Gambling ceases to be fun for me once I’m placing bets higher than $10. Of course if I’m up, I
step on to that slippery slope of slowly increasing my bets, but the last thing I want to do is sit down at a $25
minimum table and lose two or three hands in a row. The last time I was in Vegas, however, I simply didn’t
have a choice at the blackjack tables. It was $25 a pop, or it was the quarter slot machines—which is
pretty much the gambling equivalent of drinking non-alcoholic beer.
I was therefore amused to run across a New York Times article whose author was as frustrated in Atlantic
City as I was in Vegas. As a result, he went on a quest for the elusive $5
blackjack table that reads like an expedition for the Dodo bird. His hunt takes him across the vice-filled
landscape but with little luck. Eventually he does find the holy grail of low-limit tables, but, like that
“hidden” swimming hole no one is supposed to know about, it was so packed with people he never had the
chance to jump in.