My most hectic hit-and-run foray into Vegas was in the early 1960s, when I arrived in the midst of a taxi strike. I have a driver's license, but damned if 1 would take a chance renting a car for a few hours in Las Vegas, even if a rental car was available. Large Army-style buses awaited arrivals, taking visitors on a casino-to-casino route, a round-robin of a trip, and then back to the airport. What could I do? What I did do was, every time the bus made a stop, I'd race into the casino, make a quick bet or two at the first open blackjack table nearest the door, and race right back to the bus. Sure, I had a couple of close calls, nearly missing the bus, but I insured my bet with the driver by tokening him with a green chip from the first casino and promising him another one when we reached the last casino on his route. I made about a thousand dollars over expenses, but I lost five pounds with all the to-do, and I have to record it as the hardest buck I ever made in Las Vegas.

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Before we talk about what and what not to do when you gamble in casinos, let's first pay tribute to my personal Patron Saint of the Green-Felt Tables, Louis G. Holloway. Mr. Holloway lived and raised a family in Las Vegas, where he gambled for his livelihood. He also wrote a splendid book entitled Full-Time Gambler. Holloway was a low-key, low-profile player, who made the rounds of the Vegas casinos for an hour or two daily, winning a few dollars here, winning a few dollars there.

When his MIT-graduate son insisted that no one can beat the casinos, Holloway replied, "Son, do you see this house? The car outside? The nice clothes we're wearing? Gambling paid for all of it, including paying for your college tuition."

• Im Not A Gambler (0)
• Im Not A Gambler Part2 (0)
• Blackjack Hit And Run Part3 (0)

I rolled and rolled and finally sevened out. Believe me, I was never so happy to lose. Not to waste a minute, I shoveled the chips into my pockets and raced for the exit. Who had time to cash them in? I barely made the plane—I was the last one to board—and had a double vodka when the hostess came around with the beverage cart. Believe me, I needed it.
There was yet another time I just made the plane by a hair, but there wasn't a pocket full of black chips involved—just a ball-busting suitcase full of nickels. Yes, nickels, and lots of em.

Let me explain. One of my pit stops on the way to the airport was the Dunes. At the time they had a gimmicky slot machine promotion to bring in the locals—a pregnant nickel machine with a twin (or was it triple?) jackpot. The machine was bulging with nickels, with nickels showing everywhere. Man, did it look tempting! Every time I passed the damn machine I put my five nickels in, hoping to hit the jackpot. Always without luck. That is, until my little pit stop on the way to the airport.

You guessed it—I hit the Super-Duper Nickel Jackpot! I didn't believe that there were that many fucking nickels in the whole world. I looked over and saw that the line for the Coin Cashier wound around the corner. Happily, my carry-on luggage was strong, so in the middle of the Dunes casino I opened it up and started tossing out expendables—two Las Vegas newspapers, my subscription copies of Playboy and Penthouse, my big can of shaving cream, plus other trifles that could be replaced in Manhattan. Then I started pouring in the nickels. Pouring is the correct word, as I used one of the heavy cardboard cups placed between the slots by every casino, to scoop and pour the nickels into my suitcase. They all fit, but the goddam thing weighed a ton. It was like carrying an anvil.

Somehow I managed to get it onto the plane and somehow I finally got it home. Then I poured my winnings out in the middle of my living room floor. God, for a mass of nickels it really looked impressive! Needless to say, it was a long, long time before I ever had to ask anybody to change a quarter.

The moral of all this is: Always remember to wear a watch and keep a keen eye on it. Casinos have no windows and no clocks, all carefully planned to keep the player in a time-warp limbo. To quit winners, you always have to stay one step ahead of the casino.
And, always bear in mind that the casinos are open seven-days-a-week, twenty-four-hours-a-day, all at your convenience. They only have an opportunity to get a crack at your bankroll when you choose to put it on the line. You must always remember that! Never lose sight of it. It's your choice when and where you play, and for how long, and for how much.

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• Im Not A Gambler (0)
• Blackjack Hit And Run Part4 (0)

Foxwoods Casino. Never again, thank you. If Foxwoods was the only casino around, I'd hang up my hiking boots and quit gambling. But don't get me wrong: I have nothing against Foxwoods or Native Americans. It's just that if I'm limited to gambling in only one casino, I am fated to join the swelling ranks of losers. When Foxwoods was the only casino in all of the northeastern section of the country, it was the most profitable casino in America—and I don't find that coincidental. When the word got around about the roaring success of Foxwoods, a rival tribe down the road in Connecticut decided they also wanted to get in on a good thing. So now there are two Indian casinos in that neck of the woods. Not to be left out, a New York State Indian tribe has also set up shop near Syracuse. So competition may bring better odds to Foxwoods.

My only chance of winning is to keep putting mileage on my hiking shoes. I have to be able to pick up my chips and hightail it over to the next casino at a moment's notice.
All my hit-and-run trips to Vegas and Atlantic City were carefully time-controlled. I always had one eye on the dice or the blackjack hand and the other eye on my wristwatch. I always made absolutely sure I allowed myself enough time to make that plane or bus.

I never ever, on my Lone Wolf prowls, missed my return mode of transportation, but I must admit there were squeakers. One time in particular was just too close for comfort. It was the end of a one-day raid on the Las Vegas casinos for a specific goal— I needed some quick cash for the next day. I had taken my ever-faithful TWA Flight #57 at 5:30 from Kennedy to McCarran, with a return flight on the last plane out to New York that midnight. I had done well so far on my hit-and-run journey up the Strip from the Sahara, and now I was at the Aladdin, my final casino before cabbing to the airport. (This was in the 1970s, when both blackjack and craps limits were in the hundreds, and purple ($500) chips were only seen on the baccarat table.) Nicely ahead for the evening, I cashed a couple of thousand in seed money at the blackjack table as the dice came around to me. Playing the front line with, of course, full odds—along with placing the 6 and 8, I took control of the dice. This was going to be my Grand Finale for the evening, a quick win at the table and a quicker exit out the door and off to the airport.

My point was 10. I wound up like Sandy Koufax, and sent the cubes hurtling down the table, bouncing smartly against the back wall.
The number was 3. Again I rolled them cubes, and again it was a no-decision (for me) 12.
And I rolled again. And again. And still again.
Still no decision. I was nowhere near my needed 10.

Time was ticking away, and I was getting nervous. 1 started to roll faster. In fact, for the first time in my casino career I asked the stickman to please speed up the action. Now it was getting hairy. I took down my two place bets, and even picked up my odds bet just to show the stickman my urgency and sincerity in trying to finish the roll as soon as possible. Three more rolls and still no decision.
In desperation I pleaded, "Look, I gotta make a plane. Any way that I can just cede the hand and split?"

The table went into an uproar. My notion that I could escape was an impossible dream. To make matters worse, the other players at the table became menacing.
"Roll them cubes, shithead."
"Finish off the hand and buzz off. We don't want you around here either."

• Im Not A Gambler Part2 (0)
• Im Not A Gambler (0)
• Blackjack Hit And Run Part4 (0)

I'll also tell you about the honesty of one casino—how my Keno ticket was worth a thousand dollars more than I thought, and how they went out of their way to upgrade my ticket and pay me every dollar due me.

In addition to all this, I want to assure you that I'm not a compulsive gambler.
I've never been to a race track. I agree with legendary gambler Nick the Greek: Never bet on anything that eats.

I don't buy lottery tickets—though I've collected lottery money prizes five times in my life, including a $1300 Lotto ticket! But more about that later.
I don't play poker with the boys.

I shy away from office baseball and football pools.
I've only bet once at OTB (Off-Track Betting) in New York, and I quit winners.
I didn't even pitch pennies with the kids in grade school.

But yes, I do gamble at the casinos, and I've been doing it for four decades. When I first went to the Las Vegas Sands in 1960, I was wide-eyed and hell-bent to break the bank. The one who ended up broke was me, and I was lucky to have enough left for cab fare back from the airport to my apartment. Parenthetically, in New York, before the days of the lotteries, the East Coast casinos and OTB, the race tracks were the serious gambler's only refuge. There are stories about horseplayers that lost their shirts at the track who had the foresight to put a nickel—subways were a nickel then— in a rented ten-cent locker to insure having the fare for the return trip home.

Today I go to the casinos with an entirely different mind-set. No, I don't want to clean out their cashier cages, or take home their chandeliers, I only want to nibble away at them. Hit and run—Lyle Stuart taught it to me—and that's the only way I know to beat the casinos. Years ago, during a weekend at Caesars Palace, I was strolling over to the elevator when I saw a heavy-set man sitting—yes, sitting—at the end of a craps table. In front of him, piled on the racks and on the table itself, was the highest mountain of chips I have ever seen in front of one player. He appeared to be playing almost everything on the table—all the numbers, proposition bets, the field—the works. I watched for a few minutes and then went to my room for some shut-eye. Six hours later I returned to the casino. The fellow was still there, sitting in front of his chips . . . only now there was no mountain—it was barely a molehill—a lot fewer chips there than there were the night before. Here was a man who should have hit and run hours ago.

In his book on gambling, John Scarne tells the lesson-to-be-learned classic story of the busboy from a Strip casino who took his paycheck downtown to the Fremont Street casinos. Lady Luck smiled on him as he gambled through the night and miraculously worked his meager bankroll up to $50,000. Toward dawn his luck turned sour and—you guessed it—he lost it all, sadly drag-assing himself at 9:00 A.M. back to his menial busboy job on the Strip. Scarne then astutely noted that, even if the busboy had run up his bankroll to $75,000 or even $100,000 or more, he would have doggedly stayed at the tables until he was completely tapped out. I read it years ago, and never forgot the lesson I learned there. I hope you'll always remember it too.

• Im Not A Gambler (0)
• Blackjack Hit And Run Part4 (0)
• Blackjack Hit And Run Part3 (0)

I never expected to write a book on gambling. Me, I'm just a guy who's been gambling in casinos since the spring of 1960, when my friend Lyle Stuart talked me into flying to Las Vegas from New York—a daring endeavor and extraordinary then in those days of mostly propeller-driven planes. This, for a scant three days and two nights, all just to see a legendary casino show that would become known as "The Summit Meeting." It starred Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr., Peter Lawford, and Joey Bishop. By night they performed together on stage at the Sands, while by day they were filming Ocean's ii. Forty years and hundreds of casinos later, I have to admit that I haven't seen a better casino show since that first one. Gambling-wise, I've done a lot better since, but it was a torturous—and rather expensive—journey. In retrospect, what it cost me in blood money—money that at one point I couldn't afford to lose—amounted to the dues I paid to reach where I am today.

What I am going to tell you in this book will save you a lot of dollars. I'll confess the costly mistakes I've made so that you can avoid them. The information I offer cost me many thousands of dollars in pitfalls and pratfalls along the way. I finally wised up, but it was an expensive journey. I learned it the hard way, but I can help you to learn it the easy way.

A gambler who lies to himself and to others is doomed forever to dwell among the ranks of losers. If you gamble and you want to enter the thinly populated world of the winners, learn that you cannot live in the bullshit dimension. Don't imitate the casinos. They tell you "their" casino is "The friendliest" in Atlantic City or Las Vegas, that "they" want you to come (with your bankroll) and "feel like part of the family."
It's all sham.

The casinos play hardball all the time. If you want to have a chance to beat them at their own games, you must understand that they are suckering you. Keep your wits about you at all times, until you're safely heading home with your winnings. With my two no-hitters against the casinos in a little over two months, I can write with a modicum of authority.
Don't get me wrong. Arrogance and smug self-assurance are the quicksand that'll gobble up a gambler's bankroll. I never approach a gambling table without the utmost caution—the same caution with which I would approach a bear trap. On May 16, 1999, I played at fourteen blackjack tables in twelve casinos in a row in one day without a loss. At the fourteenth table—my last table for the day—I exercised as much caution in playing as I did at my first table, when I was fresh off the bus from New York.

This book is not only about blackjack. I will share with you my experiences with every game in the casino, including my onetime love/hate relationships with Keno and the money-hungry slot machines. I'll even tell you about one flawed slot machine that I emptied out, and how I had the sweet thrill of watching the sour-faced attendant turn the depleted machine to the wall.

Some of what I write is anecdotal. I will relate my adventures in dozens of casinos, from Monte Carlo and Nice, to Reno and Waldorf, Maryland, as well as my stints in illegal casinos in Hot Springs, Arkansas. I'll tell you about times I was cheated—yes, cheated—in Atlantic City and in Las Vegas—and the times dishonest casino employees cheated the casinos in my favor, hoping for a handsome "toke" (tip).

• Blackjack Hit And Run Part4 (0)
• Im Not A Gambler Part2 (0)
• Blackjack Hit And Run Part3 (0)