Las Vegas has always been a place where dreams come true. Located in the sun-scorched Mojave Desert, it appears to travellers like a mirage rising from the sand: a beating heart in the middle of a vast and empty nothingness.

Those who’ve visited can attest to its fantastical nature. A world of glitz and glamour, incongruously situated amidst one of the most barren stretches of the earth in existence, it is a wonderland for the optimistic and the excited.

For some lucky winners, Las Vegas is life-changing, as a Californian local discovered earlier this month.

A lucky role of the dice 

Source: Pixabay

Throughout its long and storied history, Las Vegas has been witness to some of the biggest casino wins of all time. Filled to the brim with gambling establishments galore, it turns on the premise of changing your fortunes in a night, and it is this tantalising promise that attracts around 43 million tourists each and every year.

Its appeal is unsurprising. Eternally popular, the gambling industry has gone from strength to strength in recent years, thanks to the advent of online play. This has made the casino industry more accessible than ever before, with around 1.6 billion people gambling annually.

Lured by everything from slot games like Deal or No Deal,which allows them to live out all of the electrifying tension and tough decisions of its TV show counterpart, through to more traditional options like roulette and blackjack, people are gambling in numbers never seen before, and Vegas is the ultimate mecca for those who want to give it a go.

Of the many individuals who visit, plenty go home poorer than they started, but others do not. In fact, there are examples of some truly incredible amounts being won, such as in 1997, when an Australian billionaire is reputed to have walked away with around $40 million.

Indeed, one man got so lucky that he scored multimillion-dollar wins twice over, firstly leaving Las Vegas with $4.6 million, before taking home a tidy $21 million 16 years later, at the incredible age of 92.

A new winner 

Source: Pixabay

Although it is not a significant enough sum to rival these record-changing wins, the 9th May 2019 saw another lucky winner emerge. A lady, so far identified only as Rhonda from California, became the latest in a string of visitors to Las Vegas to leave markedly richer than she arrived.

Playing slots at the South Point complex, Rhonda was fortunate enough to score a six-figure jackpot, with her earnings allegedly totalling $954,263.11. Identified by the casino via their social media pages and a news release, the triumphant player was taking her chances on the 25 cent Wheel of Fortune Progressive machine when luck struck.

According to tweets from IGT, this sum marks the second large win on one of their machines in Las Vegas in the space of a month, since another fortunate player walked away with a whopping $13.2 million on the 14th April.

We can only imagine how much fun this lucky lady will have splashing the cash and spending her winnings.