I don’t believe in voodoo mumbo-jumbo, but I do believe there is such a thing as ESP-extrasensory perception-especially if you spend enough years surfing the casinos. I’ve experienced it myself a number of times. I can’t explain how or why,- I can only tell you that it happened to me. It happened also to a gal from Sacramento, California, who had a sudden premonition that she was going to hit it big on a slot machine and, over the protestations of her family, drove all night from Sacramento to Reno. As the National Encjuirer reported it in a splashy picture story, she marched up to a quarter progressive machine and promptly hit for over a million.

It also happened to Allan J. Wilson, a publishing executive from New York. As he relates it, he was at a craps table in Las Vegas when he had a premonition that the shooter would have a great roll. Confidently, he wagered heavily, backing his bets up all the way. The shooter held the dice for thirty-eight minutes!

There have been times when the dice were in the air and I knew what the outcome would be. More than once I started to walk away from the craps table before the dice landed and the stickman announced, “Seven and out.” And there were times I confidently relaxed at my place at the table, just waiting for my bet to be paid off before the shooter even finished his “windup,” preparing to toss a beautiful Queen of Hearts, topped off with a handsome Ace of Spades, for $750 payoff for my “mistake” $500 bet. odds on football

Sure, I won big on this comedy of errors, but it could have easily turned into a tragedy of errors, and washed away the $500 that I had no intention of wagering. The lesson to be learned here is to stay alert, and keep your eye at all times on your money on the table. Don’t depend on luck, or dumb luck, to help you come home with some of the casino’s money.

• Casino – I Dont Believe In Luck (0)
• Casino Luck Reconsidered (0)
• Casino – The Great Rip-off Part2 (0)

My firm conviction that there is no such thing as "luck" occasionally wavers when I read stories like that of Steve and Peggy Hailes of Michigan, who motored to Onida, Wisconsin to celebrate a relative's birthday. On their way to the birthday party they stopped off at Onida One-Stop for gas. While waiting for service, Peggy wandered over to the slot machines in the back. "I just put a few quarters in that I had in my pocketbook and then it happened." "It" was a $1,252,594.92 jackpot.

"It" can happen at Keno, too. When I see hoards of people laboriously marking up Keno tickets with their "lucky" numbers, 1 have to remember Shirley Corbin of Altamont, Illinois, who hit for $10,968.40 at Sam's Town Casino in Las Vegas. What was "Lucky" Shirley's secret numbers-picking method? She simply marked off the whole top row, the first ten numbers on the ticket, and voilal Eight of her ten numbers were called for the eleven-grand payout.
Friday the 13th means diddly to me, but for some timid souls it's a harbinger of bad luck. One hardy casino player at Atlantic City's Tropicana on a dreaded Friday the 1 3th went along with the gag and played slot machine No. 1313. You guessed it—he hit a million-dollar-plus jackpot on the No. 1313 machine. I would guess that from that day on, he looked forward to Friday the 1 3th even more than his birthday.

Everyone has read about someone who had a sudden stroke of luck, when lightning strikes and "it" happened. Maybe the next time it can happen to you.
Did it ever happen that some oddball circumstance, not planned, and not of my making, turned into a "lucky" twist of fate at the tables for me? Occasionally, yes. One instance I vividly recall was an episode at the Frontier in Las Vegas in the 1970s. I was back-to-back at blackjack tables with my weekend date. I was at a $25-minimum table, backed up to her at a $5 table. The lady shied away from sitting with me, as my comparatively high-stake playing made her too nervous. Frankly I was glad she was at another table, as her being nervous would only have made me nervous.

My dealer was a speed demon. Man, was he fast! After betting $250 and winning, I turned my head for what seemed to me to be a split-second, just to ask my gal a question before picking up my chips and making another bet. When I turned back to the table, my $250 bet, along with my $250 winnings, were in play, and Speedy was in the midst of dealing the hand. Before I had a chance to cry foul, my eyes popped out of my head as I gazed down upon.

• Casino – I Dont Believe In Luck (0)
• Casino And The Sixth Sense (0)
• Casino – The Great Rip-off Part2 (0)

But … As 1 have said so many times, I don't believe in luck. People make their own luck. My philosophy is, and has always been, that I wouldn't care if a zebra dealt the cards, or if a monkey rolled the dice. I tell you this as a preamble to two memorable episodes I witnessed during two blackjack sessions at Atlantic City casinos.

The first was at the Showboat, where I was sitting a couple of spots away from a loud-mouthed kid, whom I immediately pegged as a novice. Yet the way the cards were coming his way, he didn't have to know much. From the very first deal he was off-and-running.
He just couldn't lose. He turned up blackjack-after-blackjack, and when he missed a blackjack he got 20s and 21s. He wasn't betting big, the dumb kid wouldn't budge over the one-green-chip minimum, even though he won hand-after-hand-after-hand.

Even playing it so close to the vest, he still had a fairly decent pile of chips in front of him by the end of the shoe. He showed a very cavalier, take-it-for-granted attitude about what had happened as he leisurely picked up his chips and wandered over to a craps table. I never saw the kid again, but I'm pretty sure no matter how many more blackjack tables he gambles at for the rest of his life, this singular episode will stand out as his One Shoe of Fame. I only hope the kid appreciated it. I did.

The second episode happened in the $25-minimum blackjack pit at the Atlantic City Sands. Taking the two contiguous seats at "first base"—I play two hands—I found myself next to a flashily dressed Italian lady who must have applied Chanel No. 5 with a garden hose. To nail down my spot prior to the dealing of the shoe, I put a green chip on each of the two open spaces. I could see Miss Naples was visibly annoyed—she obviously wanted my other spot— but with a typical Latin shrug of the shoulders she settled down with her single spot. In retrospect I would have been overjoyed to have given her that second spot. Financially, I would have been far better off. On the other hand, Miss Naples, limited to her solitary spot, began her spectacular run, something she or I will never forget. Never, but never, have I seen so many blackjacks in the run of a shoe. After her fourth blackjack in a row even she became a little uneasy with the unreality of it all.

If I myself hadn't happened to cut the cards on that particular shoe I would have sworn that the fix was in. It was truly one shoe for the books! And the lady was a High Roller. The table had a $2,500 limit, and she often bet the limit. It was mind-boggling to see her rake in all those purple and yellow chips as the piles of chips before her just grew higher and higher.

When the shoe was finished, the pit bosses came around to survey the damage. The figure bandied about was $62,000—all from that one shoe. During the entire run of the shoe I recall her only losing maybe four or five hands, a stunning streak. (No, it never happened to me. I never even came close.) Was I jealous? You're damn right I was. Why, oh why, couldn't it have happened to me? Some day my turn will come. . . .
Can it happen to you? Sure, it can. I only recount these two episodes to show you that it can happen to someone.

• Casino Luck Reconsidered (0)
• Casino And The Sixth Sense (0)
• Casino – The Great Rip-off Part2 (0)

Early on, the lottery gang realized that lottery players are nothing but a flock of sheep, easy marks to be fleeced again and again. Bad enough that a pitifully small amount of lottery profits are allocated for prizes, but when some schmuck holding a winning ticket doesn't redeem it—the ticket expires a year from purchase—the state claims that it "recycles" the unclaimed prize "into the prize pool," which is total bullshit.
A $ 1 3.3-million-dollar winning Lotto ticket was purchased on June 3, 1996 and expired on the following June 3, 1997. Did the Lottery boys in Albany start off the next week's Lotto jackpot with the unclaimed $1 3.3 million, or with any of the $46.6 million in unclaimed prize money from Take Five, Pick 10, Quick-Draw, and all the multifarious scratch-off games? You bet your sweet ass they didn't!

Would you believe that, as the New York Daily News reported, a mind-boggling $59,900,000 in Lottery prize winnings went unclaimed in the year i997 alone?
Lottery players in general are proven losers, but especially those who blunder into buying a winning ticket and then don't even bother to check the numbers to see if they won!
It has been said that some people really don't want to win. When I see that almost $60 million was incredibly ceded back to the Lottery cabal by these born losers, I tend to agree.

The Spaniard who had a winning Lottery ticket for a January 1998 drawing can be forgiven for not cashing it. The unfortunate fellow died prior to the drawing and was buried along with the winning ticket in his pocket. The Associated Press news story didn't say whether or not his grieving relatives later dug up the corpse to retrieve the ticket.
Like your local Chinese laundry man says: no tickee, no washee. Same goes for New York State. The Associated Press reported on August 8, 1998 that Governor Pataki vetoed a bill that would have merely given a Long Island cab driver a hearing on his claim that believed them, the Daily News believed them, and probably even the lottery officials believed them, regretfully the officials gave their version of "No tickee, No washee": If you don't present the ticket you don't collect, period.

To repeat, if you're silly enough to waste your money on a lottery ticket, at least have enough brain matter to hang on to it and check it for a winner.
As dumb as lottery players are, in my estimation horse players are even dumber. Years ago I came to the realization that horses are smarter than people. After all, I've never heard of a horse that bet on a man. Have you?

The racetracks take an unconscionable percentage of dough out of the betting pool, but compared to OTB, they're benevolent. Off-Track Betting slices the pie even thinner.
And, like the lottery fools who don't bother to cash their winning tickets, some pony players piss away their winnings also by not cashing in. Since 1990, a staggering $70 million in horse bets has gone unclaimed. On September 13, 1998, the New York Post noted that $8 million had gone unclaimed in 1998 alone. The money just galloped out of the bettors' pockets and into the New York State treasury.

The stupidity of OTB players is exemplified by the player who bets there, then doesn't wait around to watch the race. When he opens his newspaper the next day and doesn't see his horse in the money, he throws away his ticket. What he forgets is the possibility that his nag was scratched, and didn't run at all. In that case, he is entitled to a full refund.

• Casino Luck Reconsidered (0)
• Casino And The Sixth Sense (0)
• Casino – The Great Rip-off (0)

QUICK RIDDLE: What has six balls and screws you
three-times-a-week? ANSWER: Lotto.

If you go out and buy yourself a lottery ticket today, the odds are literally millions-to-one against you hitting the jackpot. However, if you placed a bet that the company running your state lottery is shadowy, your odds would be a lot better. California, New York, and New Jersey, among other states, had the fog of scandal hanging over their lottery operations, and there was even a Federal Grand Jury in Texas probing the activities of one lottery company.

Lottery operators are a cunning lot. Not content with profits from the New York daily numbers drawings and the dozen or more scratch-off "games" for sale everywhere, the lottery crowd in Albany schemed up a neat way to circumvent New York's long-standing legal prohibition against casino gambling games. Keno, a casino mainstay in both New Jersey and Nevada casinos, was finessed into New York State under the alias of Quick-Draw.
Quick-Draw is a video numbers game that is flashed on television screens in many New York bars and delis. A new game runs every five minutes.

Keno and Quick-Draw are identical in concept, except that Quick-Draw has fewer numbers and smaller payoffs and, as bad a some airports, which allows lobby cigar stand operators to make a living. On my way up to see a publisher, I impulsively stopped at a lobby stand and bought a $1 lottery ticket. I scratched it off in the elevator and was delighted to find I had a $25 winner. On my way out I happily cashed my winning ticket. What the proprietor said as he counted out the $25 cured me forever from buying anymore scratch-off lottery tickets.

"Jeez, yer one lucky guy. In a year an' a haff I mustda sold a cou-pla hunnerd thou' tickets, and yer da' foist $25 winner I ever seen."
There are flukes, of course, as lightning must strike somewhere. Once, Lyle Stuart took some employees and kin out for lunch. Impulsively, he stopped off and bought a $1 lottery for each of his guests, putting a ticket at each place setting. His daughter Sandy learned two nights later that she had a $5,000 winner.

To sum it all up, my advice to you is to avoid the state lotteries in all their razzle-dazzle shapes and forms. They're all rip-offs. You can't win, you won't win,- don't waste your money. If you think playing your "lucky numbers" will be the key to a life of wealth and ease, think again. Most of the pitifully few winners of New York State Weekly Lotto jackpots have won by the dumb-luck "Quick-Pick" ticket, where the Lotto computer selects your numbers.

The New York Daily News reported that there were five winners of the $40 million jackpot of February 26, 1998. The headline of this story: "A Quick-Pick Trip to Wealth."
All five of the winners did it with Quick-Pick tickets!
Outside of the Quick-Pick method, the only way I can suggest for you to pick a winner is to buy a monkey. A man in California had his pet monkey pick out numbered ping-pong balls from a cardboard box. You guessed it, pal. The monkey unerringly picked out the wining lottery numbers, guaranteeing his owner a life of ease and for himself a lifetime supply of bananas.

If you don't happen to own a pet monkey, then the next wisest thing is just not to buy any rip-off state lottery tickets.

• Casino Luck Reconsidered (0)
• Casino And The Sixth Sense (0)
• Casino – The Great Rip-off Part2 (0)

With no response and no action by any of the agencies that are allegedly there to protect my interests, I could only bitterly write it off as a Lost Cause, I thought. I had tried the legal route to obtain justice for myself and the others that were taken in, but being a novice at suing, I learned that I came to my attorney too late in the game. Famed Philadelphia lawyer (and dear friend) Albert B. Gerber regretfully told me that I should have seen him before I (finally) got my refund. Then he could have started the wheels in motion for a Class Action suit against the casino.

Frankly I'm at a loss why blatant violations by the casinos are often ignored by regulatory agencies that profess to exist to protect the public. It appears that the casinos and the owners are Sacred Cows that are above the law.

One day I picked up a copy of a New York tabloid, and suddenly there it was! Now all the pieces fit together. The Casino Control Commission released the figures for that quarter of the year, and they were spectacular. The casinos were raking in megabuck operating profits. They all made big gains.

All but one. The scam casino was at the bottom of the list— with an utterly disastrous loss for the period!

Perhaps I'm reading more into it than is there, but I would think that a casino, sinking steadily for the quarter, as the bait-and-switch casino was, would be tempted to resort to desperate measures to stem the decline. I can easily imagine how much more of a fiasco the quarter would have been for it had they not fattened their bottom line by taking money from me, and thousands more like me, with their too-good-to-be-true promotion that was too good to be true.

• Casino Luck Reconsidered (0)
• Casino And The Sixth Sense (0)
• Casino – The Great Rip-off Part2 (0)

As I've said, I never—but NEVER—put MY money into slot machines. Sure, I'll play the slots, but I always make it a rule to first win the money at the tables, and then pump it into the machines.

One Sunday, in the Spring of 1997, I was a fool. But only one of hundreds of fools. We'd all flocked to an Atlantic City casino, lured there by an irresistible same-day-50%-rebate-at-tbe-slot-machines offer, laid out in a razzle-dazzle quarter-page display ad in the previous Friday's New York newspaper. Sadly, it turned out to be nothing more than the classic bait-and-switch.

I saved everything, so that I have a complete paper trail, laying out the anatomy of the rip-off. The casino has no defense.
You would think that justice would eventually triumph. So did I. All the ads, the direct-mail the casino sent me, the material I was given there, along with the letters I wrote, including copies of all my evidence, plus the replies I got back in reference to the apparent scam, including one from the Governor of New Jersey—let them all speak for themselves. I saved them all. It's all laid out. You be the judge.
Even though it was a very transparent and clumsy scam—so clumsy that the casino didn't even bother to cover its ass and arrogantly repeated the rip-off ad verbatim on the following Friday!

I was infuriated. I set out to "get" them.
I wrote to the Chairman of the Casino Control Commission and I also wrote to the whole Casino Control Commission, to every damn member, all by Registered Mail, Return Receipt Requested. I wrote to the Governor. I wrote to the New Jersey Attorney General. I wrote to the United States Postal Inspectors, as the United States mail was used in the scam. I wrote to the Consumer Advocate of New York City. (New York newspapers were utilized for the rip-off.) I wrote to the New York State Attorney General. I wrote to—hell, why go on? You get the gist.
It is now more than four years since I sent all my letters with Xeroxes of all my hard evidence to everybody with clout who could possibly rectify the injustice, not only for me, but also for the other hundreds—maybe even thousands—of casino patrons who were victimized.

Was justice done? Let's look at the record.
Diane M. Legreide, a Vice Chairman of the Casino Control Commission, wrote me that "the Chairman has forwarded your materials to the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement for investigation. Please be assured that the situation will be looked into and we will keep you abreast oj the matter. [Italics mine.]

One Commissioner, Leanna Brown, also replied. "I know it is not easy to duplicate and send many copies [out] at $2.39 each for postage. However, it is appreciated. Too few people make this effort. I have been concerned by some of the marketing techniques used by the casinos, especially this year. As you know [No, I did-n't know. It wasn't publicized, to be sure.—A.B.L.], we no longer regulate marketing, but incidents like this illustrate why we did once.
"I will be waiting as will you with much interest for the D.G.E. [Department of Gaming Enforcement] response."

Yes, I am too, Commissioner Brown, but to date, I'm still waiting. . . .
The other Commissioner, James R. Hurley, who also received my registered letter along with my dossier never even bothered to respond.

Now let's see what has happened since I lodged my complaints in May, 1997, to both State and Federal regulatory agencies in regard to the casino's repeated ads that lured me, and thousands of others like me, to their casino with an offer they had no intention of honoring.

The Chairman of the Casino Control Commission sent my Registered Letter and my "smoking gun" evidence to the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement "for investigation and appropriate action," and thanked me for "taking the time to bring this matter to my attention."

Governor Whitman forwarded my letter and the "smoking gun" evidence to the Treasurer of New Jersey "to review my concerns," and noted "that a response will be sent to you directly on my behalf-Deputy Attorney General of New Jersey Timothy C. Ficci responded that "the Division is investigating the matter, and, subsequent to your letter, has received other complaints regarding this promotion."

To date I have calculated that it took less time to investigate Watergate than it has taken these people to nail the casino. As of July, 2000, I have yet to hear from the Chairman of the Casino Control Commission, the two Vice-Chairmen of the Casino Control Commission, the Treasurer of the State of New Jersey, or its Attorney General, who had an investigation under way on July 15,1997, or in fact from any of the many officials in New Jersey to whom I sent my solid evidence.

• Casino Luck Reconsidered (0)
• Casino And The Sixth Sense (0)
• Casino – The Great Rip-off Part2 (0)