The Vegas Guy: Bill Bennett at the slots

NEW YORK, May 8 (UPI) -- Did you hear the schoolyard taunts emanating from Washington this week?

Bill is a gambler!

Bill is a gambler!

Nyah, nyah, nyah!

That's about the sophistication level of this expose of

William Bennett in The Washington Monthly and Newsweek. It's actually no expose at all. What a smear job.

The man likes to play the slots and video poker at legal casinos. So what? They're saying he's a hypocrite because he's a crusader for family values and yet he likes to gamble? Probably half our presidents have been in favor of family values but liked to gamble. There was a time when you weren't even considered presidential material unless you could hold your own at high stakes poker.

Oh yes, his critics reply, but he gambled EIGHT MILLION

DOLLARS over a 10-year period. He must be an addict.

The size of the bet has nothing to do with gambling addiction, as any mental health professional can tell you. A nickel slots player can be an addict, and a million-dollar player can be doing it strictly for relaxation.

Bennett can AFFORD $8 million. He's a millionaire. I've interviewed many of them. They don't get any satisfaction out of a $20 bet, or a $100 bet, or sometimes even a $1,000 bet. It's not enough money to them to make the game interesting. It would be like you or I wanting to play $15 blackjack at the casino, but instead being forced to play for matchsticks or pennies. Without any possibility of winning anything that matters, the zip of the game vanishes. Millionaires are the same way -- you just have to add zeros.

Would he be criticized this way if he had a weakness for sailing yachts? You can easily spend eight mill on a yacht in one day, not 10 years.

Then there's the matter of how reliable that number is. It's an "estimate" from "sources." What's more likely is that he's had $8 million in play over 10 years. Since his preferred games are slots and video poker, a conservative loss rate on that would be about 3 percent, or $240,000. It wouldn't vary much from that because, the higher the amount wagered, the more accurate the Random Number Generators become.

In order to actually LOSE $8 million, assuming a slot machine with a 97 percent payback (which is probably low), you would have to gamble $267 million. I suppose it's possible he put that much in the machines, but if he were that level of whale for 10 years, I think we would have heard about it before now. The article said he had $200,000 lines of credit at four casinos. That qualifies as a big bettor, but not a whale. A whale would be a million or above.

In fact, if Bennett played Jacks-or-better video poker, he would have close to a 100 percent payback on skillful play. And if he played $500-per-pull slot machines, he could expect to have 99 percent or even 99.5 percent payback. (The higher-denomination machines are set for better returns to the players.) That makes the numbers even more ludicrous. At 99 percent, he would have to gamble $800 million to lose $8 million. I don't think he had enough TIME to pull the handle that many times. The article says he gambled in three-hour sessions every few months.

The more troubling aspect of this railroading of the former education secretary and drug czar is that somebody, somewhere -- possibly more than one person -- broke the cardinal rule of casino hosting: they publicly revealed the name of one of the casino's high rollers, without his permission. Some high rollers like publicity -- the Australian media baron Kerry Packer comes to mind -- but most of them don't.

If these casinos have any business sense, they'll publicly fire whoever's responsible. (I actually doubt that the leak came from a casino host. It's more likely to have come from a lower-level employee with access to Bennett's computer printouts. This could also be the reason for the lack of sophisticated analysis of what the numbers mean.)

Two of the casinos mentioned in the Washington Monthly article were Caesars in Atlantic City, N.J. owned by Park Place

Entertainment, and the Bellagio in Las Vegas, owned by MGM

Mirage. These are two of the largest gambling corporations in the world, publicly traded, and both rely heavily on high roller business. Since the word is out that they don't protect the identities of gamblers in their high-limit salons, they could lose millions overnight, especially if some of the super-secretive Asian businessmen desert them. If I were a stockholder in either company, I'd be incensed.

So why's Bennett being hammered?

Listen to this diatribe by Jane Eisner in the Philadelphia Inquirer, referring to Bennett's occasional poker sessions with Supreme Court justices: "A penny-ante poker game with the Supremes is one thing, but heavy, compulsive gambling ($8 million will fit that description) is a social ill, associated with drug use, domestic violence, child abuse, and bankruptcy."

To which I say, HUH?

CHILD ABUSE? He's contributing to CHILD ABUSE by traveling in the middle of the night to Atlantic City to gamble away a few hours? Domestic violence? Drug use? When did drug use become associated with gambling? Her theory, I suppose -- and I'm guessing -- is that he's a role model, and all these wife-beating degenerate rednecks will tend to act up once they know he gambles a lot.

News alert: they can't even get IN at the high-limit salons where Bennett plays.

Other organizations weighed in against Bennett as well. Dr. James C. Dobson, of Focus on the Family, called gambling "a cancer on the soul of the nation," and said he was concerned that Bennett was a gambler.

Concerned Women for America said: "Families are crumbling under the weight of irresponsible gambling losses."

Well, guess whose family is NOT crumbling under the weight of irresponsible gambling? Bennett's.

One way you can always spot a compulsive gambler is by his domestic situation. He'll be in debt. His family will be suffering. His marriage will be shaky. It's an almost universal symptom. But when the press called Bennett's wife, Elayne, to get her reaction, she was mildly annoyed -- at the media.

The most mysterious aspect of all this is: What was the casino industry's motive in selling Bennett down the river? Could they have been truly worried about a single item in the agenda of his organization Empower America, which opposes the expansion of gambling? Did that seem so hypocritical to them that they set out to get Bennett?

First of all, a lot of gamblers are opposed to the expansion of gambling. They would prefer that the casinos in Nevada remain strong, and think that the fact you have to get on an airplane to gamble is an effective social control against "convenience gambling" of the sort they have in Oregon -- video poker in bars.

Secondly, it's such a small part of his agenda that no one would have noticed it had these articles not appeared.

Joshua Green, author of the Washington Monthly article, sums up his moral outrage at Bennett by saying: "By furtively indulging in a costly vice that destroys millions of lives and families across the nation, Bennett has profoundly undermined the credibility of his word on this moral issue."

And yet his word on this moral issue was much simpler than that. "If you can't handle it, don't do it," is what Bennett said.

He also said that he won't be doing it anymore -- not because he can't handle it, but because he cratered to the pressure. The only losers here are the casinos who were handling his business, but under the circumstances, it couldn't happen to nicer guys.

(E-mail Joe Bob Briggs, "The Vegas Guy," at [email protected] or visit Joe Bob's Web site at www.joebobbriggs.com. Snail-mail: P.O. Box 2002, Dallas, Texas 75221.)