Bet Could Go Up in a Puff of Smoke

It’s simple, really. Catch Bob Stupak smoking a cigarette between now and Dec. 31 and he’ll pay you $300,000.

That’s what the billboard says, the big one on Sunset Strip. That’s what Stupak says, too: “I figure it’s the only thing that’ll get me to stop--public humiliation.”

Stupak has tried to stop, God knows. The Shick Center, acupuncture (twice), Smokenders, “you name it.” And then there were the bets, $5,000 bets and $10,000, and one for $25,000, all predicated on Stupak’s willpower. “I blew ‘em all, all the smoke bets,” says Stupak. “Over the years, $50,000. I mean, I’m a major-league smoker. No more though. At least I hope not.”

Stupak owns a casino-hotel in Las Vegas, called Vegas World. It’s a profession that lends itself to a certain nervousness, especially when the proprietor plays a little poker himself, “and I play poker a lot,” confesses the boss. “Already I smoked five packs a day, but when I’m at the poker table it went up to eight packs, maybe nine. Plus owning a casino . . . hey, it’s a grueling business, you know what I mean?”

Stupak, 46, started smoking when he was “12 or 13, those long Pall Malls, no filters. I smoke one of those today, I pass out.” When every effort to kick the habit failed, he started betting friends that he would stop, hoping that fear of a light wallet would cure a heavy cough.

“First bet I made, $5,000, it was a six-month deal. I was living up to it. I was really into it. I mean, I went about 2-3 days without touching a cigarette. So now one day there’s hot dice in the pit, the crap table. They start shooting up a hand (making a run on the house). They call me over and I start counting the rolls. Well, a 7 should come up every four rolls or it’s overdue, so I’m counting the numbers and every number before 7 comes up is costing me $7,000-$8,000.

“It seems to be going on forever. So the guy I bet the $5,000, he comes up to me and says, ‘Hey, Bob, you owe me five.’ I say, ‘What’re you talking about?’ He says, ‘Look in your hand.’ I look and I see a burning cigarette. I don’t even remember it. I tell him I lit it accidentally. He says, ‘Sure’ . . . “

The big bet before the billboard gig, the bet for $25,000, was with “a poker player name of Roger Moore. Not the actor; this guy lives in Georgia. He goes home and I know he isn’t coming back to Vegas until May 1, the big poker tournament.

“So he comes in four days early, and I don’t know it. I’m sitting in my casino having a coffee and a smoke, and someone comes up from behind and says, ‘I hope you’re enjoying that cigarette . . . ‘ It killed me, it absolutely killed me.

“So now I’m in a trap. How am I ever going to stop smoking?”

Stupak, losing candidate for Las Vegas mayor last year (“lost by only 1% of the vote”) and currently running on the Democratic ticket for Clark County Commissioner, held a local press conference, ran ads in the paper, threw a monumental party. (“I asked 10,000 people; 5,000 showed up. Buffet, band, the works. June 30, it was. I got up and sang a song and said, ‘At midnight I quit smoking, and I urge you all to join me.’

“See, everybody in Vegas knows me. . . . Now I can’t even go into a store and buy cigarettes. Can’t even send anybody to buy ‘em for me because they’d be in for the three hundred thou.

“It’s died down a little now, but people still follow me into the bathroom--one on each side, one looking over the top, the other sneaking through the bottom.”

The Sunset Strip billboard was for the benefit and enlightenment of “my many friends and clients in Los Angeles. Paid about $8,500 for it, I think. The $300,000? I don’t know. It just seemed like the right number. I could’ve made it a million, but a million, somehow, doesn’t seem real.”

So has Stupak smoked a cigarette since June 30? “Are you kidding? For $300,000?”

How’s it going, then? “It went good for about a week, then bad again, then good. It depends on the agitation. Casinos can be an agitating business.”

So if Stupak can make it to Jan. 1, will he stop for good?

“I can’t see stopping for six months and then going back to it,” he says. “That’d be a crying shame. But I don’t know, I’ve never stopped for six months before.

“Anyway, who knows? Maybe a year from now, two years, they might come out and say, ‘Smoking cures certain kinds of diseases.’ I mean, who knows?”