I’ve been wanting to write more about Macau, which is such a huge gambling story, for a while, and when given a feature slot for Vegas Seven, jumped on the chance to talk about Macau’s impact on Las Vegas. The result is this week’s cover story: Back in the early days—2006 or so—American executives signing […]
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Vegas SevenLast Sunday, on a short deadline for my Green Felt Journal, I suddenly got inspired. I recalled that Caribbean Stud Poker no longer had a separate line item in the monthly Gaming Revenue Report (these things apparently stick in my head), and figured, that’s got to be worth a column. Some digging for numbers and
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Vegas SevenIn addition to the two features (Light and space) in this week’s Vegas Seven, I have a Green Felt Journal, which talks about the probably impact of MGM’s proposed Park development: How about getting back to urban basics and creating a worthwhile street-level experience? That’s what MGM did on April 18 with the formal announcement
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Vegas SevenI already shared one feature I had in this week’s Vegas Seven: my piece on space tourism and Vegas with a sidebar on Zero-G, which currently flies out of McCarran. I also wrote a feature on the evolution of nightclubs, as seen in the soon-to-open Light at Mandalay Bay: With all that success, it’s no
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Vegas SevenA few weeks back I got an email about an event connected to the launch of Virgin America’s thrice-daily LAX-LAS flights. I usually don’t go to those kinds of events–there’s not too much to “cover” outside of photo ops. But I got thinking…wouldn’t it be fun to ask Virgin founder Sir Richard Branson how Vegas
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Vegas SevenBased on a Twitter conversation with @AgentMarco, I decided to look into what was happening with betting on video games. The result was this week’s Green Felt Journal: Could betting on video games be the last chance for gambling? In 2009, Woody Levin debuted BringIt.com, a website that let gamers open accounts and bet against
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Vegas SevenIn this week’s Green Felt Journal, I take a look at how a British invasion has changed Las Vegas nightlife: The two biggest demographics in Las Vegas these days seem to be nightclubbers and international visitors. As a bit of anecdotal evidence of the trend, the casinos in development that have stoked the imagination plan
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Vegas SevenI’ve got a little resort fee reverie in Vegas Seven this week: Resort fees—those mandatory per-night add-ons of between $3 and $25 that include charges for services guests may or may not use during their stay—migrated to Las Vegas in the early 2000s, but have recently gotten a second wind. Caesars Entertainment had for years
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Vegas SevenIn this week’s Green Felt Journal, I take a look at how the proposed Resorts World Las Vegas differs from the project it replaced: When Resorts World Las Vegas rises from the abandoned husk of Echelon on the north Strip, it will be very different from what Echelon would have been. And the differences tell
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Vegas SevenIn this week’s Green Felt Journal, I take a look at how the Strip’s original boutique hotel is keeping up with the competition: But the original boutique hotel-within-a-hotel on the Strip, the Four Seasons, is generating some buzz of its own with a two-phase renovation that’s just started its second half. Sharing the Mandalay Bay
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Vegas SevenIn this week’s Vegas Seven, I consider the bigger impact of the attention focused on problem gambling due to the case of Maureen O’Connor: The recent revelation that former San Diego Mayor Maureen O’Connor had reportedly embezzled more than $2 million from a charitable foundation to feed her gambling addiction has focused attention on pathological
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Vegas SevenThis is one of the most emotionally-difficult pieces I’ve had to write for Vegas Seven–a look at the career and legacy of my friend and mentor Bill Eadington, who passed away last week: Within five years of his 1969 arrival at the University of Nevada, Reno as an assistant professor, Eadington had made the case
A Game-Changing Scholar in Vegas Seven Read More »
Vegas SevenTomorrow night (2/12), at 7 PM, I’m speaking to the Southern Nevada Casino Collectibles Club. I’ll be talking about gambling history and maybe sharing some things from Roll the Bones: The History of Gambling. I’ve known many of the collectors through the years, and I’m always energized by their passion for gambling history. But the best
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Roll the Bones, what's newThis week in Vegas Seven, I also consider the Mob Museum’s first year: But the Mob Museum—together with the 2012 openings of The Smith Center and the Neon Museum—signaled a new era for Las Vegas’ cultural institutions, and a commitment to Downtown. These institutions have deeper local roots, and it seems more likely that they’ll
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Vegas SevenLast month, I traveled to London to give a series of lectures to students at Cass Business School. While there, I had some thoughts about the differences between gambling in the US and the UK, so I wrote a Green Felt Journal about it for Vegas Seven: The result is a casino industry that is
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authorIf you’ve been waiting to buy Roll the Bones: The History of Gambling (Casino Edition) in paperback from Amazon or Barnes and Noble, wait no longer: it’s now available from both booksellers, as well as Lulu.com, where you get a 20% discount: Amazon: Roll the Bones: The History of Gambling (Casino Edition) $26 (free shipping) Barnes and
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Roll the Bones, writingThis week in Vegas Seven, my “Seven Questions” interview with Tom Breitling is running: Tom Breitling’s career started humbly enough: In the early 1990s, he was a sportscaster and weatherman for a TV station … in Barstow. By decade’s end, Breitling had surfed the dot-com boom to a multimillion-dollar payout, which came in 2000 when
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Vegas Seven, writingThis week, I’ve got four pieces in Vegas Seven magazine. The first is the Green Felt Journal, where I take a look at whether nightclubs are reaching a saturation point: If there’s a proven moneymaker on the Las Vegas Strip today, it’s a top-flight nightclub. With tremendous margins on bottle service and measureless lines of
Does Las Vegas Have a Nightclub Bubble? in Vegas Seven Read More »
Vegas Seven, writingThese days, some people prefer their books in print; some prefer them electronically. That’s why I’ve gone to great lengths to make the new edition of Roll the Bones available across as many platforms as possible. Well, if you define “making a few formatting tweaks to submit it to four different eplatforms” as great lengths,
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Roll the Bones, writingFor all of those who’ve been waiting to get Roll the Bones: Casino Edition on their iDevice in all its iBook glory, today should be a happy day: it’s now available! With this, the book is now available on all of the digital platforms that I’m aware of. Here’s the complete list of where to
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Roll the Bones, writing