leaving las vegas.

Looks like The Montecito will be under new management next season. From CNN:

'Las Vegas' going on without Caan, Nikki Cox

LOS ANGELES, California (Hollywood Reporter) -- NBC's casino drama "Las Vegas" is set to return for a fifth season in the fall without two of its stars, James Caan and Nikki Cox.

Caan wants to return to movies, while Cox's departure is said to stem from budget cuts. The show boasts a large ensemble cast and has moved from Mondays to Fridays, where viewership levels are lower. Read more.

I like the show well enough. It's kinda campy and goofy, sort of going for that Love Boat vibe. But you'd be surprised at how rarely I watch the show. I remember, during its first season, I was appalled at some of the dialogue. "He's in for 30-large," said a very serious pit boss.

30-large????

I've yet to hear an actual pit boss make that sort of statement without it trying to be corny. Nevertheless, it's TV.

Las Vegas the TV show

the imperial palace...surviving like a cock-a-roach.

I've often compared the Imperial Palace—my home base of operations in Vegas—to a cockroach: despite all it goes through, it survives everything.

The ol' IP has been flirting with being shut down for years. And, for years, it defies the talk and keeps on truckin'. To be fair, the talk of closing the place down makes sense. It, along with a handful of other casinos right next door, have been gobbled up by Harrah's in recent years. And, let's be honest, they are anachronistic and falling apart, compared to the lavish palaces that have been going up on The Strip over the past 15-20 years.

The word on the street last year is the IP would be closing some time in 2k7. Well, according to the Las Vegas Business Press, the rumors of the Imperial Palace's demise may be greatly exaggerated:

Harrah's sends mixed signals: Experts predict stagnation in U.S., growth overseas

BY DAVID MCKEE

Retrenchment continued at Harrah's Entertainment, as the company announced the elimination of 230 jobs at corporate headquarters. The downsizing, which was revealed Jan. 26, was achieved through a combination of terminations, transfers and leaving open positions unfilled....

"Acquisitions would be close to nil," predicted Jeff Hwang, who follows the gaming sector for The Motley Fool. "Development would mostly be put off indefinitely, or even permanently in some areas."

Eadington looks to Harrah's oft-postponed announcement of a major, CityCenter-scale development that would unite its Strip holdings. "Very obviously, that's going to get slowed down, if not stopped," he said. "Harrah's Las Vegas, Imperial Palace, Flamingo, Barbary Coast, Bally's ... that's a lot of contiguous property that is pretty tired and obsolete. Those are pretty good candidates for tear-downs." For the moment, Eadington says, it's a wait-and-see situation on the Strip.

"It's kind of been broad-based generalities," Steinberg concurred. Read more.

In case you missed it earlier, Harrah's was bought out by Apollo Management, L.P. and Texas Pacific Group for a nearly $28 billion (yes, BILLION) back in December.

Looks like the new owners are focusing less on Vegas and American gaming expansion and more on the world.

Fine by me. I still get my free room at the ol' IP!

post mortem anger in vegas.

Here's another account about the All-Star Weekend in Vegas, courtesy of the LA Times Vegas Blog:

Vegas Anger At All-Star Crowd

...Frontline workers on the Strip are not minimum wage workers but highly compensated professionals offering a mix of obsequiousness and hard work that is meant to give every tourist the VIP experience. So, Vegas workers will put up with a lot from tourists without complaining. Casino workers rarely confront troublesome customers rather they try to soothe things over. The sad truth is that the more obnoxious tourists can often bully their way into comps and other treats meant to keep everyone happy.

But the over-the-top "thug" behavior of the All-Star NBA crowd has left in its wake a boiling fury among cocktail waitresses, bartenders, security and other jaded pros of the Strip. Among the nightclubs where incidents seem to have taken place on the Strip are hot spots at Wynn, Mandalay Bay and freestanding Empire Ballroom. Off Strip, the topless bars proved a center for problems, too. Read more.

I've been to Vegas several times. Yeah, it's a fairly permissive city; the last bastion of all your great social addictions. But for all its catering to our favorite vices and Seven Deadly Sins, it's a fairly peaceful town. There's the occasional arrest on the Strip, but you never hear of shootings, brawls or other acts of violence.

I spoke to a friend of mine who's a dealer at The Palms who told me it was awful that weekend because of either thug behavior or rumored thug behavior.

Memo to David Stern: Your beloved league is beginning to lose fans and respect in droves. Here's the sad truth, Mr. Stern. You have only yourself to blame for this mess. By over-selling your league to the hip hop youth, you've created a monster. Lest we forget thug culture is celebrated by the hip hop community. And as long as it was making you money, you turned a blind eye to the reality that your fan base was getting turned off. See, Mr. Stern, thug culture is a lot like redneck culture. The difference is southerners do their best to distance themselves from redneck culture. They make fun of it. They laugh at it. They keep a safe distance from it. They don't celebrate it. In other words, you need to distance the league from thug culture or continue to watch the NBA die in a hail of bullets.

cheating the house.

Cheaters never prosper? Think again. From the Las Vegas Review Journal:

Blink and you'll miss him: Casino cheat shows how subtle moves squeezed out cash

By ARNOLD M. KNIGHTLY

Richard Marcus claims to have made more than a healthy living cheating casinos all over the world.

It is a claim that has to be taken on faith because he was never caught.

"I looked at what I did as an art," said Marcus, who said his teams took casinos around the world for $20 million. "Let's face it, who's going to feel sorry for a casino?" Read more.

This cat does a little moral equivocating on his own life of crime, but I still can't help but be captivated by the stories. As a former dealer, we were always told to be on the look-out for scams. As a brand new dice dealer, I was part of a crew that got taken for about $80,000. It is not a day of which I am proud; except for one fact: I was the one who told my box man they were sliding the dice. Was I ignored? Sort of. See, I was dealing with a seasoned crew; a couple of which were (in my view) a-holes who didn't respect me. Therefore, nobody was going to listen to me. In fact, they wouldn't even let me tap in on stick, thinking I wasn't able to handle it. Ironically, that "seasoned" crew got taken left and right while I was the one leaning into my box man saying, "dude, they're sliding the dice....dude, they're sliding the dice!"

That was not a fun week for me at all. There were reports to fill out. I had meetings with the games manager. People got suspended. I was fearful of getting fired, honestly. I chose to go directly to the people in charge and ask them what was going to happen to me, if anything. In the end, nobody got fired. I think one person got suspended. And the dice pit was, for a short period, on edge for the scam.

I'm certain one of our regular dice players—a very nice guy, I should add—got permanent eviction for jumping in and collaborating with the scammers. It didn't immediately register to me that he was in on it because he didn't get involved until midway through the scam. He was a mid-level player. Next thing I know, he's throwing out a $500 chip on a hard eight. WTF? At the moment I didn't put two and two together, but he was booking bets with the scammers' money. I knew it was out of character behavior for him (one thing dice dealers are good at is anticipating players' action). So much so that when he first booked the bet I stopped and looked right at him and say, "huh?" Should I have caught on? I suppose.

What was the scam? It was so simple it was genius. It was a crew of about eight men. Some were wearing clothes purchased in our gift shop, emblazened with our casino logo on them. They were polite, calm, soft-spoken and friendly. They made certain to say please and thank you as well as call each dealer by name. And oh yeah, they were booking bets for the dealers; anywhere from $25-$100. In other words: they were softening the crew.

Second, they all spread out around the table and booked heavy action on the hard-ways. $100, $500 and so on. They booked their bets all out of sequence, so the stick man's head was always on a swivel, Hell, all our heads were on a swivel!

Third, everybody at the table passed the dice to the same shooter. Over and over again. It's not uncommon for a player or two to defer dice shooting duties. But an entire table? Rare!

Fourth, in addition to booking bets while the dice were in the middle, they'd book more bets when the dice was out. What does that do? Not too much, but it's an attempt at distraction. But here's what else they did while the dice were sent to the shooter: a few different players—one near the base dealer and another next to stick—would throw a fan of cash on the layout asking for action out of it. DISTRACTION! Not only does that force the base dealers and box man to quickly react, the player obstructs the view of the stickman just as the dice are thrown.

Fifth—and here's what makes the whole scam a success—the shooter is sliding the dice. Not both of them, but one of them. The rule on a dice game is the shooter must get air under the dice when he/she throws them. If not, the roll can be disqualified (a "no roll" is called immediately). So how is it three dealers a box man and a floor missed it? Everybody was distracted. I never saw photos from the game, but I would bet everybody's heads were in different directions when the dice were being handled and thrown/slid.

Like I said, they took us for about $80,000 and the dealers dropped a ton of tokes on that game. The casino considered withholding our tokes, but eventually dropped that idea.

It was a simple plan and it was executed nearly flawlessly. And it opened up a discussion in the dice pit that needed to be opened: who can call a 'no roll'? I was taught anybody on the game can call a 'no roll'. Some box and floor people told me I was wrong. Truth is, I was right. I was right all along. But nobody listened to me. I really hated some of those people on that shift because they were smug, condescending and swept up in their own high school drama that they failed to recognize I could deal circles around half of them.

I take solace in knowing that.

Okay, story-time is over. Get to bed! :-)

pac man fever.

I knew things got out of hand at one strip club in Vegas during the NBA All-Star Weekend. I had no clue the entire town was feeling overrun by violence. Bill Simmons of ESPN.com wrote a fairly lengthy and detailed account of All-Star weekend:

Hip Hop Woodstock

Following up on the Minxx shootings, it looks like that case is still ongoing and fingers are getting pointed at an associate of Pac Man Jones. From the Las Vegas Review Journal:

Death threats alleged at club: Minxx owner says calls followed shooting

By DAVID KIHARA

The strip club at the center of a shooting involving NFL player Adam "Pacman" Jones received multiple death threats last week warning employees to back off the Tennessee Titans cornerback, the club's co-owner said.

Robert Susnar, co-owner of Minxx, said the club's general manager received four threatening phone calls on Wednesday warning him to "leave Pacman alone" or face the consequences.

"They said, 'If you don't leave Pacman alone, we're going to kill you, your family and everyone in the club,' " Susnar said Saturday.

The calls were placed by an unidentified man two days after the shooting at Minxx that wounded three people, leaving one security guard paralyzed. The general manager told police about the threatening calls and has moved from his apartment because he didn't feel safe, Susnar said. Read more

Pac Man, it's time to take a page from Ray Lewis' book and not protect a trigger man.