When I first went to Vegas in the 1960s, it was a free-and-easy town. The casinos, as a rule, were small and friendly. The $100 chip was usually the top denomination in play at the tables, so it was standard procedure for a player to have a wooden rack close at hand to keep his chips in. A player could walk over to a blackjack table, drop greenbacks on the felt, and tell the dealer, “Money plays.” When the player won, he would pick up his bills, put them in his pocket and gamble with the chips he won.

Not in Atlantic City, pal! The first time I placed my greenbacks on the table for a bet, the dealer swiftly gathered them up and zipped them into the drop box, exchanging my money for chips.
Annoyed, I wrote it off as petty bullshit. But as time went by, it dawned on me how clever and sophisticated the marketing geniuses in the casino front offices had become. Now follow me on this: When you play for money, real greenback folding money, you’re more aware, more cautious. You’re looking down on cash you made by the sweat of your brow. But once the dealer exchanges it for the casino’s multicolored chips, it suddenly ceases to be “real” money. Now you’re playing with play money.

If you stand back a little and put it all in perspective, the pieces fit neatly into place. The player (read that as “patsy”) is in a controlled atmosphere where Father Time is an absentee dad. A place with no windows and no clocks, a place where low, soothing lights and music in the background puts the player in a perpetual Twilight Zone. Like Pinocchio on Pleasure Island, he is a kid again, able to have all his whims satisfied: free cigarettes and drinks served by half-naked Playboy centerfold-type waitresses at his beck-and-call (you never see a guy serving drinks).

As for the chips, he often bets them without restraint. And why not? They’re “only” chips, not the real money he barters in a work-a-day world. The dealers help feed the myth of make-believe for the player with their unique terminology: You’re not betting $25— you’re betting “a quarter.” You’re not betting five real dollars— you’re betting “a nickel.” You can begin to see how easy it is for the casino to lull the player into losing a sense of reality.

If you think all this is just applesauce, just think back on the times you were flying high at the table, a fortune in the casino’s chips in front of you. A shoe or two later—wham!—the tide turned in the casino’s favor, as it eventually always does, and you were soon tapped out.
If you weren’t so zonked and brainwashed by the casino’s controlled environment, you probably would have grabbed your chips while the going was good and headed directly to the cashier’s cage.

I know of what I write. I was the patsy too many times in the situations discussed above. Oh, how many times I had it, but greed consumed me and I stuck around for “just one more shoe.” And, dammit, how many times I lost it all!
So don’t be an ass like I used to be. Don’t get lured into the “casino trance,” where you lose track of your table/casino goal and get swallowed up in Pinocchio’s Pleasure Island syndrome. When you reach your predetermined goal, run out of the casino with your winnings. Don’t join me and Pinocchio in the donkey house.

• Casino – Mad Money (0)
• Casino And Borrowed Money (0)
• Casino And $5,000 Chips Part3 (0)

Sounds far-fetched, I know. You've probably never even seen a $5,000 chip, let alone owned one. But here are three horror stories about $5,000 chips, one told to me, one that I witnessed, and one fairly recent episode I read about in a 1999 issue of Gambling Today.
The first instance happened on what was supposed to be a jolly and carefree, fun-filled junket to a Caribbean island casino. The husband, who gambled, took along his wife, who didn't. She was just eager to soak up a little winter sunshine.
While strolling through the casino the wife spied a chip on the floor and picked it up. To her amazement and delight it turned out to be a $5,000 chip. Now grandiose thoughts danced in her brain, like how she would surprise her husband with extravagant gifts, etc. Her dream turned into a nightmare when she went to the cashier's cage and tried to cash the $5,000 chip. Immediately the shift boss and the casino manager closed in on her, asking her exactly where she got the chip.
She wasn't a junketeer gambler known to them, and no one had ever seen her at the tables. She told them that she had found it, but that didn't satisfy the casino bosses. Without going into all the nasty by-play, I'll just say that she and her husband fled the island paradise, threatened with arrest! Truth be told, they probably were lucky to get out in one piece.

Another episode concerning a $5,000 chip happened on my watch recently at Caesars in Atlantic City. I was at a $25-minimum blackjack table, as is my wont. Sitting next to me was a young guy, who couldn't have been much older than eighteen, by law the age requirement for gambling in a New Jersey casino.
He pushed a chip toward the dealer for change—a $5,000 chip. The dealer froze and stopped the action. He immediately summoned the pit boss, who asked the kid a few questions and then called over the shift manager. Meanwhile all action at the table stopped.
After the shift manager had interrogated the kid, an impressive casino executive appeared, probably an assistant casino manager. He asked the youth for his ID and then wanted to know where he got the $5,000 chip. Still no action at the table. The lad explained—claimed—that his father had given him the $5,000 chip.

After a short sotto-voce conference between the three Caesar stooges, they pushed the chip back to the kid and told him to have his father bring it in. Red-faced and crestfallen, the kid left the table, and at last—the game went forward.
I relate these two $5,000 chip episodes, which occurred thousands of miles apart, to alert you to the perils of accepting high-denomination chips. I wonder what happens to the schnook who stumbles upon a $10,000 or a $25,000 chip.

In 1998 an entirely new set of problems arose over the $5,000 chip, this time in Binion's Horseshoe in Las Vegas. It appears that some very enterprising counterfeiter successfully cloned the casino's $5,000 chocolate chip, panicking the management. Hamid Dastmalchi, winner of the 1992 World Series of Poker, tried to redeem the five-grand chips for $815,000, but was rebuffed at the cashier's cage. The explanation he was given was that, with counterfeit chips in circulation, Binion's would only cash big-money chips they could verify as having been bought or won at the casino.

• Casino – Money Doesnt Play In Atlantic City (0)
• Casino – Mad Money (0)

My then-girl friend Stella, now my wife, also regards my gambling winnings as "found money" to be splurged on fantasies. Of course, when I lost I would explain it was just loose money, the loss of which didn't affect our standard of living, but she still had a few thousand choice words of vituperation for me.

When we were wed, Stella and I spent our honeymoon at the Sahara in Las Vegas—where else? Thinking all good things must come to an end, I found myself standing on the check-out line, feeling good because the Las Vegas tables had paid for our honeymoon. I felt a tap on my shoulder,- it was my blushing bride.
"We need a necessity for our apartment."

Warily I asked, "What 'necessity'?"
"A ZEBRA LOUNGE neon sign," she answered, nudging me off the check-out line and pointing me toward the blackjack tables. "You're not finished winning yet," she added.
An explanation is required here.

Our Manhattan apartment has a zebra motif—zebra sheets, zebra covers, zebra figurines, zebra pictures—zebras everywhere you look. We are up to our ass in zebras.
I shrugged my shoulders, and muttered "what the hell," and headed back into the casino and over to the nearest blackjack table. There, I laboriously ground out another $400 before checking out.

The next afternoon found us at a sign shop in Greenwich Village. We designed a splendid ZEBRA LOUNGE neon sign, which still, as of this very morning, was shining like a beacon over the table as I sipped my breakfast coffee.

Follow my advice: When you win it, go out and spend it! If necessity dictates, then yes, go out and buy that mattress you put off getting because you couldn't afford it. However, if you've got the necessities covered, then dream-that-dream that you dared to dream and make it come true with the "mad money" that you just won! And always remember: If you win it and spend it, the casinos can never win it back. The Sahara Hotel will never ever win back our proud ZEBRA LOUNGE neon sign, that's for sure!

• Casino – Money Doesnt Play In Atlantic City (0)
• Casino And Borrowed Money (0)
• Casino And $5,000 Chips Part3 (0)