Time magazine had a most informative article on the video poker machines in South Carolina.
The state has more than 30,000 of these machines in operation, each one of which earns a yearly net profit of $22,000. (I can't help wondering how many South Carolinians have incomes of less than $22,000.)

While the Nevada casinos have installed $500 and $1,000 slot machines, they also have reverted to the other end of the spectrum with the reintroduction of penny slots. Most notable are the penny video poker machines with their impressive 98% payback. Novice slot machine players can both, at the same time, learn as well as enjoy the game with an optimum five-coin investment (a nickel!) where the best pay-off schedules are. No, pennies aren't showered into the coin trough when you win,- paper vouchers are dispensed as cash-outs, which you can take over to the coin cashier for folding money.

As impressive as is the 98% payback of these penny video poker machines, the Las Vegas Stratosphere Casino advertised a 100% guaranteed payback on their dollar video poker machines. Anything to bring 'em into the joint.

I've gone into an Off-Track Betting (OTB) parlor about a dozen times in my life, eleven times to duck into the doorway to get out of the rain, and once—just once—to place a bet. That one time that I did bet, I won, making me probably the only guy in New York City who can say that he has bet at OTB and quit winners.

That one isolated OTB incident happened because my wife Stella's sister and brother-in-law came into the city to have lunch with us in Chinatown, right next door to an OTB parlor. Having never been in a legal bookmaking joint, they were hot to place a bet or two. I figured what the hell, I'm already here so I might as well go along with the crowd and put my two bucks down too. Knowing zip about the horses, I decided to consult the people who claim to have the inside track on the nags—the handicappers who pick 'em for the tabloids.

Fishing in the trash cans I found their daily tout sheets. Almost all of the pony pundits had concurred, first, that a couple of the nags would come in first and second in the first race, an "exacta." As they obviously knew more about these particular horses than I did, I went along with their picks. I won $54 for my two bucks, which made me The Last of the Big-Time Spenders with my in-laws, as I treated everyone to Chinese lunch with my windfall.

"This put him at risk for $6,500, including the vig (vigorish or tribute) on the 4 and 10. On the next roll of the dice, if the shooter made his point or any of the other five numbers, Arnold would collect his winnings, take down all his wagers, and walk away.
"He went from casino-to-casino. He came home several thousand dollars ahead.
"Arnold,' I said, 'that's no system except for suicide! You can't overcome dice odds that way!'

"Did you ever talk to a brick wall?
"Arnold smiled benignly at me. What did I know?
"All he knew was that he went back to Las Vegas and won again. And again. . . .
"[H]e made another journey to his easy-money land. This trip didn't begin well. He walked up to a table, waited until the shooter threw a point, then made his $6,500 worth of bets. The next roll was a seven.

"He hurried to another table and did the same thing. The second roll was a 7. After it happened at the third table in the casino, he stumbled across the Strip to another casino [the Sands], It happened three times again. He came home a $39,000 loser.
"Neither of us ever mentioned his 'system' again."
Now let me fill you in on all the gory details of my Last Stand at that ill-chosen craps table at the Sands. . . .

Early on, I did have success with my One-Roll "System." Then, on that most unfortunate day, after I already had lost five times in a row, I convinced myself it just couldn't happen for a sixth time. No way. This time would be a sure-thing winner.
I bellied-up to the next craps table and saw that 8 was the point. Couldn't be better. In a loud voice I confidently announced "$6,500, across the board," dropping the necessary chips onto the cloth. As always, a bet of this size aroused the attention of both the table personnel and the players. The boxman peered at me intently. I could see that he was sizing me up. Me, I couldn't have cared less but, in retrospect, I should have cared more. Somehow, instinctively, he had my number.

A gaunt cowboy at the end of the table was the shooter. Now the dice were set on the cloth in front of the boxman, ready for the next roll. Then the boxman did a curious thing. With his right index finger he turned over one of the dice, just gave it one little turn. Then the stickman pushed the dice over to the shooter, who picked them up and threw them against the back wall for a 7-out. The boxman flashed a broad smile and snapped his fingers with an "I-knew-I-did-it" flourish. And damned if he didn't. That single roll retired my "one-roll-system" for good.

As I gambled more in the casinos I learned more, a lot more. Perhaps my ill-fated "one-roll-at-a-table-hit-and-run system" will teach you what not to do in the casinos. In theory it was a good system. In practice it was a road to ruin.

• Tales Of Casino Luck And Folly Part3 (0)

A good boxman at the craps tables has sharper eyes than an eagle, and is ten times more street savvy than a sidewalk peddler in front of Macy's. He is always on the alert for unusual moves by a player, especially the person shooting the dice. More than once I have seen the boxman halt the game and request that the player holding the dice—particularly if he switched them from one hand to the other, or made some other unorthodox movement with the cubes—to drop them back on the table for examination before allowing them to be put back into play.

Any die that flies off the table is returned to the boxman to be checked before the shooter can continue the roll. Dice in play at each table are secretly coded to prevent any loaded dice from being switched into the game. Only once did I see a die fly off the table and get returned directly into play without the boxman examining it. The player who picked up the cube and directly tossed it back into action for the shooter was Dean Martin.

When a die, or both dice, are thrown with such force that they fly off the craps table, great care is taken to find the cube or cubes and return it, or them, to the boxman. Sometimes a game can be halted for several minutes while players, stickmen, and pit personnel scurry around looking for the lost dice.
One time a die whizzed past me and, no matter how hard we all looked, the cube never showed up. Later, at a blackjack table, I reached into my jacket pocket for a Kleenex and came up with the missing die.

I've heard stories of loaded dice being switched into the game. If true, this had to be done with the contrivance of both the box-man and the stickmen, if not the pit boss too. With all the safeguards in place in today's casinos it would be a daring and risky undertaking.

Some boxmen have a sixth sense when it comes to the roll of the dice. Ask me, I know. The simple movement of the index finger of a boxman at the Las Vegas Sands during my wild and foolhardy early days foraying in the casinos cost me thousands of dollars. That one little movement by the boxman's index finger at the Sands cost me $6,500. It also sounded the death-knell for one of my first ill-conceived hotshot, sure-fire "systems."
Even today I wince at my daring, and the ultimate disastrous consequences of that system. Rather than relating the painful details myself, here's how my mentor, Lyle Stuart, told it in his Winning at Casino Gambling:

"[A] postscript about my friend, Arnold. On one occasion he believed he had a sure-fire system. He would stand at a craps table, wait for the shooter to come out with a point and then place bets of $1,000 on the 5 and 9, $1,200 each on the 6 and 8, and he'd buy the 4 and 10 for $1,000 each.

• Tales Of Casino Luck And Folly Part4 (0)

I sadly surveyed the mob scene all around me and instantly, painfully decided to just write it off. Recovering the chip would have necessitated causing an uproar in the casino. They would have had to call in security guards to halt the moving mob of people and to clear the immense crowd in the aisle to make the space for me so I could look for my chip. Five hundred dollars is a lot of money for anyone to lose but, in this situation, it wasn't worth the grief. If I could go back and do it again, I'd make the same decision. My consolation was imagining the thrill someone in the casino experienced when he or she found my $500 chip. I hope it was some poor slob who never even found a $5 bill in his life.

My next move was to go back to the seat I had just vacated to try to win back the lost purple chip. And I did! But I lost it back gambling at the tables at the next casino.
Call it a fluke, a coincidence, or a freak occurrence, but here's what happened when 1 arrived in Las Vegas with a girl who had never been there before. She was eager to explore Circus Circus.

So there we were, strolling the sideshow exhibits, where we were amused by a cute little monkey attraction. I handed the little fellow in the cage a five-dollar token, whereupon he went into a cute little dance, and then handed me a card with a fortune. My fortune that day? "Go home. Today's not your lucky day."
We should have followed the monkey's sage advice and hightailed it out of town on the next plane. Not only did I lose my proverbial shirt on that ill-fated Vegas trip, but my pants and underwear went along too.

If you spend enough time in casinos you'll have your share of flukes and blunders. Some work in your favor, some don't. Chalk it up to casino adventure and take it all in stride.
In Atlantic City, Trump Plaza was another story. When the old bus terminal was still in operation, the closest casino was Trump Plaza. Every time my wife Stella and I went for a day at the seashore (we never stayed overnight) my standard-order-of-procedure was to meander over to the Boardwalk entrance of the Plaza. While Stella sunned herself on a bench outside, I'd make my initial foray inside, with a modest goal of winning a hundred dollars of "mad money" for her. Maybe it was my fresh enthusiasm in hitting the first casino of the day, or perhaps it was my mega-positive attitude, but damned if I didn't return to Stella on the Boardwalk most of the time with Donald Trump's money.

Sure, there were times The Donald nailed me, some of which I blame solely on myself.
Now pay attention while I teach you a lesson I learned the hard, expensive way. Never, but never gamble when you're in an ugly mood. If you are mad at somebody or something, in a temper tantrum or a blind rage, you're not in control of all your faculties. You risk doing damn foolish things at the tables, which I invariable did when I was in such an ugly mood.
If you're engulfed in some sour situation, do yourself a favor and go to the movies or take a long walk on the boardwalk, just steer clear of the table games! If there isn't a movie house close by, or it's too rainy to promenade on the boardwalk, then cut your losses by playing the nickel slot machine. Yes, Atlantic City casinos have nickel slots. I believe these were originally mandated by the Casino Control Commission to make sure that the Little People— the Low Rollers—can gamble and have a little fun there, too.

Let me tell you about one fiasco. In Atlantic City—coming off an ongoing argument that had started in our apartment and continued onto the bus and all the way up to Stella's Boardwalk bench in front of the Plaza—I charged into the casino in a murderous mood. Gambling with real money, I had a lethal combination that spells guaranteed financial disaster. This time it was really "mad" money, but the term took on an entirely different meaning. In my blind rage I literally pissed away more than $6,000 of my bankroll, a staggering loss that I couldn't overcome at the other casinos. Let me spell it out for you one more time: NEVER GAMBLE WHEN YOU'RE IN A BAD MOOD.

The record for holding the dice goes to Stanley Fujitake from Hawaii, who in July, 1989 at Las Vegas' downtown California Club held the dice for an incredible three-hours-and-twelve minutes! By the time he sevened out the table had paid out almost a million dollars.

When "Mrs. Lucky" (she opted to remain anonymous) hit that long-overdue Megabucks World's Record jackpot of $27,582,539 on November 15, 1998 at Vegas' Palace Station Casino, she truly beat the slot machine odds in cards and spades. Only a paltry nickel out of every dollar fed into the machines is ever earmarked for the jackpot. That meant over half-a-billion dollars had to have been pumped into the Megabucks machines all across Nevada to have funded Mrs. Lucky's multi-million-dollar windfall. But that's not the end of the story. When you're lucky, you're just lucky. Only a month prior to her Megabucks win, Mrs. Lucky had hit a Wheel of Fortune slot machine jackpot for more than $680,000!
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ •
Dr. Joseph Damato, a dentist from Newark, New Jersey, visited what was then the Grand in Atlantic City in 1992 to enter a blackjack tournament. Luck wasn't with him when he discovered that then, of all times, he had lost his glasses.
Afraid to enter the tournament because, as he put it, "I couldn't see the cards so well," he decided to wile away the afternoon by playing the Megabucks slot machine, the symbols of which were easier for him to see. And luck rebounded in a Megabucks blast as the dentist drilled into a $4,400,000 Megabucks jackpot.
♦ * ♦ ♦ ♦
Flukes, blunders, and just plain dumb luck (as you know, I don't believe in "luck," but I'll take it if it happens) have enabled me to win and to lose through the years. The $400 in $100 bills that I found in an Atlantic City taxicab one Christmas week falls in the "easy-money-dumb-luck" category. Ditto for the $200 in $50 bills I found on the floor of a stall in a Caesars Palace men's room.

The Caesars windfall was just a bunch of bills folded in half, the cab jackpot was in a small Christmas money envelope along with a card: "For Tony. Good luck from Al." If it wasn't for bad luck, Tony wouldn't have any luck at all, poor Tony lost Al's bonus money in Atlantic City before he even put his toe in a casino.
Then there was the time at a $25 table when I inadvertently won an extra $475 on a hand. I carelessly buried a $500 chip under a lowly $25 chip,- I meant it only as a $50 bet. The dealer, asleep at the switch, should have noted "purple action" to alert the pit boss that money played. I won the hand and happily learned at the payoff that I had more riding on the wager than 1 had intended.

But, alas, 1 lost the $475 back, on another day, plus an extra $25. It was on a chaotic Fourth of July at the Trump Plaza. The joint was jumping, with the aisles as packed with people as the Times Square subway station is at rush hour. Having won a tidy sum, I arose from the blackjack table with my hands piled high with chips of all kinds. I neglected to call "color in" and change my smaller-denomination chips before backing into the surging crowds. You can guess what happened next. Overloaded, I was jostled by some goon, which caused me to drop a chip under the feet of the mass of moving mankind. A purple chip, no less—worth $500!

As a rule, people who think there are "lucky" casinos also believe in lucky numbers, lucky days, lucky charms, and astrology. As for myself, after four decades of casino-hopping I don't believe there is any such thing as a "lucky" casino. I will say that there are two casinos—one in Las Vegas and one in Atlantic City, where I have won consistently: the Sahara in Las Vegas, and Trump Plaza in Atlantic City.

In retrospect, had I just gambled at only these two casinos and then gone directly home, I would be a much richer man today. Too often I took their money and promptly lost it at the next casino.
The Sahara was a money-making machine for me almost from the start. I won there regularly. Oh, I may have walked out and dropped it at the casino next door, but at the Sahara I almost expected to win. Maybe my positive mental attitude helped, for I could do no wrong at the Sahara tables.

One particular visit was a pivotal point with the Sahara and me. 1 had flown to Las Vegas for a weekend. As usual on Sunday night, I worked my way up the Strip to the casino closest to the airport, careful not to cut it too close to departure time.
Safely checked in at McCarran Airport, my hand luggage dumped in a seventy-five-cent rental locker close at hand, I let myself go, and headed directly to the bar for a couple of stiff vod-kas-and-grapefruit juice.

Why not? 1 had $3,600 in winnings, and I was only a few yards away from the boarding gate. But, as Shakespeare so aptly phrased it, "There's many a slip twixt the cup and the lip." The slip here was the dreaded announcement over the PA system that my TWA flight was delayed—for four goddam hours! Now well-oiled, I left the airport bar and returned to the Strip—where 1 taxied straight to the Sahara.

Once there, I won immediately and consistently. It was a snap. With forty-five minutes to go before the new departure time, I picked up my winning chips, another $5,000, and headed directly to the cashier's cage. Counting out all that fresh new Sahara folding money there, I just couldn't resist a parting shot.
"See you next trip," which translated into "Fuck you, Sahara, I'm going straight home with your money."

Suddenly, I felt a huge beefy arm around my shoulders. It was Frank Portnoy, a casino executive whom I had known casually through the years. In general I tend to keep my distance from dealers, pit bosses, and casino executives.