Elmer Smith: Open gambling to the small guy? No chance.

THE GAMING hearings in Harrisburg this week reminded me of my favorite W.C. Fields line.

It's in a scene from "My Little Chickadee" in which some soon-to-be sucker walks up on Fields and three men playing poker on a train:

"Well, well," he asks innocently, "is this a game of chance?"

"Not the way we play it," Fields answers.

Not the way the state of Pennsylvania plays it either.

The way it's played here, there is no chance for anyone but the state's favored casino operators to draw cards in this game. You'd have a better chance of opening your own strip mine or nuclear-power plant.

Not that your average citizens are vying to compete with the Foxwoods and SugarHouses, et al. But corner bars and social clubs, for years, have been doing a brisk trade in various games of chance.

And, for years, police and state enforcement officials have been busy looking the other way. They have been somewhat less tolerant of video poker at corner bars. But tavern owners seemed to operate those with impunity all over the state.

That was before Harrisburg had a stake in helping to funnel every loose quarter in the state into an authorized slot, and before the state police got a $5 million infusion earmarked for gaming enforcement.

Now, that guy at the end of the bar with a mug in one hand and a roll of quarters in the other has to keep one eye on the door for fear a state trooper will walk in and make him an even bigger loser.

I'm not about to lament the loss of this shadow industry. It does more to harm patrons than it does to benefit tavern owners.

But it's an example of how incestuous the relationship between gaming operators and regulators inevitably becomes. The hearings are a case in point.

A bill to force casino operators to issue statements to regular gamblers detailing how much they have lost is moving through the legislative process in Harrisburg like a sloth with a sprained ankle.

But passage of HB 2121, which would broaden the buffet of casino offerings to include table games, is as inevitable as sunrise. It may not happen this session. But, by the time the reels start spinning on the Delaware, expect table games to be in the mix.

Back when they were selling us this Aladdin's lamp, we were told that table games would come into play only if casino operators needed them to remain profitable. Yet, even as they are raking it in hand over fist, state Rep. Bill DeWeese is proposing a pre-emptive expansion to table games.

Meanwhile, state Rep. Thomas Caltigirone is scrambling to salvage a few chips for the various Moose, Elks, Lions and others who finance their charitable causes with punchboards, bingo and Monte Carlo nights.

Caltigirone was an original sponsor of the law that protects what the state calls "small games of chance." He wants to expand the 20-year-old law to allow video poker in these clubs.

"We turn millionaires into billionaires," Caltigirone told me yesterday. "Why can't we share the wealth with these clubs and volunteer firehouses who use their money for charitable purposes?

"We would charge a licensing fee of $1,000 for each machine, up to five per club. They'd be hard-wired so we'd be able to monitor each bet."

Of course charity begins at home. So the state would get 40 percent and return 25 percent of that to the local municipalities.

Bill Kearney, a reformed gambler and ardent anti-gaming activist, had no trouble handicapping the chances for Caltigirone's bill.

"You kidding me?" he said. "You think the gaming board and casino operators are going to let anyone in on their play?"

Therein lies the difference between gambling and gaming. Gambling is what we do in casinos. Gaming is what casinos do to us.

Casino operators have a friend in Pennsylvania. For them, gaming is no gamble. *

Send e-mail to smithel@phillynews.com or call 215-854-2512. For recent columns: http://go.philly.com/smith