After a long break, I’m back in town. Suni and I went on our honeymoon to Italy, which was quite an experience–12 days of travel and fun, far away from the daily hubub of the Center for Gaming Research.
Of course, I couldn’t keep my mind totally off work stuff–not when the luggage carousel at the Venice airport was decorated as a ROULETTE WHEEL! As you might suspect, I had to sit and watch it go around once before saying, “Hey, it’s single zero roulette–that’s a house edge of only 2.7% if you bet on that one.” Luckily, though, I didn’t see too much other gambling stuff, even though this little place in Rome where I bought a cannoli (which, I learned is a misnomer: one of them is actually a cannolo, and the plural is cannoli) had a machine that said “blackjack” but looked like a video poker machine. I wasn’t curious enough to see if it was a full-pay jacks or better or not.
My Venice airport observation brought to mind the question: why haven’t they done this at McCarran? Hey, if they’ve already got slots at the airport, why not have baggage roulette? They could slap down a layout and you could bet on which slot your bag lands on when it comes out. You could also put a dollar into a special progressive jackpot that hits if your bag never makes it out. At least you’ll get something for your lost luggage that way.
We had a great time together there (just like we have a great time together here), but it’s fun to get back to work, too. I’ve got some very exciting things that I’m working on that might really benefit the gaming research field, so stay tuned.