Elmer Smith: Here's a personal way to vie with Del. sportsbetting

I ALWAYS THOUGHT that Philadelphia had the world's most passionate sports fans. Then I went to Las Vegas.

There they were, surrounded by torn tickets and folded tout sheets, sipping complimentary liquor and screaming at the top of their lungs at horses running on tracks 250 miles away.

These guys could follow USC vs. Notre Dame with one eye and the stretch run at Santa Anita with the other.

Because nothing piques your interest in sports like having the mortgage money riding on some horse's hindquarters. Proposition bettors were my favorites. They'd bet on anything from which round the fight would end to who would sing the National Anthem.

Those 24-hour sports books probably did more to increase the population of Las Vegas than low taxes and year-round sunshine. Hundreds of people who thought they were just passing through settled in Las Vegas after they became homeless by a nose.

But I don't expect a population boom in Delaware, even though our neighbor to the south will become the "First State" east of the Rockies to open its own sports books. If it goes the way of all gaming, they eventually will be joined by neighboring states, which will be forced to open sports books in self-defense.

Gaming, as the industry is so aptly called, respects no borders. It is a self-perpetuating enterprise, with growth guaranteed by the mutual greed of the gamers and the gamed.

Delaware didn't just dip a toe into the betting pool. It cannonballed into the deep end from the high diving board.

Starting Sept. 1, you can go to a sports book in Delaware and place a bet on anything from the World Series to a roach race across your kitchen floor.

They're bringing in professional handicappers to set the lines. The Delaware lottery commission will run the sports books at Delaware's three racinos.

Pennsylvania is rushing to keep pace with proposals for video poker machines in bars and clubs and table games in our own slot palaces. It could be a veritable gaming smorgasbord for you multitaskers.

But this is no game for slackers. Not even our creative legislators in Harrisburg can deal us in soon enough to keep our, ahh, clientele from crossing state lines.

Which is why I am renewing my advocacy for what I am calling personal gaming devices.

Every civic-minded citizen would be fitted for one. They could be attached to your wrist or hang from your ear like a Bluetooth or be affixed to almost any body part that feels lucky today.

They could even be surgically implanted into our nervous systems so we could place a bet literally with a blink of our eye. No more big boxes to build along our pristine riverbanks, no more busloads of bored retirees polluting the air with their exhaust fumes (the buses not the retirees).

They would pay off instantly in scrip to be cashed in at street- corner redemption centers providing jobs even in the economically depressed neighborhoods.

It's not just the wave of the future. It's here today. A company in Louisiana is planning to market a wireless gaming device called WifiCasinos that can be built into your BlackBerry or other hip-borne gadgets.

Juniper Research, a British company, judging by the accents on their Web site, has estimated that the take from mobile gaming devices already in use overseas would grow to $19 billion this year.

Nevada has already run a demonstration project using handheld devices so that patrons can play video poker and keno without leaving their poolside lounge chairs. Cantor G&W LP, the company that ran Nevada's demonstration, would pitch a tent in the capital plaza if we showed even the slightest interest.

Or we can sit back and see our disposable income being swept across state lines in the next wave of innovation.

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