The rich called it the "Million Dollar Club" referring to the minimum credit limit allowed to enter the private domain of the high roller private gambling rooms (they call them Salons, as if they're gonna curl your hair while you play) in the elite casinos. At one time they were usually nestled on the top of some winding staircase above the casino floor, or on some secluded floor on the top of the better casinos. Only recently have they been placed amongst the ordinary public casino on the main floor in view of the ordinary people who armed with a good 20X binoculars could get a glimpse of what a half-million dollar bet really looks like.

This was a move that was headed by the new MGM just a few years ago when they put their gold carpeted high-limit room right there next to the coffee shop and the poker room. Nothing more than a three-foot high wall to separate the real money from the rest of us.

Then the Rio followed putting their high roller room right next to the steak house becoming the first casino to serve Surf-And-Turf free with every half-million dollar bet. Now days these places are called the "Pocket-Change Room" since now, thanks to the Carson City based Nevada Resort Association the minimum credit limit has been lowered from $1,000,000 to a mere $50,000, and the minimum bet, which at one time was $20,000 per hand/play had been lowered at just the beginning of the year to $10,000 per hand/play and then in July was lowered once again to $5,000 and since Sept. 11th the Nevada Resort Association is lobbying to lower the current limit to $500 per hand.

FIVE HUNDRED BUCKS PER HAND!

Do you realize, I could actually drain my checking account, sell my car, pawn my stereo, and walk into Caesars Palace, stroll into the second-floor, gold handled, Royal Blue lush carpeted high-roller room wearing my cleaner pair of jeans, my "good" shoes, my clean Cubs cap (the one I don't wear) and my Alfred E. Newman For President t-shirt, and when the two security guards in tuxedos try to stop me at the door, I can just flash my $500 and say "Step aside sonny, I'm a high-rollin' gamblin' man, and my FIVE HUNDRED BUCKS says I get a seat see? And someone bring me a Bud, A COLD BUD, BUD!! And here's a buck for you, and one for the drink girl. (Yup, my daddy taught me, take care of the people on the way up, 'cause they'll take care of you but good on the way down.)

I was always under the impression that the casinos set their own standards as to who plays in their high-roller rooms and how much they want to let them bet. But the idea is that the high-roller rooms aren't under the same rules as the rest of the casino. The surveillance is designed to be only on the games and the players' hands, but it doesn't have to cover the faces of the players. The players use high limit checks and the casinos use real dealers that are used to dealing with these limits.

Trust me, the ordinary dealer couldn't walk up to a table and start dealing $25,000 a hand single-deck pitch blackjack and not shake a little when the guy gets a pair of 8's and you have a Queen showing and the first card on the split hand is a 2.

Since each bet is subject to the 6A laws of the Nevada Gaming Statues, each hand is also of interest to the IRS when $100,000 changes hands in the form of 10 average sized yellow and black $10,000 chips. The same size as a $5 trashy casino chip that can barely buy a pack of cigarettes. Where a million dollars in chips can be put in your vest pocket.

The idea was implemented a couple of years ago to embed a tracking chip in each chip of a value of $5,000 or more with the idea that the IRS was paranoid people would start stealing chips from the high-roller room now that the limits were so low, with the security system with the same idea in mind of someone walking through the doors of a Wal-Mart without paying for that bag of M&M's when the little voice over the intercom says "excuse me, but we seem to have forgotten to pay for that little tid-bit didn't we? No problem, just return to the check out stand and pay for the item, OR TAKE ONE MORE STEP MOTHERFUCKER AND YOU'RE TOAST!!."

Well the idea is to keep tabs on their high-limit chips as though everyone is walking around with them trying to cash them in with a handful of quarters and a few silver dollars, but I guess since there's going to be so much trash pushing their way into the high-roller rooms with their $500 in hand, they have to keep a closer eye on the $5,000 and $10,000 chips along with how many lobster and cheese doodles on Ritz crackers are missing from the relish trays.(I always thought relish came in little packets along with the catsup, mustard, and mayo)

What the Resort Association is trying to do is loosen the IRS's hold on the high-rollers, as though they're going to convince the government boys that Michael Jordan was only playing $500 per hand blackjack and only lost $6,000 last night, rather than the usual $25,000 per hand and writing a check for $250,000 doesn't even have to be signed by the NBA star. He just smiles and takes a picture with Cleopatra and it's called advertising.

The other ugly truth is segregation. Yes folks, sorry to tell ya, but the rich and famous don't especially want to drink their beer with a lime stuck on top, or drink their rum and cokes out of a plastic cup like the rest of us. They want their shrimp cocktails to be the size of spawning salmon rather than the size of…well, shrimp. They actually WANT steel silverware to eat their dinners while the luckier of us get the clear plastic forks rather than the white plastic ones.

But I do have to say, where we get those huge hot dogs for a buck, with all the free relish we want, they get their weenies on little toothpicks and gotta eat a lot to get full like we get on just one or two of ours. Yup, they just don't want to gamble with the rest of us, and with the old $1 Million dollar credit limit, and the $20,000 per hand minimum bet, they were pretty assured not to have to share the table with a couple of Homies from Compton, or Bass fishermen from Arkansas who's idea of an Oscar performance was Ned Beatty on all fours squealing like a pig.

But now those days are gone. Now they have to scrounge drink holders like the rest of us and wait for the cocktail waitress to clean up the spilled drink off the $500 mini crap table before she can get to your Champagne cocktail.

So here I am, poised on the precipice of greatness with my grubby $500 in hand ready to enter the realm of the great ones in the high-roller rooms of Las Vegas, thanks to the lawyers from the Nevada Resort Association, who decided to force the casinos to share their "Rich And Famous" space with the "Poor And Scrungy" to be able to share the tables and rub shoulders with the Ted Turners and Donald Trumps, to drink champagne out of a glass and eat my meatballs hot on a stick.

Yes, equality's great, God Bless America, I say, $500 tables for everyone! Now all I'm looking for is someone else with $500 to go with me just incase I lose the first hand….Ken Pearlman