A Rouvan opening night at the Dunes was always a perfect excuse for Stella and me to fly to Vegas. This time, however, we didn't make a show reservation. Arriving at the Dunes in plenty of time for the dinner show, we found to our dismay that the showroom was jammed, with a line waiting outside. Haughtily, knowing the power of the $25 green chip, we bucked the line and told the maitre d' we wanted our favorite table, the cozy small one just to the left of the stage. The man looked defeated and forlorn— he'd have to refuse the green chip this time—because two middle-aged ladies already were sitting there.

If it had been my nine-to-five workaday money, or if I had suffered a bad run in the casino on the way in, I would never have dared do what I did. Drawing myself up to my full height of five-foot-eight, and well-juiced with a couple of stiff vodka-and-tonics on the flight in, I thrust a black $100 chip onto the maitre d's palm and dramatically pointed, "We-want-that-table!"

Suddenly the heavens opened and a chorus of angels blared their Golden Trumpets as Arnold Bruce Levy of Brooklyn, New York, played God at the Dunes. The maitre d' had a hurried conversation with the two women, and then escorted them to a table toward the rear of the showroom. Curiously, they were smiling as they left their table. We later found out that the maitre d' used his casino clout and was able to comp the ladies at their table way in the back.
It was, as usual, a spectacular Rouvan opening night, but later I realized what a rude and unsportsmanlike thing I did, which was, for anyone who knows me, totally uncharacteristic.

I ashamedly relate the above episode only to caution you not to ever commit as despicable an act as that. Do what I say, not what I did. Trust me, you'll never regret not doing it.
Sometimes the ham-handed approach doesn't work, anyway. A popular disc jockey in New York once announced over the radio a contest where one lucky listener would win a trip to Las Vegas and be a guest for the Frank Sinatra opening at the Sands. As I listened to his spiel, I decided then-and-there that my girl-friend-of-the-moment would also be a winner, courtesy of me. Arriving in Vegas, I discovered to my horror that the show was sold out. One black chip wouldn't get me anywhere, and definitely not to my "usual" ringside table. Fired up and desperate, I went over to the tables and won $400, which I took to the maitre d'. There were real tears in his eyes as he reluctantly pushed my hand away, explaining that Frank had reserved most of the room for 'The Boys."

Winning a bundle allows you to think like a winner. Three times in my life I missed the last express bus from Atlantic City to Manhattan, and each time I splurged and became The Last of the Big-Time Spenders, taking an Atlantic City taxicab all the way back to New York City, each time at the cost of two black chips. Once I actually did pay the cabby in Trump Plaza black chips.

I already had cashed in $10,000 in chips at the casino, the most you can convert to greenbacks in a twenty-four-hour period in a casino without the nuisance of filling out Internal Revenue Service forms. The remaining chips in my pocket I had planned to use on my next Atlantic City visit, so two of them became convenient cab fare for that night.
Sure, all through this book I've emphasized over and over again that, if you want to beat the dealer and come home with casino money, you shouldn't play big shot and show off for your girl friend. Once I went with my girl friend, a tabloid publisher friend and his wife, along with a mail-order letter-shop owner who had never been west of Hoboken, ALL on a flying weekend to Las Vegas. I postured, I pirouetted, I did wild things at the tables that I would never have done had I been alone.

I gave them a razzle-dazzle round-robin tour of both the Strip and the downtown casinos. I must admit that I felt like James Bond as I made daring bets, some of which, amazingly, paid off. It was just dumb luck that a $57 Keno bet won $605. My recollection is that I only played Keno there to show them all how the game was played. All in all, it was a fast-paced dazzling weekend which I'm sure my little flock will remember always. For me, it was an expensive guided tour, for I was a $3,800 loser. I never made that mistake again and I never will, but what the hell? I guess I got $3,800 worth of fun out of playing "Mr. Vegas" for a weekend.

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One advantage of winning money from a casino is that it's not nine-to-five workaday money. You roll a pair of dice for a couple of hours and suddenly you're hundreds or even thousands of dollars ahead.

My uptight former accountant, who never ever gambled, suggested: "It's time you took a business trip for the calendar year," so I figured what the hell, and took him along with me to Vegas on the way to Los Angeles. A man who never bought a $1 lottery ticket suddenly found himself at a craps table in the middle of a streak.
Melvin didn't know diddly about dice—he was just at the right place at the right time. When he came home with nearly $2,400, his instruction to his equally uptight wife was explicit: 'The money isn't to be used for anything practical. We don't buy a couch with it and we don't use it to repaper the kitchen." They finally blew most of it on a weekend cruise to Bermuda—their first ever.

My first adventure in spending "mad money" was at my old Las Vegas horn of plenty—the Sahara. I had made my usual hit for the day at the Sahara and was on the way to my suite. Along the hallway from the casino to the elevators was displayed exotic and eyecatching oil paintings for sale. I was near the elevators when my roving eye was attracted to a large, dramatic oil painting of Don Quixote on his horse, ready to tilt at the windmill.
It was gorgeous and priced at $500. Now I like art, but I wasn't about to spend $500 of my money even for the Mona Lisa. Sure, I liked Don Quixote, but my art appreciation up to that point had been limited to just looking at paintings on museum and other people's walls.

Impulsively I wheeled around and headed back to the casino. What the hell, I said to myself, let me see if I can win some more of their money to buy the painting. . . .
About a week later the large, well-padded UPS carton arrived at my Manhattan apartment, and for the next few years Don Quixote hung proudly over my couch. My wife is now into theatrical posters, so Don Quixote is currently relegated to a storage space in the spare room. If my workaday money had been in question, you better believe that Don Quixote would still be hanging on the hallway of the Sahara—unless someone else was similarly smitten with it.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
If you really want to, you can even play God with casino winnings. I did it once, and let me tell you right off the bat that I am thoroughly ashamed of what I did. It was an arrogant, discourteous, and almost tyrannical act of mine, and I only relate it here as an example of what not to do when you're flying high with casino mad money.
Through our punctuated visits to Las Vegas, Stella and I became friendly with an extraordinary singer named Rouvan, who starred for years as the main attraction of the ongoing "Casino de Paris" shows at the Dunes. He recorded for RCA, and had a voice as good as Mario Lanza's. Rouvan "only" made $25,000 a week during the years when Sinatra made $125,000 and Elvis made $100,000, but as he starred for about twenty-six to thirty weeks-a-year at the Dunes, Rouvan's $25,000 a week totaled to more than the combined Las Vegas earnings of Sinatra and Elvis—who each only starred there for a few weeks a year.

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1 had now learned how to enjoy using money. Now I felt so much freer in both buying things and doing things with the winnings. Money casino money became fun cash for me. Without this new concept, would I ever have thought of buying a pair of $150 face-value tickets from a scalper on the sidewalk for an outrageous $500 for a once-in-a-lifetime event—Carnegie Hall Celebrates The Glorious MGM Musicals] Would Arnold Bruce Levy ever even THINK of handing over $500 to a despised sleazy scalper on the sidewalk for a couple of $75 tickets? Not conceivable, that's for sure.

ut, I said to myself, whenever again will such a star-studded line-up of legendary movie stars of this magnitude from the Golden Age of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer ever appear all together on a New York stage? Or, for that matter, on a stage anywhere else in the world?
Most probably never.

Walking into the lobby of Carnegie Hall, clutching the much-sought-after tickets, I studied the long line of tired-looking people inside, waiting for hours on the no-ticket line, hoping for ticket cancellations that never came. Some looked very well-to-do, and I'm sure many on that no-ticket line could have bought-and-sold me, and I'd never even know that I was bought-and-sold. As I gazed at those anxious people on the line I knew that I was wealthier and much wiser than any of them. I'd put my money to good use, spending it for this once-in-a-lifetime experience that Stella and I cherish in memory forever. Even as I type this, I can still hear the golden echoes of those screen legends singing in person, on stage in magnificent Carnegie Hall, just for us.

The $500 for those precious tickets were spent with money I learned how to spend through my escapades in the casinos. When I lost there, I only lost what I took with me, and only what I could afford to lose. The $500 for that fabulous evening with my favorites of the silver screen were well-spent with the "fun money" 1 allowed myself. I am confident that my estate will be no poorer for that extravagant purchase, one that has enriched both Stella's life and mine while we're still here.

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How Las Vegas and Atlantic City gave me a whole new philosophy on life and money, and how to spend both wisely . . . Hot News, a private book publishing newsletter, recently quoted from a letter written by Nathan Rothschild, founder of the London branch of the Rothschild family: "I don't read books,- I don't play cards, I don't go to the theater. My only pleasure is my business."

"That little statement . . . amused me," wrote the editor. "It caused me to reflect on the many wealthy men and women I've known. Most of them had the talent to accumulate large sums of money, but few had another talent: the talent to enjoy it."

The editor was right on target. The quote caused me to reflect on my philosophy concerning the role of money in my life, how it ranks in importance, and how I use it. I look back now at how my cash consciousness has radically changed in the past four decades, and the role the casinos played in that change.
Money was green paper that I had earned. I'd spend some and I'd squirrel away some. That was money to me. Then I discovered Las Vegas and the casinos, and suddenly money had a new exciting dimension. I felt much more free in both handling it and spending it.
Whenever I came into a casino windfall, I further honed my spending skills. One of the reasons I got to this mind-set was a comment by casino mogul Bill Harrah. When told that a high roller had just walked out of his casino with a big wad of the casino's cash, Harrah assured his executive, "Don't have to worry, he'll bring it back. I just consider it a temporary casino loan."

Well, with no malice intended, I respectfully say, "Screw you, Mr. Casino Honcho! When I hit it big, I spend it, and you can eat your heart out because you'll never see it again!" With a tight rein on my stop-limit pocket seed money, along with my unwavering no-credit policy, I make sure that I never bring it back. I also make sure that I make use of my winnings, both wisely and frivolously. Recall I even fucked away a nice wad of casino cash during my X-rated days, winning harems of wanton women, all funded by casino money. That they definitely can't win back.

I learned the art of buying on impulse with my windfall cash. At times I bought my girl friends expensive presents, often right there in the posh casino shops, and often paying with chips I had just won from the green-felt tables. And on impulse once, flush with casino cash, my girl friend and I flew to exotic Monte Carlo for three mad, exciting days and nights. What a James Bond weekend that was!

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The most awkward—and most amusing—example of wayward dice that I personally witnessed was at the Desert Inn casino in Las Vegas, where an overzealous shooter sent one of the dice bouncing off a high roller's stack of chips, after which it flew squarely at the prodigious bosom of the floozie standing across the table from him, and nestled in her cleavage. I'm sure the stickman would have enjoyed retrieving the cube, but the lady deftly reached between her twin peaks and tossed it back onto the table. And—no exceptions—the business-like boxman carefully examined the dice before putting it back into play.

I've read similar accounts in a number of books on gambling. Mamie Van Doren, Jayne Mansfield, Marilyn Monroe—you pick 'em—allegedly had dice popped into their spectacular bosoms. A flavorsome story every time you hear it, but probably just casino folklore.
Then again, the larger the target.

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I wish somebody had taken me by the hand and given me this sage advice. Oh, how many times have I stayed too long at a table! How many times have I waited around for "just one more hand," "just one more shoe," only to see all my winnings—and sometimes my table stakes—swept away? Remember, just as fast as you won it, that's how fast you can lose it, so pick up your chips and head directly to the cashier's cage, and then right to the exit door, with the casino's $20 in your wallet. It's yours. You won it. As Jackie Gleason phrased it, "How sweet it is. . . ."

Now you're off to the next casino, with your original bankroll of two or three hundred dollars, plus your $20 winnings. Now let's see you do it again. This time shoot for twenty-five bucks. Sure, you can do it again,- just don't be greedy. Stick to your hit-and-run strategy and, voilal you'll now be $45 richer. Keep doing this up and down the Strip, or all along the Boardwalk, and soon you'll be stuffing hundred-dollar bills in your wallet. I can't emphasize enough that having a specific goal in mind is essential to quitting as a winner.

Here's a case in point: It was Saturday afternoon in New York. My girl friend at the time was embroiled in a messy and expensive divorce. Her court case was on the docket for Monday. The distraught lady was up a tree financially,- she had to come up with $1,600 for her lawyer by Monday morning. Inspired, I grabbed my hat and headed for the door.
"Where are you going?" she asked.

"Off to the Strip, of course. Let's see if I can win some lawyer money for you."
And of course I did. At JFK I took TWA Flight #57 at 5:30 (after all these years, I still remember my "usual" flight to Las Vegas!), arriving at the old McCarran Airport at 8:30 Pacific Standard Time. By 8:45 I was at the blackjack tables at the Hacienda. (The Hacienda, along with the Sands, was imploded on national television on New Year's Day, 1996. It had outlived its usefulness. When the new McCarran Airport was built, the road out of the airport ran in the opposite direction. Isolated and alone at the bottom of the Strip, the Hacienda became like Australia prior to the invention of the airplane—everybody knew where it was, but nobody went there.)

But, back in the days when you had to enter Las Vegas by way of the old airport, the Hacienda was the first casino you came to.

In ten minutes I left with $175 of the Hacienda's money, then I hit-and-ran at the Tropicana for another $125. And so it went, all the way down to the Sahara, at which point my total Strip winnings topped $2,200, which more than covered my goal plus expenses. Looking over my scorecard, I never made more than $175 in any one casino. I had a goal and I systematically moved on my goal. I accomplished what I wanted to do by disciplining my table action from the first casino I entered. My lady now had her lawyer money, and her newly-paid attorney creamed her ex-husband in court Monday Morning.

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The question people ask me most often is, "How much money should I take with me to the casinos?" I always answer with Gary Cooper's classic reply: "Depends."

Depends on a number of factors. For one, the player's familiarity with casino action. If you're a novice, unsure of yourself and feel uptight at the tables, don't take more than two or three hundred dollars along for the day, and patronize the minimum-bet $5 tables. (Years ago at the "sawdust joints" on Fremont Street in Las Vegas, you could play at $1 and $2 tables.) The logic in all this is that at five bucks a pop you can't really get hurt too bad financially. You won't be wagering "scared money." Scared money never wins. I emphasize again that you should only gamble with money that you can comfortably afford to lose, where the loss wouldn't interfere with your lifestyle.

The mistakes you make at the $5 table you'll avoid making when you're wagering at the $25-minimum table or at a $100 table. On-the-job training will serve you well when you play for keeps at higher-limit blackjack.
Even better than starting at the $5 tables, check around the casinos and see whether any of them give free blackjack lessons for beginners.

These free practice sessions are usually scheduled early on weekday afternoons. By all means, take advantage of these freebie excursions to the blackjack tables.
Here you will be able to relax and hone your gambling skills without risking your seed money. Here you can double-down and split cards and generally see how the game goes. (In between these practice sessions you can sidle over to a $5 table to put what you just learned into practice. During such brief "off-campus" forays, limit your goal to a modest $15 win.)

Now you've gotten some free lessons from the casino and you've cut your baby teeth on a few go-arounds at the $5 table. You feel more comfortable and confident with the game of blackjack. So far so good. Now go back to the $5-minimum tables with the firm goal of winning $20 of the casino's money, and quitting winners. That's your firm goal, $20. Not $25, not $50, just $20. If you learn self-discipline from the start, it will serve you well throughout your casino career.

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