As gamblers go, you won't find Calvin Tyson going for broke on ESPN's "World Poker Tour" show.

A best, the 47-year-old former Marine and one-time star sprinter at Harding High School will drop a C-note on the casino slots a couple of times a year. These days, it's about all the fun he gets.

Tyson has kidney disease and spends much of his time traveling back and forth to his three-times-a-week dialysis treatments at the West Haven VA Hospital. His only source of income at the moment is Social Security disability checks.

On Nov. 11, 2003, Tyson says, he joined a bus trip to the Mohegan Sun casino in Uncasville, sponsored by Bridgeport's Eisenhower Senior Center. The ticket included the round-trip ride and lunch. At the casino around noon, Tyson says, he started playing a 25-cent video poker machine, called "Bonus Poker Deluxe." By 3 p.m., Tyson was broke.

Normally that would have ended Tyson's gambling day, but he wanted a chance to recoup his losses, so he got a new infusion of cash at the ATM.

The new money worked. After just a few plays on the video poker machine, Tyson hit three-of-a-kind. It paid $20. Not much, but better than he'd done earlier.

Somewhere between 3:30 and 4 p.m., the light on top of the poker machine starting blinking like a berserk lighthouse. Bells rang. The machine had run up four deuces. Jackpot.

With slot jackpots above a certain amount (Tyson estimates his could be at least $10,000), a casino attendant must verify

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the win. While the player waits by the machine, the attendant goes to the cashier and subsequently returns with a slip of paper stating the amount of the jackpot. The winner can redeem the paper for the jackpot cash.

It was not long before the attendant arrived at Tyson's extroverting machine.

"She put her card into a machine and turned off the light," he says. "Everybody around me was cheering and patting me on the back."

The attendant, a woman, Tyson says, then left, saying she'd be right back with the "white piece of paper."

While he waited, Tyson handed his pocket camera to a woman at a neighboring machine and asked her to snap him and his lucky machine. He still has that photo. It shows a beaming Tyson in front of the machine. Although the lower part of the window is partially obscured, four deuces can clearly be seen.

Tyson waited. And waited. But after an hour the woman still did not return with his slip. Now Tyson had another problem. The bus returning to the Eisenhower center was scheduled to leave at 5 p.m. sharp.

Worried, he says, he left the machine and went to the cashier's window to tell them about the missing attendant. He says someone behind the glass told him to go home and call the next day. His jackpot could be verified and the winnings sent to him. The casino's spy cameras would have recorded his win, and it would also be recorded on records for his "player's card." Tyson says he called and spoke with Michael W. Bloom, senior vice president of marketing, who promised to look into his claim. After several more calls, Bloom sent him a form letter thanking him for visiting Mohegan Sun and using a player's card. But no money.

A year and a half and many phone calls to Uncasville later, Tyson says he still has neither his money nor any satisfactory answers. He fears the attendant may have stolen his jackpot payoff.

This week he spoke to another casino official who said he could find no record of the jackpot hit on the surveillance cameras. He asked Tyson to send him a copy of the photograph and a letter describing when and how he hit the jackpot.

Tyson says he's heard that before.

Our efforts to reach the officials over the weekend were unsuccessful, but another floor manager promised to look into Tyson's claims.

Charles Walsh's column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. You can reach him by phone at 330-6217 or by e-mail at cwalsh@ctpost.com.