Jackpot win for a 50-centimes bet should bring a smile to the face - shouldn't it?

It's the kind of story you read from time to time in the press, see on the telly or hear on the radio: a dead cert to make you feel good and perhaps start wondering what you would do if you won a pile of money.

Image from Wikipedia - author: Jeff Kubina from the milky way galaxy

"A woman places 50 centimes and wins €238,830 at a casino in Toulouse," runs the headline on the site of the regional French daily La Dépêche du Midi.

Surely the stuff that dreams are made of.

But take a scroll down the page and you'll see that not everybody is of the same opinion.

Because among the "congratulations" are some comments that are - to put it politely - simply mean-spirited.

There are those that accuse the paper of "running an infomercial-type story" or others expressing disgust at the amount of money the casino must have "raked in" before someone hit the jackpot.

Wouldn't you expect readers to be happy for the Maryse, the fiftysomething named in the piece who's also seen smiling in an accompanying photo receiving a "symbolic cheque" for the amount?

After all, as the hospital worker tells the paper, she only plays the slot machines once a month and never risks a great deal of money as proven by her having only bought €10-worth of 50-centimes tokens.

And her win should bring an even bigger smile to the face of those reading as she was obviously more than overjoyed when she thought she had won the smaller amount of €25,000.

That was the figure the machine had registered when Maryse hit the jackpot.

"I was already happy but when the director of the slot machines told me exactly how much I had won, I cried like a child," she told the paper.

"I thought such large sums of money were only reserved for 'serious' players."

But no, some of La Dépêche readers aren't at all happy for her, the paper or the casino it seems.

This is the age of the Net of course, in which the habit of making perhaps snide and resentful comments has become easy and almost commonplace - especially when they can be left anonymously.

Maybe they have a point when they write that the casino is getting some free publicity in a story that tells us, "The win is the biggest since it opened its doors four years ago."

And maybe they're right that by publishing the first name, a photo and giving the job of the winner, the paper has, "Provided enough information to allow other 'less fortunate souls' to come begging at her door or begin bombarding her with telephone calls."

But heck. Where does all this cynicism and apparent churlishness come from? And why do they feel the need to express their thoughts?

Why can't they just be happy for her?

Oh well you can't win them all.

But at least Maryse did.

Kebab-selling couple scoop casino jackpot

For one French couple 13 wasn't such an unlucky number as they celebrated their wedding anniversary by scooping a €5.5 million jackpot at a casino.

But rather than let the win change their lives the pair fully intend to keep their jobs selling kebabs and chips.

On Monday afternoon Elhadi and Mahjouba decided that they would try their luck at a casino in the spa town of Bagnères-de-Bigorre in southwestern France.

The couple, both 38 years old, run a bar selling kebabs and chips and were in the town taking a break from the children and celebrating their Lily of the Valley (here in France) anniversary - marking 13 years of marriage.

As the wife said, when interviewed on the nationwide radio network RTL, they had gone along to the casino to have a drink and had "splashed out" €20 on playing a slot machine.

Luck clearly seemed to be on their side from the beginning as they had soon totted up €120 in winnings - all of it in small coins.

"We exchanged the coins for notes," she said.

"Except for the initial €20 which we traded in for 50-centime coins so that we could play another machine."

And that was when Lady Luck really struck because, even though at first they apparently thought the machine had jammed and wasn't working properly, it turned out that they had hit the jackpot and were €5.5 million richer.

Far from frittering away the money though, the couple fully intend not to let it change their lives in any way. So much so that they insist they'll keep their kebab and chip shop running.

"For us, we see the win as simply an improvement in our everyday lives, and it was just chance," said Mahjouba.

"We're not at all gamblers and it was pure luck," agreed her husband.

"We'll put some money aside for our children in case they want to study later," he added.

"Otherwise we're not really sure what we'll do, but we're certainly not going to squander it."

The winner wants it all

Just imagine for a moment that you're in a casino playing on one of those slot machines.

Next to you is a friend, also happily gambling away, and although you've been pumping money into that little devil for quite a while now, you've not actually won anything of any consequence.

So you turn round and ask your friend to hit the lever to set the thing in motion and then press the appropriate button to stop its rotation.

All the time of course it's your money that has been playing and it's in effect "your" machine.

Your friend obliges and.....KERCHING - you hit the jackpot to the tune of €2.175 million!

That's exactly what happened a couple of weeks ago to Marie-Hélène when she won at a casino in Palavas-les-Flots not far from the city of Montpellier in the south of France.

And her friend, Francis was with her the next day when the bubbly was flowing and the casino handed over a cheque for the full amount.

The local press was even there to record the event, with the smiling winner proclaiming, "He's my lucky charm, my four-leafed clover."

End of story perhaps. Except of course it isn't.

It has now been picked up by the national media because Francis would like something more than simply to be remembered as Marie-Hélène's "porte-bonheur".

He also wants a slice of the winnings - half of it reportedly - and of course he has found himself a lawyer.

"My client was playing on the machine next to the one which hit the jackpot," Luc Abratkiewicz told the national daily, Le Parisien.

"She asked him to 'play' for her and he set the machine in motion and pressed the button," he added.

"To win, a player needed to perform three separate actions* and my client carried out two of those."

As far as the casino is concerned there's only one winner.

"It's clear Marie-Hélène is the winner," said Jean-Marc Masquelier, the director of the casino.

"On the day that the jackpot was won, nobody said anything other than that - including her friend who even participated at the celebrations to hand over the cheque."

So far Marie-Hélène has refused to comment, and she certainly hasn't handed over any of the prize money.

Instead the case has been turned over to investigators from the brigade des jeux who are looking at video footage of what actually happened before, during and after the slot machine went KERCHING.

And the moral of this tale?




*the other one of course being to have provided to the money in the first place.