got a whole lotta money that's ready to burn...

Las Vegas, here I come!

This is not a drill! Repeat! This is not a drill!

What: lasvegas2k7...trip #10 to the desert
When: Thursday, 28 June 07 - Monday, 02 July 07
Where: Harrah's, on the Strip
Why: Because I miss it, I love it. I can't get enough of it.

Perhaps this time around I'll actually float a resume or three to some folks on The Strip. I'm sure there's a marketing office onsite at Harrah's, right? Or perhaps my good friend Steve Wynn would hire me on the spot, no?

Okay, so Steve Wynn and I aren't really friends, but you never know.

This is my first time staying at Harrah's. I don't dislike the ol' Imperial Palace, but I'm ready to upgrade a bit.

One thing I look forward to the most? Drinks with my friend Heather at one of the lounges at the Wynn. Always a good time.

I'm not sure how much I'll gamble this year, but I plan on hitting some of the nightlife.

As of tomorrow, I'm in training. Woo hoo!

how will the blue-hairs adjust to this?

Are slot machines about to get (another) facelift? From the AP:

High-tech slots could transform gambling

By RACHEL KONRAD, AP Technology Writer

REDWOOD SHORES, Calif. - Engineers at PureDepth Inc. spent years developing tools for helping the military plot 3-D maps of war zones, eventually licensing top-secret technology to the U.S. Air Force and Navy.

But the Silicon Valley startup hit the jackpot in October when it inked a deal with International Game Technology Inc., the world's largest maker of slot machines.

Industry experts say a realistic digital video display is the final hurdle that will completely digitize one-armed bandits. The new displays by PureDepth and others — set to debut later this year — could profoundly change the $85 billion U.S. gambling industry and how it's regulated. Read more.

owning las vegas.

How big is Harrah's in Vegas? By my count, they own and operate about nine casinos on The Strip, including a string of seven along one side of the street, thanks to a property swap with Boyd Gaming that led to the (re)opening of Barbary Coast under a new name. From the Mohave Daily News:

Harrah's takes over renamed Barbary Coast hotel-casino

By ARNOLD M. KNIGHTLY

The world's largest casino company officially got a little larger Thursday.

Harrah's Entertainment reopened the former Barbary Coast at 2 p.m. under the name Bill's Gamblin' Hall & Saloon.

“This is very valuable for us,” said Ed Crispell, general manager of the Imperial Palace and, now, Bill's. “It is on one of the most famous four corners there is.”

In a low-key event, Crispell cut a ribbon before reopening the property at Flamingo Road and Las Vegas Boulevard South under new ownership.

Harrah's took ownership of the property Monday and promptly closed the casino around 2 a.m. although the hotel remained open. Bill's is named for company founder William Harrah, who died in 1978. Read more.

Harrah's Casino Hotels

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.

new year's eve, vegas style.

The Las Vegas Review Journal has some pretty cool New Year's photos.....it makes me misty. *sniff*

Check Out The Photos Here (I'm not sure if they'd like me posting their images over here, so I won't.)

ETA: Upon further review, I'm not so sure I'd want to be on The Strip for New Year's Eve, given the massive crowds. Holy smokes!!

...and I lied. I had to post this NYE image, for God's sake!!


That's just too precious a moment to miss!

operation: sands.

I haven't been here in awhile, so it's high time I fire it back up. For starters, Merry Christmas!

Now that we've got that out of the way...

I've been doing some soul-searching of late. I've got some irons in the fire just now, but it appears some of them may be cooling off. So I'm beginning to think it's high time I put together a definitive game plan for getting to Vegas.

I was talking to a dealer friend of mine who works at The Palms. I told her my tentative plans are to arrive in the desert sometime in 2k8. What'll it take? Well, a job is the lynch pin to any Vegas plan. I will not move until I've got something lined up. My dealer friend is of a mind that I could—with assistance from the right "juicer"—make my way to The Strip as a dice dealer. The fact that I haven't dealt any action since May 2k1 makes me think I'd need about six weeks of intense training to get my hands back.

But any dealing gig is strictly a Plan B; a "get me the hell out of here and the hell over there" Hail Mary pass. My goal is to land as a PR practitioner at a major casino operation, PR firm or University. Those are my three industry areas of choice.

So let's say my plan—we'll call it Operation: Desert Storm Sands—has a D-Day of 1 July 08. That's about 18 months away. That means I've got to get crackin' at figuring out the cost of moving the animals, myself and my essentials to Vegas.

Let's break it down:
* Cost of a moving fan/shipping
* Fuel costs of driving the rig to Vegas
* First month's rent, security deposits, start-up costs

The latter two will be in the $2,000 range, easily. Perhaps I'll look into ditching/selling lots of crap before loading up the truck and heading west.

But again, the only thing that makes the plan go is a job. And that means I'll need to be ready to jump anytime after 1 Jan 08. So, in summation, I've got about 12 months to get my financials to a place where I can pull up the tent stakes and get outta dodge at the drop of a hat.

Yikes.

That's all for now. I'll have to wait and see what Operation: Plainfield yields.

the color of dinero.

The Las Vegas Business Press has an interesting article about the new hot demographic for the gaming industry: Latinos.

Gaming execs to discuss burgeoning Latino market

BY DAVID MCKEE

They have seen the future and it speaks Spanish. That is the contention of many in the braintrust that has been assembled for the inaugural Hispanic Gaming Summit tomorrow, a one-day prequel to the annual Casino Marketing Conference, presented by Ascend Media Gaming Group and Raving Consulting Co. Still, with the casino business doing bigger numbers year after year, why worry about this particular subset of America?

"Long story short, that's where the young people are," stated Charles Anderer, Ascend's director of trade events, who added that the casino industry needs to "wean itself off a dwindling number of older players. They need to develop new market segments. (Latinos are) a young segment but will be maturing over the next decade."

We're in the learning curve. I include myself," said Charles Harrison of Harrison & Montoya, co-sponsors of the event. "We cannot just rely on caricatures of Speedy Gonzales and mariachis."

Harrison has been a casino general manager in Latin America. Read more.

That last quote is the money-quote. I can tell you first hand that people do NOT understand the Lation market....well, white people.

fly-fishin' w/ wayne.

From the Review Journal:

Nothing says Nevada like ...
Iconic Strip entertainers sell state's outdoor offerings in ads

By CHRIS JONES

It's been 29 years since Elvis Presley last left the building, but state leaders are betting $1.25 million that the King still rules when selling Nevada.

Wayne Newton and some feather-clad showgirls have also chipped in on the Nevada Commission on Tourism's latest marketing campaign, which rides the coattails of some familiar Strip favorites when touting the state's outdoor recreation industry.

"The more we do in-house research and test these ads ... the more we realize that there are certain icons in Nevada that will always be recognizable," commission Director Bruce Bommarito said Tuesday.

"We'll try to use those icons to introduce the adventure side of Nevada," he added.

The first new print ad shows a tuxedo-clad Newton fly-fishing in Pyramid Lake. The caption reads, "Without him we didn't think you'd believe it was Nevada." Read more.

don't do it! i'm warning you! i mean it! don't do it!

From the Review Journal:

LV council OKs homeless ordinance

The Las Vegas City Council this morning unanimously passed an ordinance that bans the feeding of homeless people at public parks. The law bans giving or selling food for a "nominal fee" to "a person whom a reasonable ordinary person would believe to be entitled to apply for or receive assistance" under state law. Councilman Steve Wolfson, who raised concerns that this would prohibit someone from giving a sandwich to a homeless person, said he felt comfortable with how the bill would be enforced after talking with City Attorney Brad Jerbic.

"The marshals will get specialized training on enforcement," he said. "If you bought a couple of burgers and wanted to give them out, you technically would be in violation but you wouldn't be cited."

So let me get this straight: you can't do it. It's against the law, but if you break that law, nothing's going to happen to you. Yeah, that's worth the time.

how much for the one on the right?

Well, there you go, then. From the Las Vegas Review Journal:

Talkin' Dirty
Sex industry is topic at convention

By DAVID KIHARA

Wearing a T-shirt with the words "Will Work For Sex" on the front, Robin Head stood outside Palace Station and proudly said that she worked in the sex industry.

Head, who said she was the former owner of an escort service in Houston, was among 150 sex workers, business owners, academics and social workers who gathered in Las Vegas this week for a convention that brought prostitutes, pimps and professors together to talk about the sex industry. Read more.

double-down in the heartland.

Some casino news closer to home. From the Indianapolis Star:

Casino school opens in French Lick

FRENCH LICK, Ind. -- The first round of training for future poker dealers at the new Orange County casino begins next week.

The French Lick Resort & Casino is scheduled to open in November, and officials have already offered jobs to about 350 people. Training for people who will run craps, roulette and poker tables begins Monday and will last for 10 to 12 weeks, while training for blackjack dealers begins in August.

The dealers were hired after a job fair in June, and another job fair was scheduled for August 18-19 to find about 600 more people to work at the facility.

"We couldn't be happier with the turnout we had for our June job fair," said Scott Spurlock, general manager of the French Lick Springs Resort. "With the additional job fair in August, we fully expect to have all positions filled before the resort and casino opening in November."

Hourly wages at the French Lick Springs Resort start at $8 an hour for housekeepers, but officials have said casino dealers may earn up to $50,000.

The French Lick Resort & Casino is a $382 million restoration and casino development project that includes the French Lick Springs Resort and the new French Lick Casino -- both scheduled to open in November -- and the West Baden Springs Hotel, which is slated to open in June 2007.

The resort and casino will include more than 650 guest rooms and suites, an 84,000-square-foot casino, 45 holes of golf and two full-service spas.

i am on the wrong side of the dice table.

Reading the following article from the Las Vegas Business Press might make me re-think this whole gambling-as-a-hobby thing:

May gaming win is another monster

By DAVID MCKEE

Gamblers in Nevada lost over $1.1 billion in May, giving the Silver State its fourth consecutive month of billion-plus of casino revenues. In Nevada, only January 2006 was more lucrative. Despite healthy competition from other domestic and international gambling jurisdictions, Nevada casinos also registered yet another month of revenue growth, up 9 percent from May 2005.

For the fiscal year ending June 30, casinos' gambling win is up more than 12 percent. Read more.

on your own.

I'm sure something of note can be said about Las Vegas...I'm just too tired to look it up.

Talk amongst yourselves for a little while.

from humble beginnings.

Carlos Diaz works for Extra and has a Vegas blog? Wha??? I remember him 12 years ago when he was a local DJ here in Indy, moonlighting as a PA announcer at Indianpolis Ice hockey games. He then went on to ESPN and that's the last I ever recall. And now he's doing the Vegas thing. Huh.

I guess I don't watch much TV these days; well, celebrity gossip TV, that is.

capt. jack will creep you out tonight.

I have to admit, this wax figure stuff kinda creeps me out. From Brett's Vegas View at the Las Vegas Leisure Guide:

Madame Tussauds at The Venetian has introduced a wax figure of movie star Johnny Depp as Capt. Jack Sparrow from Disney's "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest." to coincide with the international release of the new motion picture premiering this month.

chinese market "would fill every single hotel room for years."

The Las Vegas Business Press has a pretty interesting story about the Vegas gaming industry and the one market everybody wants a piece of....China!

Dancing with dragons
Nevada courting Chinese tourists

BY ARNOLD M. KNIGHTLY

One of the keys to a successful business is the ability to lure customers back while seeking out new ones. In Nevada, the business is tourism, and the ultimate prospective customer base is the growing middle- and upper-class of China.

According to a recent report by the World Tourism Organization, China is projected to have 50 million international travelers by the end of the decade, climbing to 100 million international travelers by 2020. Needless to say, Las Vegas desperately wants a cut of that market.

"This market is so huge for us," Lt. Gov. Lorraine Hunt said. "If only a small segment of that population would come to visit Las Vegas it would fill every single hotel room for years."

Sixty percent of visitors to Macau are Chinese, and Las Vegas officials are hoping to entice them to experience the Strip, not watching dragon boat races.

One of the great hurdles for tourism to the United States from China is that the U.S. does not have an "approved destination" status agreement with the Chinese government. That agreement would simplify visa and passport issues and the marketing process.

According to the World Travel Organization, the Chinese made 31 million international trips last year, but 91 percent were to Asian destinations. They tend to travel independently instead of in large groups. One of the places they visit in great numbers is the growing Asian gaming hub of Macau.

"What Macau is going to be doing in our hotel-casinos there is, basically, getting us a new audience," Hunt said. "Everyone wants to come to the real world, the mecca, and Las Vegas is the Mecca of gaming." Read more.

I swear, every major American industry can hardly contain itself over the prospects of gaining the Chinese market.