BLACKJACK ON THE BOARDWALK: ATLANTIC CITY

Lest you think of all gambling as a relaxed romp in tropical splendor, I think you should hear about the early casino days of New Jersey. By the time you read this, the problem has lessened by having more casinos up and going.

The Resorts International Casino in Atlantic City had an official license to monopolize gambling in New Jersey in its first year of existence. Reports were that the whole town was con-cerned with milking the new wave of visitors eager to try the tables. Just to keep up on current events in the game, I visited At-lantic City so I could report to IBC members on the conditions.

Ienlisted a fellow gambler to take the trip with me in the inter-ests of helping humanity and getting in some decent playing time. We booked ourselves into the Holiday Inn so no one at the Resorts hotel could identify who we were. It was also cheaper than the casino hotel, but the prices were still as high as a New York City hotel. We each brought five thousand dollars, planning to hold our expenses down and to put as much of it into play as we could.

It turned out to be nearly impossible to hold our expenses down. In addition to the outrageous price at the Holiday Inn, ' parking one long block away from the casino was five dollars for three hours. Prices in the casino (once you got in) weren't any' better. One beer and a gin and tonic on the rocks were five dol-lars.

Conditions were horrible. There was a line of several hundred people waiting at the door before the 10 A.M. opening. Looking ; around at the people in the casino, it seemed like every dreg and j hustler on the East Coast was there (I wonder what we looked like to them?). Security was far from what it should be. By the time the casino was only two months old, there had already been three robberies in the washrooms.

One of these netted the thief over four thousand dollars! At the cheaper tables, there were waits of over an hour to get a seat, even during the day. Fortu-nately, the twenty-five-dollar-minimum tables were fairly open. In the evening, the casino reversed the table mix so that 75 per cent of the tables were twenty-five-dollar minimums and 25 per cent were five-dollar tables. Even with the higher minimums, every seat was filled.

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