He got right into my face. "We’ve all read your books and we know what you are doing. We don’t like it. We don’t want you here!"

This guy was new to me; he was an "upstairs suit" at my favorite casino – well, my formerly favorite casino, and he came from on high with his loud clarion call broadcasting to everyone near me that it would be best if I left his property and went elsewhere.

"I wouldn’t give you any comp time if you hadn’t taken out a marker," he snarled. "Why don’t you go across the street to Caesars? They’d love your action. You’re rich, you can play anywhere."

The upstairs suit then added, "One of your guys roughed up one of our pit people last night at the craps table. We have it on tape."

One of my guys? My guys? I don’t have any guys.

I turned to my friends: Skinny; he was red-faced. He had never been through something like this at a casino. Skinny is a man of reason but he was now confronted with loathing. I looked at Stickman; he was staring at the upstairs guy. Stickman can be scary when he stares. I looked at Not2Soon and he seemed to be calm and relaxed. He’d been through this in his own playing career before.

Still, though this has happened many times to me, I never like it; so this morning was another bad day for me in the casino world; another casino boss misunderstanding the math of his own games and becoming enraged; another tale of being told to leave an establishment that I had brought hundreds of players to because this place didn’t want me there any more.

Oh, it fit in with the week. It fit right in; right, right in.

A highly foggy week should start with a highly foggy day, and my June trip to Vegas started just that way. When I awoke and looked out my bedroom window I saw almost nothing but haze. When I left Kennedy Airport in New York that early morning, the fog was so thick you couldn’t see more than 50 feet. We got on the plane at the correct time but waited on the tarmac for 20-30 minutes before we could take off. That is recorded as an "on-time" flight even though we got to Vegas about a half hour late.

On Thursdays we set up the hotel banquet rooms for our dice control classes. We had 19 teachers, all of whom are elite dice controllers, coming in to teach our students how to beat the casinos at craps. But first, we all had to set up the rooms.

Now this Thursday during set-up of the practice room, my partner Dominator was in something of an emotional turmoil, which is usual for him. He wants everything the way he wants it and that’s that. He is something of a perfectionist and gets heated when perfection is not achieved. You can see this during his long rolls at craps. He gets increasingly angry as the roll progresses because somewhere deep inside him is the knowledge that this roll will end, as all rolls must end, and so much for the perfection he is experiencing, and that pending inevitable end angers him.

Unfortunately, nothing goes entirely as planned when we are putting together such a big event; especially in a new place. Last-minute changes are often greeted with charges from the hotel; which can be annoying but understandable since the hotel is not there to accommodate us for free.

We were doing our classes at the Alexis Park Resorts, a beautiful non-casino property on Harmon Avenue, across the street from the Hard Rock. It really is a resort too, with three swimming pools, a restaurant, a gym, with every room a suite.

Setting up our practice room on Thursday is tough work. We have three full craps tables; two half tables; and anywhere from four to eight throwing and receiving stations depending on the size of the class. The student teacher ratio, a key to the intense personal instruction GTC gives, is usually four students to two teachers. Each four-student group has a mentor and each station has an instructor. You are given truly up-close hands-on experience with the best dice controllers in the world.

As always there were some small glitches in setting up the various rooms for our weekend. We found that the room where we were to hold the "Meet and Greet" party on Friday evening was not as air-conditioned as the room next to it that had been set up as the classroom or as cool as the practice room where we had set up our tables. The classroom was cool; the practice room was cool but the party room was not so cool.

It was too late to change rooms without a fee from the hotel (which annoyed Dominator no end, so we didn’t go that route) and we also didn’t want the attendant hassle of doing such a mass moving; so we shut the lights, opened the doors, and tried to get the air-conditioning from the practice room and the hallway into the party room.

When Thursday’s work was said and done, my craps team The Five Horsemen, composed of Dominator, Stickman, Nick@Night, Skinny and me, along with Marilyn "the Goddess," Charlie "Sandtrap," and Arman "Pit Boss" headed to Craftsteak at MGM-Grand for a great meal. The owner of Craftsteak is Chef Tom Colicchio; the leading judge on the reality show "Top Chef" – a show my wife the beautiful AP and I love.

I have never had a bad meal at this restaurant. But something happened between this visit and my visit last June. One of Golden Touch’s interns, John "the Rolling Rooster," twice sent me a couple of dozen steaks from a new company he had bought and, well, even Mr. Colicchio never tasted steaks that were this good. While I again enjoyed my meal at Craftsteak, I kept thinking that if some cows descended from heaven, the "Rolling Rooster’s" were those cows.

My normal day at home usually goes something like this: I wake up, do some work – usually answering emails – go swimming three mornings a week, box two mornings a week and work out on the treadmill two mornings a week. I am fat but in decent enough shape.

However, when I am in Vegas during a class things radically change and I rarely get to workout while the class is on.

But I wanted this trip to be different; I wanted to do my workouts every day as I do at home. So Stickman and I decided on Friday morning to get up really early and head to the gym to use their treadmills, only one of which actually worked, causing Stickman to volunteer to use the Stairmaster, a torturous device, especially if you have never used one, and then we’d go to the pool where I could swim laps.

After the treadmill and "Stairslaughter," we headed for the pool. Of course, early in the morning there were no lifeguards but I went in anyway. After 13 minutes a really large gun-toting security guard stood at the edge of the pool. Obviously I couldn’t ignore him.

"Oh, please don’t tell me that I have to get out," I said

"You have to get out," he said. "The lifeguard doesn’t come until 9:30. It’s only a little after seven."

"I never refuse a man with a gun," I said and slowly made my way out of the pool.

Stickman prefers to lounge and get some sun and he had one hell of a tan. He uses no tanning lotion and it amazes me that he never burns. Satan would have a hard time frying him in hell…if there is a hell.

That Friday the Elite Video Analysis created and taught by NoFieldFive and our tune-up lessons where GTC’s Bob "Mr. Finesse," our director of tune-ups, helps unleash the students’ abilities under his well-known "eagle eye," were huge successes. The Elite Video Analysis is one of the most innovative and insightful programs Golden Touch offers.

We were expecting well over 70 people to attend the "Meet and Greet" that night – although some wound up not coming due to airline delays. I think we had a 62 count.

Friday evening’s "Meet and Greet" party is tough – tough on me that is. My audience has heard that I am funny, and many have seen me do "my thing" before, so I do feel a pressure to be just such as I introduce our instructors, mentors and students. The problem is that I can’t prepare myself for humor; it comes or it doesn’t come. I ad lib my way through my entire stint on stage and hope for the best. So far so good, but I do know that one night – one horrible night – I will bomb and know that my humor days are over. That night has not yet come but like a seven-out it surely will.

I gave out an award to Charlie "Sandtrap," one of our first two students (his wife Marilyn "the Goddess" was the other) for his blistering 90-roll hand, the fifth longest hand we have ever recorded.

Except for occasional dustups when Dominator got really angry by something someone did that he didn’t like – usually someone from the resort; one such moment being the fact that we had to pack up our own leftovers from the party because Clark County law does not allow hotels to wrap up food that has already been served – or when one of our instructors did something he didn’t like (which happens only on rare occasions), Friday went smoothly. I was (thank you Lord!) funny; the students and guests at the "Meet and Greet" had a great party and we looked forward to two days of teaching novice (Primer) and intermediate players (Refreshers) the secrets to unlock their potential to beat the house using dice control and proper betting.

Stickman and I were too tired to get up early and work out. There goes mimicking being home.

Teaching students from 8AM to 5PM is not an easy thing. By the end of the day, the instructors are exhausted as are the students. The scariest part of the day is when the instructors demonstrate their own controlled throws. I mean, here we are – live and in person – doing before them what we tell them they can learn to do. There is no guarantee that our throws will look good and we know that our reputations as dice controllers are on the line when we do our demonstrations. So far, after more than nine years, we haven’t bombed out once!

The fun break of the classroom day is lunch with the students. In a relaxed atmosphere we can really get to know them and they can get to know us.

Saturday evening, Dom, Stickman, Skinny, Nick@Night, Marilyn "the Goddess," Sandtrap, Pit Boss, Dice Pilot, his lovely wife Lilly, and I had dinner at my favorite Italian restaurant, Fiamma at MGM-Grand.

As we entered MGM-Grand, we were greeted by a horde of young "ladies" heading out to the Electric Daisy Carnival at the Las Vegas Speedway, a dance marathon starting at 8PM and going until dawn. None of our party is easily shocked but these young "ladies" shocked the hell out of us. Many were either in their underwear or almost naked. One young "lady" was wearing only a bra and a g-string!

All of us agreed that we would be completely depressed if any of our daughters turned out this way. "Ladies" indeed….

Fiamma was a major disappointment.

Fiamma had been a restaurant with the best home-made pasta I had ever eaten. My mouth would water just thinking about eating there; but it wasn’t to be this night. The new chef had created pasta dishes that sounded lackluster – one of which had mint flavor! You can’t feed Italian appetites such as Dominator’s mint-flavored pasta; it is a mortal sin.

Dom decided to take the bull by the horns and he requested some meals like we used to have at Fiamma. The chef attempted to make them but they were a disappointment, except for Stickman’s raviolini, which had actually been on the menu.

When the bill came, for the first time ever, Dom looked at it. We usually just split it up and pay.

"What the hell is this?" he asked nobody in particular.

"What?" I asked him.

"It says ‘ice’ and ‘no ice,’ with a charge next to each."

He called the waitress over.

"What’s this ice and no ice stuff?" he asked.

"We charge you an extra four dollars if you have ice in your drink," she said.

"Four dollars if I have ice in my drink?"

"Yes," she said.

"And the no ice thing?"

"We charge you two dollars if you don’t have ice with your drink because we use ice to chill the glass," she said.

Ten adults, all of whom eat regularly at gourmet restaurants, sat stunned. Charging for ice? Charging for not ice?

"Check the bill," I murmured. "See if there’s a charge for air."

If a student gets a good night’s sleep and does not hit the casinos hard on Saturday night, muscle memory begins setting in while he sleeps and on Sunday their throws are much, much improved. Of course, many students do not listen to our advice about not going berserk that Saturday night and they will come into class somewhat tired or even hung over that Sunday morning. Just looking at such individuals tells you clearly they will probably never become advantage players because they have no discipline over themselves, much less having discipline over how they will play the game.

On Sunday, the big event is our tournament where each student gets to compete to see who will become the individual champion and each team competes to see which team will carry home the laurels.

When it was over, we broke down the tables, boxed all the products, took inventory and went our separate ways. The Five Horsemen, along with Marilyn "the Goddess" and Sandtrap headed for our favorite casino, Bellagio.

At the VIP check-in I jokingly said to Dominator, Skinny and Nick@Night that my hostess never seems to get my reservations right. I once showed up and the reservation was listed for the following week; I once showed up and there were only two days on my reservation instead of four; I once showed up and there was no reservation.

"You know," I joked. "They never get my reservations right. If I write that fact no one would believe me. How could Bellagio get an RFB player’s reservation wrong time and time again?"

"They’ll get it right," said Nick@Night. "She got all of ours right."

I made my way to the desk. "Hi," I said. "Frank Scoblete." I handed her my license and credit card.

She fiddled with the computer. "I’m sorry, you were supposed to come in last night but you called and cancelled your reservation."

"I never called to cancel anything. Also my reservation is for tonight, Sunday, leaving on Thursday. Please call my host and straighten this out if you can. Thanks."

After some ten minutes on the phone, she smiled and looked up from her computer. "Okay, we have you in tonight, leaving on Tuesday."

"No, no," I said. "I am leaving on Thursday."

She made another phone call. "I am sorry; yes, you are right. You are RFB, leaving on Thursday. I am sorry about that."

"Don’t worry about it. It’s not your fault."

There had been a time in the past, when Bellagio was our own private casino. No students or other players knew The Five Horsemen played there and even though the dealers and pit crews knew us, there had never been a hassle. Indeed, one pit boss came over to me a few years ago to tell me he had read my books and was a big fan! It was heaven on earth. Indeed, part of why we were liked is that we played the game properly and one of us would tip on every roll of the dice.

But it slowly got out that after the Golden Touch classes, Bellagio was the place to be and by this trip easily 50 to 100 players swarmed the place. I didn’t see that as a big deal for the casino because many of these players were not dice controllers, many more were would-be dice controllers, although some of our students could actually beat the house. Still, many of their spouses threw their money away on the slot machines. I always figured it was a win-win situation for the casino.

It was a lose-lose situation for us. Actually, let me change that. It was more of a lose-lose situation for Dominator and Nick@Night, the two Horsemen who were the most anxious to play immediately after class. After more than two decades of playing, I am never in a rush to get to the tables. I also space my play out. I almost never play at night when the tables are crowded and so Sunday after class is simply a time to relax, have a nice dinner, and get some rest for the next three days when I would play.

As we walked to the tram that would take us to the Union Restaurant at Aria, the tables at Bellagio were packed with GTCers and those who show up whenever we are at Bellagio.

Our original reservations at Union had been for 8PM but we changed them to 6PM since we had arrived at Bellagio early. Union had said it would be difficult to change the reservations but Skinny finally got them to do so. I guess on a Sunday night that place must be packed. But Skinny is a master at negotiations and he got our reservations changed.

We arrived at Union and…there was no one there! Okay, one table had two diners but the rest of the restaurant was 100 percent completely empty.

"Please wait while we find you a table," said the hostess.

So we went to the bar, which was also empty, and waited a half hour for the hostess to find us a table. I wondered if they were having an invisible man convention and we just couldn’t see all the people eating, albeit silently, in the place. I was beginning to get an eerie feeling that I had been somehow transported to Tunica, Mississippi where no one ever got anything right.

Finally, several months after Armageddon, we were seated. But the wait staff had not yet arrived and so we waited some more. Maybe that’s why they are called the "wait staff"? If so, they do their job extremely well.

When the waiters showed up, they were not the best but the food was excellent. It was a long meal since the waiters seemed to vanish into thin air for long periods of time and the place did start to get some customers by the time we left. There were at least three more tables brimming with hungry people. As far as I know, they might still be there waiting for their meals.

Back to Bellagio, where at least four tables were packed with GTCers, then up to my bed for some comforting sleep.

Monday morning, Stickman and I got up early and headed down to the craps tables. I enjoy playing in the early hours – 5AM, 6AM – when the tables are usually empty. They were not empty this morning; they were packed.

Stickman and I ambled over to the Pai Gow Poker tables. Now, Pai Gow Poker is a game that can be beaten because played properly you can get a small edge over the house. Skinny is going to do a class in just how this works on October 21^st in Las Vegas. (You can call 1-866-SET-DICE if you wish to sign up for the class. It’s only $99.)

We played a little, then Dominator, Skinny and Nick showed up and we met Marilyn "the Goddess" and Sandtrap for breakfast.

And that began the horror for me.

An hour after breakfast, Stickman and I decided to go to the spa and work out. Then we’d head for the pool where I would swim and Stickman would challenge the sun to do its worst to him.

My stomach was feeling a little weird while I walked on the treadmill. I had earphones on and I was watching the news. Gurgle, gurgle; maybe I was working out too soon after breakfast.

After the workout, we headed for the pool. Bellagio has several pools, all of them lovely, plus Jacuzzi’s. The big pool was just too crowded to do any laps and I was feeling kind of bloated anyway. My stomach was still gurgling.

Stickman was sunning himself. I lay down on the recliner next to him and covered myself up. I am not a big fan of sitting in the sun.

I was just feeling a little "off" you might say.

I took a nap that afternoon but I just didn’t feel too good now. I went down to play some Pai Gow Poker but after two minutes I knew I was going to get sick. I told Stickman I had to go back to my room. In my room, I realized there was no way I would be able to go to dinner so I called Stickman and told him to let the others know I was not going out that night.

I slept a couple of hours then got up. I was feeling really bloated as if someone had pumped air bubbles into my belly. I did not feel nauseous – how could I? I hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast and that was 12 hours ago.

But that night was awful. Every half hour or so, I would run to the bathroom, thinking I was going to have diarrhea but nothing would come out, not even gas; and then I started retching, but nothing would come out from that end because there was nothing in my stomach to come out.

This went on for 12 hours or so. It was a miserable night.

Things calmed down by 6AM on Tuesday.

By 7AM, I was kind of hungry. I ordered room service; a banana and an English muffin.

I went down to play craps but the tables were full. I played a little Pai Gow Poker but I was really exhausted. I told my fellow Horsemen I would be missing dinner again that night and I went to sleep at two in the afternoon and woke up on…

At 5AM.

I had slept 15 straight hours but even though I felt a little weak, I knew I was better. I took a hot shower and just let the water warm me and relax me. I am usually fast in the shower; but not today. I just luxuriated in it. Thank God for indoor plumbing.

I called Stickman and also left a message for Dominator and Skinny that I was feeling okay and that I’d be down to play craps at about 6:30.

When I met Stickman and Skinny downstairs, the craps tables still had too many people at them and our preferred spots were not available. As a dice controller, you have several spots where you can successfully shoot. If those spots are not open, it is best not to play.

We didn’t play.

We went over to the Pai Gow Poker tables and took one which was empty. Stickman, Skinny and I bought in and several minutes later Not2Soon tooled over and we convinced him to play.

"My reputation will be ruined if I play this game," he laughed. But he cashed in too.

Now when we play we all like to bank and when we bank after all the other players have played their hands, we enjoy putting the cards on the table one-at-a-time. This really increases the suspense of the game. But this morning, the floor person would not let us do this – something we have been doing for over four years.

And then came this:

From nowhere it seemed, he appeared and immediately got right into my face. "We’ve all read your books and we know what you are doing. We don’t like it. We don’t want you here!" He made a kind of wave to cover what looked like the whole casino.

This guy was new to me; he was an "upstairs suit" and he came from on high with his loud clarion call broadcasting to everyone near me that it would be best if I left his property and went elsewhere.

"I wouldn’t give you any comp time if you hadn’t taken out a marker," he snarled. "Why don’t you go across the street to Caesars? They’d love your action. You’re rich, you can play anywhere."

The upstairs suit then added, "One of your guys roughed up one of our pit people last night at the craps table. We have it on tape."

One of my guys? My guys? I don’t have any guys. The masses of GTCers who played at Bellagio were responsible for themselves. Really would one of our former students actually "rough up" a pit boss?

I know that weekend and week one student had an 85 roll and there were several 50+ roll hands and many 30+ roll hands. Could the GTCers have actually hit this massive casino hard enough to make the bosses sweat? I couldn’t see that at all; no matter how hot some of our players had gotten. Just 50 feet from us at this very moment in time was a player on a reserved table betting $50,000 a number! I didn’t see any sweat flying off any casino bosses’ heads because of this.

But this boss screaming into my face could be unnerving.

Skinny was red-faced. He had never been through something like this at a casino. Skinny is a man of reason but he was now confronted with loathing directed directly at me. I looked at Stickman; he was staring at this raving executive. Stickman can be scary when he stares. I looked at Not2Soon and he seemed to be calm and relaxed. He’d been through this in his own playing career before. I really think he was only worried that people would think he would actually play Pai Gow Poker.

Still, though this has happened many times to me (including one time at a downtown Las Vegas casino where a steroidal security guard put a gun in my back), I never like it. I don’t do anything illegal and I merely try to help players win or cut the house edge down as much as possible – something which is wrong in the eyes of the casino bosses. Had my books, tapes, television appearances and classes really hurt Bellagio? Had The Five Horseman crippled this casino with our wins? Were all those GTCers flooding the tables really done any monumental harm? I doubt it.

Were some players winning over a long period of time? Yes. These were true advantage players of the first order. Were most of the GTC followers who charged into the casino to play with the dice control elite winning scads of money over time? No. Watching the way these players wagered was a sure indication that they were just your typical losers.

But none of this mattered. When a casino boss gets it into his head that you are no longer welcomed at his casino, then that is, as they say, that.

"Could you show me the tape? I’d love to see who roughed up the pit person," I said.

"I am not going to do anything about that," he said. "I really don’t want you here. I don’t like what you do. I know what you are trying to do."

"Okay," I said.

"I would leave if I were you," he said. "I am being obnoxious to you. Do you really want to try to play here? Look how I am treating you."

"I understand how you feel," I said. "You aren’t being obnoxious; you are just doing what you feel you need to do."

There was a long pause. I think this executive thought I was going to yell back at him or be nasty or sarcastic. There is never a point in doing that. He was the boss. He had a perfect right to tell me he didn’t like my books, my playing, my students or me. Even though telling someone who had done nothing illegal that he wasn’t welcomed in a place, the law had given him that right and, yes, it is the wrongest right in the casino world. But it is the right the casinos have.

He immediately cooled down. He was no longer angry.

"You understand?" he said.

"I understand," I said.

He walked away. We colored up.

"Well, that’s it for Bellagio," I said.

"Yes," said Stickman.

"No," said the eminently reasonable Skinny, "there has to be some way to straighten this out. He didn’t officially ban you did he?"

"Yes," I said. "He did. That is what you call a nice banning. He told us to get out. Had we continued to play, he would have made it official."

"That was a nice banning," agreed Not2Soon.

Dominator and Nick@Night arrived a few moments later.

We told them our tale. Dominator and I had indeed noticed in the past year or so, that the Bellagio pit crews and some dealers were not quite as friendly as they had been in the past. Actually quite a few of these individuals were new to us. Many of Bellagio’s pit personnel and dealers had moved to other casinos.

Dominator had noticed that when he played at Bellagio some of the dealers were starting to make cracks about him and his shooting. Dom is not one to take things lightly and so he would fire back. He went to our hostess a couple of times to complain as well. None of this worked. When you play properly (as we do); when you tip all the time (as we do); if you still get sarcastic remarks and snickers, you aren’t going to change anyone’s mind by complaining.

It took Skinny about 12 hours of trying to figure out how to fix our banning that he realized it was over.

Dominator and Nick@Night went home soon after and Stickman, Skinny, Not2Soon and I planned our day. We went over to Mandalay Bay to see the "Shark Reef" exhibit, a great underwater world of fishes and turtles, and then Not2Soon headed home.

That night we celebrated my birthday, then Stickman headed for the airport, and Skinny and I went to see "Viva Elvis" – a show I really enjoyed that had gotten mixed reviews from some of my friends.

After the show, heading back to Bellagio, Skinny was still trying to assimilate what had happened that day.

"I just can’t believe it," he said. "I just can’t believe it."

The next morning the limo (yes, Bellagio still honored my RFB) took me to the airport. I looked out the back window as the limo was pulling away from the porperyy. Bellagio came into full view and then started to get smaller.

"Goodbye, Bellagio," I said in a whisper. "Goodbye."