HARRISBURG -- Wilkinsburg resident Carrie Styles Thomas considers herself a professional bingo player.

She plays four nights a week, focuses on 48 cards at a time and owns enough daubers -- colored ink card markers -- to fill a 20-gallon plastic container.

"Bingo is its own culture that most people who don't play aren't familiar with," Thomas said. "We have our own little rules. A person's seat is their seat."

She thinks bingo games will remain strong despite the coming of slot machine casinos to Pennsylvania, probably by late 2006.

But some state legislators, and some local charities that depend on bingo games as fund-raisers, are beginning to worry.

They fear that slot machines could hurt attendance and lower the take at their bingo games. Therefore, many organizers say it's time for the state to increase bingo prizes, which haven't changed since bingo laws were first passed in 1981.

Lawmakers may act this fall on a bill that contains these higher prize limits: $500 for a single game, up from $250; $2,500 for a once-an-evening jackpot, up from $2,000; and $5,000 for the total that an organization can hand out per session, up from $4,000.

The long-term influence of expanded slots gambling in the state on small bingo operations remains as uncertain as which number the caller will speak next.

But Rep. Paul Costa, D-Wilkins, himself a longtime church bingo caller, is concerned.

"It may not be [a problem] for the people who are playing, but it is for the organizers," said Costa, who sits on the House Tourism and Recreational Development Committee, which is considering the bill to raise the prizes.

Costa, who has been a bingo caller for 12 years at his parish, St. Colman Church in Turtle Creek, said a larger prize always draws a larger crowd.

When his parish's bingo raised its prizes from $50 to $60 per game and from $75 to $100 for specials, more people started showing up.

"Certainly the casino issue will have an impact on other not-for-profits who have games of chance," said the Rev. Lawrence DiNardo, chief canon lawyer for the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh.

When slots were introduced on Iowa riverboats in the early 1990s, charities in neighboring Nebraska saw a 43 percent drop in bingo revenue, the House panel was told at a hearing this month.

Similarly, in New York, nonprofit groups lost $110 million in proceeds from small games of chance when casinos came to the state, Michael McLaughlin, spokesman for Allied Charities of Pennsylvania, told the House committee.

"The stronger [bingos] will survive. The weak ones will perish," he said.

Shar Krayvo, a bingo committee member at Prince of Peace Church on the South Side, said the slots are not a huge threat because most of her players are regulars who show up every week in the same lucky seat.

"It's more of a fear of ours if they have the slot machines on the South Side or in Brentwood," said Krayvo. "There would be more competition. We would probably lose the big gamblers, the ones who really like to gamble compared to the small ones who say, 'I'm going to spend $20 tonight and that's going to be it.' "

As for slots casinos in the Pittsburgh area, the July 2004 law guarantees a slots parlor at The Meadows racetrack in Washington County. Several sites within Pittsburgh are competing for a stand-alone casino, including Station Square, the North Side, the Lower Hill and a hilly area of Hays. A new racetrack is to be built in either Beaver County or Lawrence County, and it also will have a slots parlor.

DiNardo said the proposed increases in the state law are reasonable. But others say the amounts proposed in the bill aren't high enough. Previous bills would have raised the total evening prize limit to $8,000 instead of $5,000.

Rep. Robert Godshall, R-Montgomery, said that bingo "is really a form of gambling. ... I was surprised when some of my committee members said [the proposed limit] wasn't high enough."

Godshall, tourism committee chairman, hopes for action on revising the prize limits this fall. He's also looking for a better system to track bingo revenue. But law enforcement is difficult.

There are almost 500 bingo licenses just in Allegheny County and 20,000 licenses in Pennsylvania. The state police are in charge of bingo law enforcement, but McLaughlin said enforcement isn't uniform throughout the state.