He stood before one of the Wide-Area Progressive machines, waiting his turn as he watched the jackpot pool increment penny by penny with each bet played. The number was beyond easy comprehension. He tried to derive a formula for an optimum bet, but the constant beep and clatter of the buttons proved too much of a distraction. The numbers flew apart in his mind and the chance was gone; a chair came open and he sat. He fed the bill into the machine and his hand hovered over the controls. He weighed the odds against a number that came not from the laws of probability but his own unspoken desires. Calculation, he had learned, was a thing apart from experience. He pressed Max Bet and watched the symbols flash on the screen.
