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)

Though normally a casino owner will do just about anything in the world to coax a whale into his casino, MGM Grand owner Kirk Kerkorian flew a personal representative to Australia just to tell Packer face-to-face that his business was no longer welcome at the MGM Grand. Casino old-timers say this is the first time in living memory anything like this ever happened.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
The highest-stakes game I ever witnessed was a chemin de fer session in 1964 at Crockford's Casino in London, with auto magnate Henry Ford II, movie producer Otto Preminger, and an Arab sheik at the table. London chips get bigger as their value increases, and the chips I saw going back and forth across the table were HUGE.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Only one time in all my casino cruising have I ever seen a craps table run out of chips. It was in the 1960s at the Sands. The table was elbow-to-elbow with High Rollers, all from Providence, Rhode Island. The table minimum was $100, a rarity in the 1960s.
Lady Luck really smiled on the enthusiastic Rhode Islanders as the black chips rapidly disappeared from in front of the boxmen, streaming across the table to the red-hot Providence crowd. To my astonishment, security men suddenly showed up with a rolling table, piled high with racks of the old, discontinued black chips of the 1950s—the cute ones with the smiling cowgirl and the logo, 'Gome As You Are." It was nice seeing them again.

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

Money is the real name of the game in the casino.
In 1960, when I first started to gamble in casinos, currency was frequently used as a betting unit in baccarat. Players would put greenbacks on the betting squares and, if they won, the dealer would count out paper money to pay off the bet. $100 chips were top dollar betting units at both blackjack and craps, with higher denomination chips mostly in play at the baccarat table. The cry, "Money plays," with the bettor tossing greenbacks onto the green-felt cloth, was heard frequently in casinos.

I promised you that this book would be anecdotal, so I can't resist telling you about the most unusual loan I ever got. I went along on one of book publisher Lyle Stuart's all-expenses-paid trips to the Sands in Las Vegas for his office crew and friends. As this was during my fledgling years, I was still learning the art and science of wagering, and I was not adroit in either blackjack or craps. The result: My bankroll soon slimmed down to almost nothing. I sometimes tagged along with Lyle on his gambling sprees but, as I was just about tapped out, I explained to my friend that, with the meager funds left at my disposal, I was going to cool it for the rest of the trip and stick with the slot machines. Obviously amused, Lyle led me to the Sands' baccarat table, where he was greeted warmly by the dealers. Lyle stood there, with his hands in his pockets and just stared at the table for a couple of seconds. Then he simply announced, "Two thousand on Player."

That was it. Lyle, just standing there, didn't even take his hands out of his pockets, and of course he didn't put up any money.
"$2,000 on Player for Mr. S," intoned the Caller as the cards were dealt. "The Bank has a natural eight," the Caller announced.
The player at the table with the biggest bet on the Player's side turned his two cards face-up.

"A natural nine for the Player. Player wins, nine over eight. Pay the Player's side."

The dealer counted out twenty-$100 bills and placed them on the cloth. Now, for the first time since we got to the table, Lyle took his hands out of his pockets and reached down to pick up his winnings, which he handed over to me.
"Here, kid, here's a loan. C'mon, let's head over to Caesars. Their baccarat table opens in twenty minutes."

With my newly enhanced bankroll, I resumed my custom of tagging along with Lyle. We went to Caesars and I had my usual exciting time watching my bon vivant friend in action. Did I gamble with Lyle's windfall loan? Not a penny, dear reader. Not a sou. Which brings me to my next rule for you. If you want to be a winner, never—NEVER—gamble with borrowed money. I returned the twenty $100 bills to him as soon as our return flight to New York was in the air.

• Casino And $5,000 Chips Part3 (0)
• 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)