25 Ways to Protect Yourself Against the BAD Guys in the Casinos! - Part 1

In Atlantic City I was entering the lobby of the Claridge from the side door one evening when I saw one guy bump a lady and, when she turned to see who had bumped her, I saw a second guy come up from behind her, open her purse, and take out her wallet. All this happened so fast that, as I opened my mouth to shout "Watch Out!" -- the two of them were at the front door on "Watch" and into the night on "Out!"

I ran to the front door, exited, and looked to see where they were headed but they were gone...vanished into wherever evil vanishes. When I reentered the lobby, the lady didn't know what had happened until I told her that some crooks had grabbed her wallet from her purse. "I didn't feel anything," she lamented. "How did it happen?" I explained how this duo operated. "One guy bumped you and one guy robbed you." She filed a report.

One day on the boardwalk outside Trump's Plaza in Atlantic City, the Captain saw an elderly woman who was crying. He went up to her to see what was the matter. She told him that she had just come from the ladies' room in the casino where her pocketbook was stolen while she was in the stall. "I hung it up on the door and this hand reached over and just took it," she told the Captain. She screamed but whoever had relieved her of her purse was quick as a deer and was long gone by the time anyone knew what had transpired. "I had just won $500, too," she lamented. "I'm 82 years old," she said, "my husband's deceased, my children are all moved away, and this is the best luck I've had in years." Then she cried some more. The Captain had his limo take her to her home in Brooklyn.

In Las Vegas, several blocks north from today's Stratosphere Tower (then Vegas World), my wife, the beautiful A.P., and I had taken our clothes to a laundromat to be cleaned. We walked from the Sahara, where we were staying, and dropped the clothes off at the laundromat, and started to walk back. Now, this was during a time when A.P. had decided to make all of our clothing and we were wearing matching print shirts and we just looked so damned cute in our matching outfits. Two huge bruisers sleepy-eyed us as we passed them. From years of living in New York my antennae went up.

I thought we might be in trouble because we looked so damned cute in our matching print outfits; cute enough to be the perfect mugging victims. So I did what I always do when I think someone might mean me harm, I turned and looked them square in the eyes -- and then I knew we were in trouble! These guys started towards us, they were maybe 30 feet away. I whispered to A.P. to run across the street (Las Vegas Blvd.) when I gave the signal. I waited for the cars that had been stopped at the light to get to a certain point and then when they did, I gave A.P. a subtle signal -- "Run!" I shouted -- and we ran like hell across the street. The brutes tried to run after us but the cars came and prevented them. We kept running until we reached the Sahara.

The above incidents are not that strange for Atlantic City, Las Vegas or any other venue where gambling attracts those of us who wish to fleece Fortune and those of them who wish to fleece us. In fact, such incidents are not strange for any popular tourist venue, multiple theatre complex or large shopping mall for that matter. Yet, some casino games and some casino-hotel locales lend themselves much more readily to criminals preying upon us than do others.

Gaming readers get great advice in handling the various games in the casino, but rarely do we get good advice about how to handle the variety of games criminals might play upon us in and out of the casinos. Considering that there are two ways to lose your money in a casino: One, by having bad luck when the casino's edge defeats you, and two, by having even worse luck when some criminal steals whatever money you might have won after you had good luck, here are 25 ways to protect us (the good guys) against them (the bad guys).

In the next part of this article, Frank begins to list the 25 ways to protect yourself in the casino.