Casinos can watch their earnings dramatically increase or decrease depending on the performance of their high-roller visitors, all of whom invariably play baccarat, presumably because James Bond did. A year ago, for instance, Trump Hotels and Casino saw its quarterly income literally double when a single player lost $12 million at the baccarat table. In early 1990, on the other hand, the Japanese gambler Akio Kashiwagi won $19 million at the Diamond Beach Casino in Darwin, Australia, and bankrupted it. Still, casinos court high rollers desperately, because they know that if they keep them at the table, eventually they will give back all the money they've won, and then some. Kashiwagi, for instance, went on to lose all his Diamond Beach winnings in American casinos. (He also ended up hacked to death with a samurai sword, but far be it from me to suggest that the two things were at all connected.) The same principle applies, in fact, to both the glitzy baccarat player and the lowly slots player: No matter what, keep them playing.