"The machines contain a random-number generator, or an RNG, as they call it in the industry. It's a microcomputer that constantly, even when the machines are not in use, spits out numbers. Somehow or other the numbers are selected by using atmospheric 'noise,' but I don't understand that part at all. To continue, the random numbers correspond to positions on each of the reels in the machine. When you pull the handle or press the SPIN button, you are not really initiating anything except the spinning of the reel, which is merely for show. With the spin or handle, you are telling the machine to display the reel position that corresponds to the last set of random numbers that were generated.

"This is important because it debunks some long-held assumptions about slot machines. It all comes down to that precise moment that you pull the handle or push the SPIN button. Pressing that SPIN button or yanking the handle a hundredth of a second later would yield a totally different result."

"So can you beat the machines? And can the house fix them so they don't pay off?" Yoko asked.

"No and no, from everything that has been written about them," Charles said. "Unfortunately, I don't believe it."

"Then forgive me, dear, but I don't think any of us understands what's going on," Myra said. "Why are we going to Las Vegas? I thought, I think we all thought, that the casinos were somehow 'fixing' the machines to the benefit of the house, as opposed to the player."

Charles looked down at the ream of notes he had on the gambling industry. For some reason he'd thought his ladies would want to know all the nitty-gritty stuff he'd spent hours garnering. They'd just reduced all his research to two simple questions, to which he'd given two negatives in response.

"Obviously, none of you cares to hear the rest of my research on how it's impossible to beat the house or the odds. Having said that, there are always ways for something to slip through the cracks, as all of you know only too well. I have seen the Las Vegas series that played on television a while back, and I've also seen the Oceans movies, as you have. If I recall correctly, we watched those movies together. You saw all the time, the effort, the planning that went into ripping off the casinos. Let me be the first to point out that they were fiction. This is real.