Las Vegas is famous for its private high roller rooms where VIPs -- the rich, the famous and the infamous -- make bets that are totally out of sight.
'For celebrity players, the sky is the limit," said a casino executive who preferred to remain anonymous. "They like to gamble, but they don't enjoy being bothered by the public."
I have been in Las Vegas and actually watched some of the celebrities play. Some of them prefer to rub elbows with their fans rather than retiring to the higher limit rooms that are off-limit to the public.
Comedian Red Fox played big-money poker as well as Keno. I remember seeing him wearing a French Beret in the poker and Keno rooms at Binion's horseshoe. He was polite but he didn't want to talk about show business or his career. He was there to gamble.
Many headliners like Buck Owens, B.B. King and Willie Nelson also visited the casinos before and after their shows. And believe me, the bets they made were not small.
To Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, two hard-drinking gamblers, the sky is the limit. During a recent trip to Las Vegas, the actor buddies got wickedly drunk and asked a casino host to raise the limits of their blackjack bets to $20,000.
They played $20,000 a hand and managed to beat the House for more than $800,000. Before leaving, they tipped the dealer and other staff members more than $150,000. That gives an entire new meaning to the phrase 'Easy come, easy go.'
Arizona Sen. John McCain is another high-rolling gambler who spends a lot of time in gaming meccas around the U.S. His favorite games are poker and dice. During a recent hearing on a report on U.S. intervention in Syria, a reporter looked over McCain's shoulder and noticed he was playing VIP poker on his I-phone.
Actor Ashton Kutcher is another high-rolling gambler when he is away from the set. The popular star disclosed he recently served as a front man for a college football betting syndicate.
"They had a system for winning on college football and used me as a front man," Kutcher admitted. "Over a four-month period, we won around $750,000. I guess the bookies thought I was just another dumb actor with a lot of money to spend."
Jennifer Tilly, an attractive actress who starred in 'The Fabulous Baker Boys,' is a high stakes poker player who won a diamond-studded bracelet and $158,000 after defeating 600 other women in a ladies no-limit Texas Hold'em tournament in Las Vegas. She reportedly spends at least as much time playing poker as she does making movies.
Rap musician .50 Cent won $1 million betting on a prize fight between Floyd Mayweather and Oscar de la Hoya. He also picked up another $500,000 making a big bet on a National Football League game.
A Las Vegas casino executive put it this way: "the same competitive qualities that go into a person's acting can often be used at the gambling tables. To them, a $75,000 or $100,000 bet is a drop in the bucket compared to their annual salaries which total in the tens of millions."
"That's why we always give them the red carpet treatment. Win or lose, they are a great attraction to a casino and they always pay their way."
Bill Harrah and Pappy Smith, who owned two major casinos in Reno, NV., often asked their headline performers to deal blackjack. It thrilled the customers and the casino moguls paid the celebrities well for the extra work. Imagine sitting down at a blackjack or poker table to find yourself rubbing elbows with Juliet Prowse or Bobbie Gentry.
John Huston directed Marilyn Monroe in her last movie, 'The Misfits,' in which she co-starred with Clark Gable, Montgomery Clift and Eli Wallach. Huston loved to gamble and drink, and taught Marilyn how to shoot dice. They spent many of their leisure hours in the Reno casinos when they weren't on the set.
Huston reportedly didn't care about money. All he craved was the action. To the man who directed 'Treasure of the Sierra Madre' and 'Under the Volcano,' the sky was the limit.