to get, I still have some work to do. I got to get this bounty all fixed up. I know the stash they just found in St. Louis. I might have been the first one to get anything out of it because I got a brand new NOS lockdown bar. Undrilled? No, it's ready to go. It's got the holes and everything. Wow. Yeah. I never thought I'd be able to say I found one of those, but I did. It's in my hand right now as I'm looking at it. Congrats, man. I can't believe I found it. That's great. Yeah, so I got a lot of little things I got to take care of with the ones I have before I get any more. And then I think my wife is probably not going to let me do that again. I've got a similar issue. Yeah, I bet you do. Well, I don't know. I've got the room, but I'm turning the third bay of my garage into a bingo workshop now. And so the finish games will go downstairs, and I'll have the workshop. So you never know. I mean, I look every day. I just don't feel like shipping them in here anymore. Yeah. And they didn't run too many of them here, so they're hard to find. just can't find them and you know you go on Craigslist and look and you know every now and then you'll see something but hardly ever so nah if a deal comes along yeah sure I'll buy something I'm always off for something yeah that's an interesting thing I hear that all the time that out east here there's a ton of bingos and the further west you It's just more and more sparse. Yeah, it's hard. And, you know, in Denver, I think, well, there might have been, I don't know. You know, when I was in high school, I don't know. Maybe there were more places running them. But, boy, by the time I got older, there was nothing. But Salt Lake, in my opinion, had more bingos running than they had in Denver. and I remember I used to go out there and work and I actually started to do something with my life and I found a bunch of bingo machines on State Street not too far from the Norman Tabernacle Choir. I thought that was kind of weird, man. The Norman Tabernacle was like, what, two blocks away and then here I'm in this scuzzy little drugstore playing a bingo machine. That was weird. A little surreal, maybe. Yeah. But if you look at it, I mean, some fairly large stashes have come out of there. So I think something was going on out there in Salt Lake. I don't know. They weren't drinking a lot of coffee, so they had to do something. I don't know. I guess that's it. Yeah. So out of all your machines, what's your favorite game? All of them? I like the bouncy. Oh, the bounty is your favorite, okay. Yeah, I do. And, you know, a lot of people like the bikini or the Lido. And the reason that I, you know, they like that futurity. Right. And I never really liked that. I mean, I figured, well, you know, I'll get the okay, I'll hit it, and then I'll win. I don't want to hit the okay and then save it for later and think maybe, boy, I'm going to get a big game and a chance to win. I mean, I figure I'm going to win now. So I'd always try to get the 32 odds on the green, and usually I'd stop there. But sometimes I'd go for it. If the green was jumping and the screens weren't coming, then I'd go for the okay, especially, you know, if the screens weren't on. I sometimes would get the 600 OK shot. The thing I liked about the other OK games compared to the Bikini and the Lido is that it paid more There were 192 odds straight across in all three colors And I like that for the simple fact that a three in a section a super section would play up like four And that's a huge difference because it's 240 on the odds jump before the 192, and it goes all the way up to 480. So you double it. And to me, that was why I preferred not to play those futurity games like that, because that last jump wasn't as important. Gotcha. So when you're playing a bingo, you said you would start off small. Well, once you started winning, what was your typical wager? well it and it depends um because if if the okay came i play um three coins to start usually and if the okay came on i go to the blue and then if i jumped to 32 i'd usually stop especially if it was cheap you know if you could get a 32 odd okay game for 20 cents or four nickels. That was almost an automatic for me. I could hit it every time. Why would you push that? You don't know how long it's going to take to get that next jump. I would just do that. That's how I would do it. If the screens came on, I would normally go for the green button and I wouldn't go for any odds jumps at all, and I'd try to get the F screen minimum, and then I'd play for the blue section. Because the 13s was fairly easy. Even if you were playing a left roll, you could always find a way to get over to the 13. And then, you know, the 20 is not a very difficult number to hit either. So the only thing you needed to hit the one line on a F screen was the 17, and that happened fairly often, you know. So I would make money doing that too. So that's it. I would never, I saw guys that would pump $10 a game and then start playing. I said, you're crazy. You're crazy. There was one guy that used to go into this place called the Q Club in Baltimore and he would literally, I think that's what he was doing. and it was a county fair and he'd come in and play one game. The most expensive game ever. He'd either win or lose and he was out of there. It was really just, wow, you're nuts. But he always had a bunch of people watching him because you don't see that. I would imagine not. No, no. So did you ever play for Extra Ball? Oh, absolutely. Sure. I mean, you can determine, you know, after you play a machine a while, how loose it's going to be. You know, how easy does it give them up? And the extra balls are very smart to play for if you're playing for less odds. You know, if your odds are lower, and, you know, like, say you're playing a 32-odd in the red, which is a fairly easy section to hit because it's got the 9-1-2 and the 19-24. And if you've got eight odds in the other two and 32 in that one, then you're going to, yeah, sure. Yeah, absolutely. Because the balls would come up pretty quick if you knew the machine. now some machines you know you won't get it and if you're desperate if you're playing for like a two and blue for 600 or something yeah of course if you've got if you've got one of like say you have a 17 my god of course you're going to put money on it yeah I'm not a purist like that of course yeah I would do that I guess maybe I would have been called a sucker because that's why those were there, but I did. Well, I do too, and it's really interesting because, of course, I never played these when they were new or on location at all. So I just like hearing the way that you guys would work the machines because it's different when I'm putting my own money in and then I can pull it back out. you know yeah exactly and frankly it's not as much fun you know it it just isn't i mean it's not the same but it's still the same challenge but uh it's not the same reward obviously yeah no no you know so yeah i kind of miss it kind of miss it but you can't go home again right That's what they say. Yeah. So with your okay game on 32, that would be, what, two letter jumps? The 32 and the green, then I'd go for the okay. But usually I wouldn't play a lot of extra balls for the okay because you could get that game and I'd hit it so often that it seemed like a waste of money to me. I'd just go get another okay game and play it again, you know. Oh, okay. So just to put, you know, I mean, it wasn't that hard to get the green to jump to 32 on most of the games and then the OK would like, and most, I mean, like I said, if you find a machine that you know, you know what it's going to do. Yeah, so. And don't play a game that you can't win. Don't try to battle the machine. It's dumb. A lot of people do that. You can't battle it. You have to be, I don't know, man, it's like Caddyshack where you've got to be the ball. You have to know the machine, and the machine has to know you, and you've got to respect each other, and that's what will happen. So do you have any good stories about getting kicked out of places? or um and now i i like i said i he i didn't like play that many places i didn't get kicked out of baltimore a lot of people used to watch me and so they i don't know i don't think i'm delusional i think that he actually would let me do it because more people were playing because they couldn't figure out how in the hell I was doing it. So it was kind of an interesting situation. But, no, I didn't get it. Although I can tell you one more story, and this has to do with Las Vegas. And I started this whole conversation telling you about this man I have tremendous respect for, Mike Muldery, who is deceased now, but he was my mentor, and we had gone to Las Vegas for the sole purpose of, well, finding bingo machines. And Mike thought that he was going to be like the Blackjack King or something. but we went into this little casino on, have you ever been to Las Vegas, Nick? Never. Okay, well, Las Vegas Boulevard is this strip, and it kind of opens up at Sahara. There's a couple things closer to Vegas, but at Sahara, that's where the Sahara was, and across the street from the Sahara Hotel was a, and there's still a little shop up there. I think now it's the world's biggest gift shop. But there was a real seedy casino in there, man. And we went in there and they had bingos. They were running them. Well, my friend Mike had learned from this guy Dave in New Orleans and he was always talking about Dave and Dave, God, Dave went to Tulane and Dave paid for everything with bingos. And he told me about this guy that he knew, his name was Spitter. Well, we walked into this casino and holy crap, there's Spitter. And he was a pet boss there. and so all these stories that mike had told me about dave were verified this guy spitter said yeah dave did that and and i don't know i'm it's kind of weird because then later on well spitter's come up in some other sites you know so i think that he's still a big bingo player or a collector or something, but that was, it's just weird. I mean, it's just such a small circle, and it's getting smaller and smaller because the communications in the world is getting smaller. You know, how in the heck would I have ever met a guy like you if not for the Internet and the connections? That's the best part about this whole thing now because I'm out here with no one doing this, and I can still make friends 1,700 miles away, and I think that's great. I do too. Yeah. Yep. So I hear you're going to the Rocky Mountain show? Yep, I'll be there. That starts the 12th. That's here. Why, you sound like you're counting down. that place is about three blocks from my son's apartment so pretty convenient huh yeah I don't know man I don't think he wants me old man crashing in his place but I told him I said I'm going to pick you up and we're going to go down and frankly I got a bunch of stuff I got to buy parts and things like that and I'd rather just go buy them from the guys there than pay for shipping and do all that stuff, and that way I can just pick it all up at once and come home with it. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Now, are you buying bingo parts? Well, you know, they sell the little stuff like, I need the rubbers and, you know, that kind of junk. Lamps and stuff? Yeah, I need some 55s. I don't know if they'll have them. I hope so. But if they don't, I'll go online and buy them. But I'd rather give these guys a chance because they're putting their money up to come out and do it, you know? Yeah. Although I've been to the show, I don't go every year, but because there's no bingos, and I think I might bring one there sometime. I just haven't done it. They were trying to get me to bring one, and I said I would, and that was about five years ago, and I never did it, and he never called me back, but I should. I think it'd be great. Yeah. I was talking to one of the guys that really runs that show, and he was talking to me about pinball. And I said, well, you know, once I started to play bingo machines, I didn't really like flipper machines anymore. They just kind of lost it for me. I just didn't like them. And this guy was just touring me, told me I didn't know anything about pinball. that bingos were worthless. Yeah. And they're like, man, I don't have any use talking to somebody like that. They don't understand anything. And you can't convince them. They just don't get it. Yeah. And that's the thing, you know, I don't really understand that, but, you know, obviously, because I like bingos, but, you know, I don't understand. It's such a small hobby anyway, just pinball in general and then tearing someone down just because they like something different. I don't quite get it. Well, I was just telling them, what are you talking about? Look at this play field. What do John Youssi? Pens and a ball. How's that not pinball? That's more pinball than what you're doing. Yeah. And what about flipperless games, you know? It's not like there's not an evolution there. Right, right. Oh, that's another thing that really flies me. When people call those one-ball horse race games bingos. Oh, yeah, yeah. And people actually think they are, and they're not bingos. Yeah, completely different animal. Yeah, but they're fun. Yeah, well, I've never actually played one. you know what you should do is fly out to Vegas and go to the pinball hall of fame have you heard of us? oh yeah yeah go out there it's fun he's got a couple bingo's set up or at least he did last time I was there he's got some of the beach games which are really unusual games You know, they're flipperless games, and you try to hit the bumpers and light the ladies on the back glass. It's kind of fascinating. You should look into getting one of those. Your wife would probably like that. I'm sure. I'm kidding. Yeah. Yeah. You know, there's a variety of those. And you're right. I mean, they're not all horse racing themed. Right. Yeah. So Is there anything that you're looking forward to playing Or not at all At the Rocky Mountain Show No, no I'm just going to go look and see what's there I'll tell you what I won't play I won't play any of the new games I like the EMs And I don't play The only new game The new game This is new, right It's from Bally Playboy from 78 I like that game with the glotto on the left. But that's probably the only game that I would play that wasn't an EM. I just, I don't know, I like the old games. That's it. And I'm not going to see a bingo there, so. Well, one thing I know is going to be there is a game called Scorgasm Master. Have you heard of that? No. It's a flipperless. It's a modern recreation of a game from the 30s called Contact Master. Oh, okay. And it's got, you know, pins in the play field, just like a 30s game, and a bunch of trap holes. And in Contact Master and in this game, there's a hole that you land in that will kick balls out to get to progressive scoring, you know, further down the play field. Uh-huh. Might be worth a shot for you. I'll take a look. You know the guy that's playing it? I think it's a distributor is bringing it I see but yeah let me know what you think I've never played one of those either but I'm curious okay I will I'll do it and I'll let you know yeah show report that's good okay good so well do you have any questions for me or no I don't think so I'd just like to thank you for what you're doing here this is this is awesome and I made it through this I was you know I was kind of little reticent about doing it, but I've had a good time. I appreciate you relenting. Yeah. Because it's been a pleasure to talk with you, Phil, and I hope to talk with you again soon. Okay. Thanks a lot, Mark. Sure thing. All right. Take care. You too. Bye. I want to thank my guest, Phil Bogoma, for coming on and talking with me about his old bingo playing days in Maryland and in Colorado. And thank you for joining me. My name again is Nick Baldrige. You can reach me at 4amusementonlypodcast at gmail.com and you can listen to us on iTunes, Stitcher, Pocket Casts, VRSS, on Facebook, on Twitter, and on our website, which is 4amusementonly.libsyn.com. Thanks again for listening and I'll talk to you next time.