They each have their favorite chair in the large, overheated room, hot chocolate is served at 4 pm, the staff are attentive, there's musical entertainment to break the monotony and peers with whom they can chat about their recent hip operation. Every day, they're there – not at the retirement home, but at the casino.

Thanks to pensioners, the Lac du Der casino in Giffaumont-Champaubert, eastern France has hit the jackpot. Ranked 32^nd out of 202 gaming establishments in France, it opened 10 years ago in the village of 290, on the banks of an artificial lake, and now has the luxury of outperforming those in Antibes and Saint-Raphaël on the Côte d'Azur. Gross revenue: €22.9 million in 2023, up 12%, thanks to 230,000 admissions a year.

Customers like Elisabeth and Pierre-Paul stay until late afternoon – the time to leave to avoid driving through the night. The couple in their seventies moves like regulars around the area where the slot machines are located in the contemporary, wood-paneled building. "It's not my day," grumbled the former nurse in her reversed fur jacket. While she plays, he, the former HR manager, chats to everyone – it would be easy to mistake him for the manager. Taking advantage of the seven-day-a-week opening, the couple, who lives 15 minutes away, "doesn't mind coming along," as they put it. Nor to have lunch on the spot, on this Friday at the end of January, as they do every lunchtime.

'It's fun, it passes the time'

"We play around €3,000 a month. One day we lose, one day we win, and if we lose too much, we slow down," said Elisabeth, sitting in front of a giant slot machine screen. "I like putting in my little ticket, choosing the bet, it's fun. Here, we enjoy ourselves. There's the atmosphere, the friends, we're three couples always together." Pierre-Paul, nodding his head, added that the games "stimulate the brain a bit." Although he remembered the winnings well ("€500, €1,000 from time to time, €6,800 once"), he downplayed their significance: "We don't get our money back."

It doesn't matter, he said. "We have a comfortable retirement, savings, no children, and nephews who don't visit, don't call, they're idiots. Every year, I change cars, but we can't travel anymore, my wife has had heart surgery. So we splurge. It's unhealthy, in a way... Carpe diem! Here, it's fun, it passes the time. It's hard to be retired around here."

Eliane, who left her career as an IT specialist and the Paris region "to come back to [her partner] Alain's hometown," said that overcoming boredom is a common goal at this "overpriced" senior club. "He won €7,000 two days ago," she said, her eyes smiling behind small gold glasses. "But anyone who says they win is lying! We have a budget of €500 each per month." There have been many months since the casino opened 10 years ago.

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