Popular Casinos

Monte Carlo, in the tiny principality of Monaco, is simply the world's most famous gambling resort.

For sheer glamour, for density of celebrity, for age and grandeur, you can't beat the place.

You can't beat the games at Monte Carlo, either, but that's true of all the other casinos in the world, too. Arab oil princes and European industrialists, people with enough money to go anywhere for their gambling pleasure, still flock to the domain of the late Princess Grace.

And after Monaco, it's still Las Vegas. Things may be fancier on the Riviera - cooler, classier, with a thicker overlay of gold leaf - but there's more happening in Las Vegas, as any serious gambler will tell you.

Where does Atlantic City fit into this scene of worldwide casino action? The future is wide open. Atlantic City is no stranger to gambling style - less musty rococo furniture and more badly lit back rooms.

We are now witnessing the dawn of a new Atlantic City, one that's going in for casino gambling in a big way, for the first time ever on the East Coast. The 19th century, with its private clubs for gentlemen and ladies, never knew anything on the scale of Las Vegas or of what Atlantic City hopes to become.

Nevada still has lots of advantages, mostly that it is a huge territory and gambling is legal in every inch of it; not just casino gambling, but sports betting, card games, odds making - you name it.

Still, it's the casino games that the public favor, that give the air of glamour to a dusty desert town in the U.S., and a gorgeous little bay off the coast of France.

As a new spot on the gambling map, Atlantic City has its choice of casino styles. It seems unlikely that the Wild West, gold-and-silver-mine craziness could ever be duplicated in the East, or that people would accept it, if it were.

Nevada really was the Wild West, as the spectacular mountain vistas and played-out mines still attest. In the beginning, it was just a dry patch on the trail to California for those searching for gold. A little later, both gold and silver were discovered in Nevada.

Virginia City, now virtually a ghost town, except for tourists, saw some fortunes made and lost that would have turned heads in San Francisco, or the Klondike, any day of the week.

Las Vegas has had a unique history of influences: lifted out of small-time griminess by the mobster audacity of Bugsy Siegel, later crowned with respectability by a multi-million-dollar whim of Howard Hughes.

Nothing of the sort is likely to happen to New Jersey's Gray Lady. First of all, the state has announced its fervent intention to keep organized crime out of Atlantic City casinos.

Even if it can't succeed altogether, this attempt will surely manage to make any gangland types keep a very low profile.