I don't even play the lottery, but as a James Bond fan, I simply had to follow his lead and test my luck in the famed Casino de Monte-Carlo, giving myself a strict limit of $20 (about 16 euros).
The first and most famous casino was built here into a hillside in the 1870s by the deliberately disarmingly named Societe des Bains de Mer. (Bathing in the sea is healthy, after all.)
The society also added the magnificent Opera House (www.opera.mc) adjacent to the casino, an effort to mitigate the stain of gambling. Even today, Monaco locals are not allowed to gamble in their own country.
But even a disapproving Church Lady would be awed by the casino's majestic architecture (hey, nothing like a little splendor to ease the pain of losing).
Originally designed by Charles Garnier, who built the Paris Opera House, the casino is a series of rooms with different styles.
The first is the baroque, heavily ornamented ``European'' room built in 1878, which houses the French and English roulette wheels. The next room, created in 1889, houses black jack and other games. Down a corridor is the cream-colored 1904 room called the Salle Blanche, which now has American-style slot and video machines.
High rollers - Saudi princes, marquee stars and Onassis clones - are ushered into another quietly elegant, Napoleon-style room, added in 1910, where the minimum bet may run 10,000 euros (about $12,213).
After losing a cool million, the sultans can dine in a small restaurant designed to resemble a car on the Orient Express.
Mini-rollers like me have to pay a fee and show a passport to enter the commoner rooms.
Alas, the night I was there, James Bond was MIA, the players were only a bit more glamorously dressed than their Foxwoods counterparts, and the pit bosses had the hard stares of any in Vegas.
Intimidated by the roulette wheel, I made my way into the Salle Blanche (also known as the ``White House'') and the familiar territory of video poker. About an hour later, I dragged myself away with 33 euros (about $40) in my triumphant hand. No Saudi prince could have felt better.
