We scrimp and save our money to support ourselves and our families. We use it to feed and clothe our children. In Las Vegas many children suffer, thanks to the gambling problems of mom or dad or both. The casinos can clean out a kid's college fund in just moments, but at rare moments they can also provide the child with room and board and tuition for the first college year, if you're lucky.

In the ongoing struggle to win, the mighty casinos with their years and years of experience, their millions and millions of dollars, their never-ending supply of everything from fresh workers to new-fangled machines, constant upkeep of everything, new cards, new dice, new layouts, new dealers every hour. They can throw free food and booze at you for as long as you can take it. And look at their "competition", people spending their hard-earned money to come in for the short time they have with maybe a couple of hundred dollars to spend, very little experience on any of the games (I deal more hands in one day than most players play in a year), all the talking and noise and distractions that can cause mistakes. It's like taking out your old basketball once a year and trying to win a one-on-one game with Michael Jordan.

Most of my players are younger players. The average age would be 23 to 43, the age where most people are thinking about marriage, raising a family and settling down, while trying to enjoy a weekend now and then by coming to Las Vegas for a short getaway. But even a short getaway can get away from anyone. A couple days in Vegas can and often does, make or break marriages and relationships, if for no other reason than they get to see each other in a different situation than normal. They often get to see how the other one handles themselves and their money in a situation where they're actually losing money and how and when they take their winnings and losses and how they act around others. People getting away from home for the first time with their partners often find a side to their partners that they've never experienced before in their home setting, often revealing a side that can turn people on or off permanently. But in rare times, the casinos, thanks to their never-ending supply of money and ways to win it, can be the answer to people's prayers in the short term. The only problem is keeping the money and doing something for your own good that can actually give the word "gambling" a positive feel to it.

The greatest thing in life is not lining up the king of spades on a poker machine, or lining up the third Megabucks symbol for a couple of million bucks, unless you're an old fart living alone and have nothing else in your life but re-runs of I Love Lucy during the day and bingo and a little Keno in the local casino at night. The greatest experience in life is finding love, raising a family and passing on your love and insight on to your children so they can do the same when they grow up.

It was a year and a half ago that my nephew Brett found love in the form of Nichole, a wonderful and beautiful woman with a heart of gold and a smile that can brighten spirits everywhere she goes. My nephew, I don't mind bragging, is a smart, warm, funny and a handsome guy (it runs in the family) and those two go together like warm milk and chocolate. They finally took the next step when Nichole found out she was pregnant, and with only a matter of months left, they decided to fly out to Vegas so Nikki, who has never been in Las Vegas, could take a well-deserved break before having the baby, and Brett could get in a couple of good rolls on the dice table while she enjoyed her morning aches and pains and a turn or two at the porcelain bus.

Brett, like many players, has just enough knowledge of the games to make them enjoyable to play, but he's not a big gambler. In past years, he would come to Vegas once or twice a year, stay up for two or three days playing a little of everything. He's a good player, he's patient and quiet and watches for his spots and plays right most of the time and would rarely go home a big loser. But then, he rarely went home a big winner either, because like most guys, at the end of their stay they usually pump it up, whether they're winning or losing, and often blow back their winnings or make their hole deeper by taking a big loss after all the smaller losses throughout the weekend as they try to get even before leaving town.

But he knows how to do Las Vegas; they stayed at Caesars Palace, ate well, and did more site-seeing than gambling, since Nichole has never seen Vegas and only has another month or so before even long walks become a struggle in her condition. When staying at Caesars you have to suck it up at least once and spend some money on one of their top-of-the-line restaurants, and since it was my birthday, we decided on Spagos, Wolfgang Puck's idea of "food"(good stuff, but like most of Vegas, more talk and show than real eating). Nichole and I met at the decided time but Brett was nowhere to be seen.

Ten minutes later he finally called her cell phone to let her know he was on the way and that "he just had the best roll of his life." Not something most men admit to their wives freely. With the slightly blank stare on his face when I finally saw him, he seemed a little in shock. "What did ya do?" I asked. He knew right away what I was talking about and when we sat down pulled out a wad of hundreds. "Twenty-three hundred, I took the crap table for twenty-three hundred bucks." We were overwhelmed, it's not often that anyone takes a casino for even hundreds let alone thousands, we're not talking about hitting a slot machine and taking the money in a check or something, we're talking about craps, making long-shot bets, hitting hard ways, hitting all the come out rolls, taking full odds on the back, it takes a lot of work and a lot of luck to make a crap table work for you, and even more luck knowing when it's time to walk. Then you need to combine all that with the time you're in town, hitting too early is a sure bet that most of it will be deposited back into the casino by the time you leave town, waiting too late is a sure bet that whatever you have left in your pocket will be gone before you hit the airport terminal, and if there's still any left, they've designed the airport so there's a way to clean you out completely by putting slot machines in every terminal at McCarran airport.

So naturally, being here for twenty years, seeing all the failures come and go, the first thing I could think to say was, "you gotta keep it, don't let these bastards get that money back. Twenty-three hundred to Caesars is one new slot machine, to you guys it's a new bedroom set, a kitchen set with new cabinets and paint, it's a way to pay off your Visa bills, a way to put new brakes on your car, make a couple months of house payments."

To ordinary people, the kind of cash a casino spends on a dinner buffet could change their entire lifestyle. The stress many people experience when they gamble is not only real, but many times more stressful than what most people ever experience in normal life. Nichole's reaction was the same as mine; now that they were looking forward to a child the money meant being able to buy the things a newborn will need in the first months of life. The hundreds of diapers, formula, everything that eats up newlyweds pocketbooks. The baby showers are great but after everyone's bought their little gifts for that one day, life goes on and costs money, and I couldn't think of anyone I would rather see help raise my nephews child than Caesars Palace. This is too good, this would make great advertisement. "CAESARS PALACE, THE WARM AND FUZZY CASINO."

It wouldn't be easy; he still had the rest of the evening, and a few hours the next day before they boarded the plane back to Chicago. He would have to make it back to the room, then through the casino the next morning and through the airport before the money was safe at home. But I had faith in him and Nichole, that they would take the money home with them.

Action is a strange being, almost an entity that can be felt and touched. It calls you, it nags at you, it mocks you when you lose, it whispers in your ear constantly, and understanding that no matter how high the feeling of being in the action, it has to end sometime. That's the person's maturity shows, when it's time to shut it down and take yourself home. When it's time to take your winnings, whether it's as much as you hoped or your losses, whether it's as much as you feared. It's the action that lives on, after everyone's gone home, you have to know, someone else is just showing up, that airplane that's taking you home just dropped off two hundred others hoping to secure their future with the roll of two dice, the turn of a card, the spin of a plastic ball. Just be glad you can sit on the plane home, look out the window and grin and say "thanks" as you see Caesars Palace fade in the distance as the plane climbs out. Thanks to Caesars, the family has a great start, and it's not often a casino can take that kind of credit.

-Ken Pearlman