Louise Chavez of Denver, Colorado, was playing slots at the Fortune Valley Casino in Central City, Colorado on Friday night. She got excited when the machine she was on started flashing, displaying a message that she had won almost $43 million. The casino says the machine was broken, and gave Chavez some free meals and a hotel room instead.

BBC: $43m slot machine win a ‘mistake’ says Colorado casino

An American woman named Louise Chavez thought she had won $43m on a slot machine, but was later been told that a mistake was made.

According to the Fortune Valley Casino in Central City, Colorado, the slot machine had “malfunctioned.”
It seems Chavez will never see a penny of jackpot.

Chavez earns about $12,000 a year, so when the lights and bells went off, she was very excited.

“All of a sudden I saw the light come on on top of the machine. I’m like, ‘Oh, my God! Oh, my God!’ I’d never had this feeling before in my life, never.”

Gaming officials blame an unfortunate computer glitch.

Chavez said she was given a free room for the night, and some food for compensation, along with the $20 bet she put into the faulty slot machine.

“My emotions changed from excited, thrilled, to very upset.”

ABC News: Woman Wins $42 Million Jackpot? Not So Fast

When the lights started flashing on a slot machine at the Fortune Valley Casino, in Central City, Colorado, Louise Chavez thought she had won $43 million.

Instead, the casino claimed the machine malfunctioned, and all Chavez got out of it was some free meals and a room for the night.

“I put my money in there,” Chavez explained on Good Morning America. “Whatever I won, I should get… There are dreams and there are things I’d like to do — helping my family, helping my kids. That’s why I’m disappointed. I just don’t know.”

Fortune Valley communications director Joe Behm said, “We’ve been open for 15 years at Fortune Valley and this is the first time we’ve had something of this magnitude.”

“It’s unfortunate when it happens,” said Don Burmania, spokesperson for the Colorado Division of Gaming. “We don’t like it to happen, the casinos don’t like it to happen and in this case, the patron didn’t like it, either.”

The New York Times: Colorado: Instead of $43 Million, How About Waffles?

A US woman won $42.9 million off a penny bet in a slot machine at a Colorado casino, only to have her dreams doused when the casino claimed that the jackpot message was in fact an error. Colorado gambling authorities are now testing the machine in questions, while the rest state’s 39 casinos struggle to reassure gamblers.

Louise Chavez of Denver got the jackpot on Friday while playing at the Fortune Valley Casino in Central City. The listed its top prize as $251,000. She said that she was given a free breakfast as compensation, but that she is owed much more.

A recent study examined the behavior of two women who, because of a rare genetic disorder, had lesions on a small part of their brain called the amygdala. The study showed that these women were more likely to take big risks than patients with healthy brains. It may provide insight into why some people are less afraid to gamble than others.

BBC: Patients with amygdala injury ‘unafraid’ to gamble

Some scientists in California believe they have pinpointed the part of the human brain makes people afraid to lose money. A study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences examined two patients who had damaged their amygdala, a special area deep within the brain.

The study showed that these patients were less worried about financial losses than the volunteers they were compared with whose amygdalae were intact. They use the term ‘loss aversion’ which describes the avoidance of choices which can lead to losses, even when those losses are clearly accompanied by gains which offset them.

The lead author, Dr Benedetto De Martino, explains things in terms of the game show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, suggesting that many people would rather walk away with the prize they have than risk dropping to a lower level in order to try and win more.

During the study, participants were offered a series of tests to look at whether the chance of losing money had an effect on their willingness to take risks. The study found that healthy volunteers only decide to gamble if the gains were one and a half to two times the size of the potential losses.

Conversely, patients whose amygdalae were damaged were more reckless, playing even on poorer ratios between gains and losses.

John Aggleton, Professor of Psychology at Cardiff University, said: “Most people have been found to have a bias against losses, but this study shows very clearly that when the amygdala is damaged, this “loss aversion” disappears.”

The Independent: Genetic disorder turns risk-averse into gamblers

The brains of people who take big risks while gambling may differently than those of naturally cautious people, according to a new study that may have discovered a neurological basis for reckless behaviour.

The study found that people were more likely to engage in high-risk gambling when a specific area of their brain had been damaged due to a result of a rare genetic disorder. These individuals lacked the natural aversion to losing something of value that many are born with.

Tests on two women who had suffered damage this part of their brain, called the amygdala, revealed that they were less afraid to lose money in high-risk gambling situations compared to individuals with no such damage to their brain.

The amygdala is a small almond-shaped structure deep inside the brain. It is referred to as the “seat of fear” because of its central role in controlling this emotion. It is an ancient area of the brain that existed long before the outer “higher cortex” evolved.

“It may be that the amygdala controls a very general biological mechanism for inhibiting risky behaviour when outcomes are potentially negative, such as the monetary loss aversion which shapes our everyday financial decisions,” said Benedetto De Martino, a researcher at University College London.

Loss aversion behaviour is biologically important because it helps us consider the options involved in potentially life-threatening decisions. Today, it manifests itself in much different ways.

Reuters: Study shows why it is so scary to lose money

A recent study examined two women with brain lesions that made them unafraid to take big risks when gambling. It showed that the amygdala, the brain’s fear center, becomes active when people think about losing money.

The findings of the study were reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The report suggests that humans may have evolved to be cautious about the possibility of losing food or other valued possessions.

Benedetto De Martinoa of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena and University College of London were exploring why people will turn down big gambles, even when the gamble is likely to lead to an even bigger gain.

“Laboratory and field evidence suggests that people often avoid risks with losses even when they might earn a substantially larger gain, a behavioral preference termed ‘loss aversion’,” they wrote.

“We think this shows that the amygdala is critical for triggering a sense of caution toward making gambles in which you might lose,” Colin Camerera of University College London, who worked in the study, said in a statement.

The study may assist researchers in understanding why some people are more willing to take risks than others.