Casino

Barbara Holloway is tapping away with her right index finger, pressing down on a 2-inch square of plastic every 20 seconds or so.

Every time she hits the plastic square, images whir across a video screen in front of her.

“I don’t smoke, I don’t drink, I play the nickel slots,” said the brunette, a mother of four from Worcester.

It’s shortly after midnight, early yesterday morning, and she’s been tapping away at Triple Double Dollars for some time now, without much luck, said Holloway, a school bus driver.

She came down to Twin River in Lincoln with a friend hours before, she said, and expects to stay until 2:30 a.m. — at least a half-hour past the time she could stay on her previous occasional trips to the slot parlor off Route 146. Around her, thousands of other gamblers, spread out among the venue’s 4,700 video lottery terminals (VLTs), are settled in for a long night.

Last Tuesday, the General Assembly overrode Governor Carcieri’s veto of 24-hour video gambling, making this the first weekend for all-night gambling in Rhode Island. While Newport Grand decided to hold off on going around the clock, Twin River wasted no time in stretching out its hours. After opening Friday morning at 9 a.m., Twin River will keep its doors open until 3 a.m. tomorrow — nearly 70 straight hours of gambling.

The Assembly approved the new weekend hours in its struggle to fill a gaping deficit that opened its maw even wider in the last few months. Once pegged at $384 million, the shortfall for the next fiscal year is estimated at $440 million.

Altogether, the state expects to take in about $243 million from Twin River’s video slots for the fiscal year that will end June 30, and about $256 million for the year that will start July 1.

Lawmakers are counting on round-the-clock gambling on weekends and holidays at Twin River and Newport Grand to raise upward of $14 million in new money for the cash-strapped state.

Twin River has its own problems with money, this year falling behind on its debt payments.

Lenders have been pressuring Twin River’s owner, UTGR Inc., since the company missed a loan payment early this year. The two sides negotiated a standstill agreement that delayed legal action to collect on the $577 million in outstanding loans tied to Twin River’s operation.

The standstill pact, known as a forbearance agreement, extends until June 30, with options for two additional 30-day extensions. Meanwhile, the slot parlor will operate normally.

In effect, Twin River has until Aug. 29 to work out a “permanent financing structure” that would satisfy the lenders, according to Patti Doyle, a spokeswoman for the slot parlor.

Everyone, it seems, is banking on gamblers such as Holloway to pump more money into machines that go by names such as Vault Breaker, Wild Wranglers, Deal or No Deal and Pharaoh’s Fortune.

Twin River typically draws 21,000 to 22,000 people on a Friday, putting about half the VLTs in use at any one time, said Craig Sculos, Twin River’s vice president and general manager. Twin River didn’t have time to promote its new hours, Sculos said, and he didn’t expect many more people to show up than on a typical Friday night.

It may be Memorial Day before Twin River knows if the extended hours are drawing new patrons, he said.

“It’s not so much extra bodies,” he said. “It’s the ability to sustain the night.”

Gamblers typically start heading home after midnight and dribble out right up to its 2 a.m. closing time on Saturday mornings.

On past weekends, “there were legions of people leaving, a number of them heading south to Connecticut,” he said, referring to Foxwoods Resort Casino and Mohegan Sun, the two Indian-run casinos in that state.

“You’ll probably see a lot of people stay,” said Holloway, the Worcester bus driver. “I won’t do that.”

People were still heading into Twin River after midnight yesterday. Throngs of people stayed well past 2 a.m., but the number dwindled steadily, until there were probably no more than 200 gamblers tapping away at the VLTs.

Holloway was one of them. She was still at it after 3 a.m., though she moved to a VLT closer to the exit and was playing standing on one leg with her other knee resting on a vinyl-covered seat.

She held up a $100 payout voucher. She was ahead and decided to try her luck a few more times before she headed home.

“I’m on my way out,” she said.

By 4 a.m., she was gone, as were all but the die-hards who seemed intent on seeing the sun come up over the dog racing oval on Twin River’s east side.

pgrimald@projo.com