The three women made the trip to Lebanon in little under an hour on Tuesday. Barbara Stack, the youngest at 75, did the driving.

At 11:30 a.m., Stack pulled her white Subaru into one of four parking spaces — only yards from the establishment’s glass-door entrance — reserved for drivers or passengers with physical disabilities.

Stack and her two friends, each with a pocketbook in one hand and a cane in the other, shuffled through the lobby, passing a security guard on the lookout for anyone under the age of 21. Not that he had much to do. The daytime gamblers on Tuesday trended on the retiree side.

Revo Casino and Social House opened six months ago on Miracle Mile, following a $10.5 million renovation to a former car dealership. The privately-owned casino, one of 14 now operating in New Hampshire, is a poker chip’s throw from Interstate 89, which is no coincidence.

Revo is the only game, so to speak, for this part of the state. Judging by the license plates in the large parking lot last Tuesday morning, Revo attracts a fair amount of its customers from casino-free Vermont.

On a stroll through the floor, I counted about 50 people playing the 135 or so electronic slot machines and a dozen people sitting at blackjack tables.

I plunked down at a bank of slot machines where Stack, who is from North Walpole, N.H., and Mary Elliott, her front-seat passenger from Bellows Falls, Vt., had already settled in. The chairs were well-cushioned and easy on the back, which I suspect is part of any casino’s strategy to keep gamblers in their seats.

After introducing myself, I confessed to Elliott that I was a casino gambling novice. But she already knew that. Only a rookie pulls out a $1 bill to feed into a slot with a minimum bet of 75 cents per spin.

Elliott worked strictly with twenties when playing a slot called Pyramid Party. Though she doesn’t consider herself a big spender, usually sticking to the 75-cent per bet minimum.

“Most people are too serious,” she told me. “They come here thinking they’re going to win. I’m not expecting to win. I just hope to win.”

“It’s very easy to get hooked,” she added.

Elliott, 81, and her friends have visited the Lebanon casino, one of five that Revo operates in the state, only a few times. They prefer to stay closer to home, hitting the Revo casino in Keene.

“We’re single. We don’t hang out in bars, and there’s no movie theater,” Elliott said. “So where can you go?”

Elliott and her husband, John, who died in 2022, raised five children in Bellows Falls. They had a pizza shop in town. John also worked as a school custodian. She spent 19 years in patient care at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon.

Elliott gets by on her monthly Social Security check and a small DHMC pension.

Thirty minutes after she had sat down at Pyramid Party, Elliott was up $30. “That’s not bad,” she said.

Elliott moved over to her favorite bank of slots — The Ultimate Fire Link Explosion. The goal is to hit multiple “fireballs” with a spin, which for a few minutes she did with some regularity.

“It’s all luck,” she said. “There’s no skill involved.”

With the machine showing her up $100.55, Elliott hit the cash-out button. “Are you sure?” the machine asked in bold lettering.

Elliott stuck the cash-out ticket in her purse. “If I leave it in the machine, I spend it too fast,” she said.

I found her friend, Janice, the third member of the traveling party, playing slots near the blackjack tables.

Another lunchtime gambler overheard me trying (unsuccessfully) to persuade Janice, 78, to give me her last name to put in the paper. “I’m glad I didn’t wear my company T-shirt,” he quipped.

After the three women had gone their separate ways in the spacious casino, Stack eventually caught up with Elliott. “Janice wants to leave in 20 minutes,” Stack said.

“Is she winning?” Elliott asked.

“No, that’s why she wants to leave.”

Elliott’s luck had also changed. She moved to another bank of slots. After each spin, the machine gave Elliott a running total of how much she had left to gamble before she needed to feed it another Andrew Jackson. She had $15 remaining, enough for 20 more spins at 75 cents a pop, if her losing streak continued.

“It doesn’t take long for it to go down,” she said.

She pulled two $20 bills out of her pocketbook, but it doesn’t last long. “It’s time to go,” she said.

By my math, she ended up 52 cents in the black. “That’s a good day for me,” she said.

I walked with the three women to Stack’s car before they headed off for lunch at the Ninety-Nine Restaurant on Route 12A.

Back inside the air-conditioned casino, I found a seat at the bar which features several big-screen TVs. Revo runs a daily lunch special. A burger or grilled chicken sandwich for $5 is a real bargain, I remarked to the bartender.

“They’re not making money from us,” she replied.

The New Hampshire Lottery Commission issues a monthly “gaming revenue report.” In the first five months of 2025, the Revo Casino in Lebanon was in the middle of the pack with total revenue of nearly $2.1 million. Revo’s share came to more than $1.2 million. After the state got its cut (roughly $215,000), the remaining $730,000 was earmarked for nonprofit organizations, which is part of the deal that casino owners worked to gain a foothold in the state.

I ran the revenue figures past state Rep. Susan Almy, of Lebanon, who acknowledges that she’s “not neutral on casinos.” Not only does New Hampshire allow casinos to prey on people who “don’t have enough to live on, the state is getting hooked too,” she said.

Almy, a Democrat who is serving her 15th term in the Legislature, points out that gambling — ranging from scratch-off lottery tickets to casinos — has become among the state’s main sources of revenue.

It’s not sustainable, she argued.

As much as I like $5 chicken sandwiches, I’d still bet she’s right.

Jim Kenyon can be reached at jkenyon@vnews.com.