About three years of Poker Player Newspaper are now online. There isn’t much indexing, but there are contents for some of the issues. It’s a great resource for poker history. Poker Player Newspaper :: Back Issues.
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gambling & cultureSheldon Adelson’s drive to find America’s most boring city notwithstanding, most people agree that Las Vegas’ tourist strategy might need a little tweak. Should the town emphasize value, or carefree fun? It’s a serious question. Here’s one approach that I don’t think we’ll be dusting off anytime soon: Las Vegas, home of weapons of mass
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life in vegas, news about gamblingI got some ideas about the possible future of the Strip’s hotel inventory by reading this Wired article on Netbooks, which are ultra-cheap, low-performance laptops that are good to connect to the Internet and not do much else: Netbooks have ended the performance wars. It used to be that when you went to an electronics
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news about gamblingI apologize for missing this when it first came out, but better late than never. From the AC Press: An intruder into the Ballys Atlantic City kitchen was nabbed Thursday night with 91 pounds of frozen lobster stuffed under his clothes and in a backpack, according to Atlantic City police. The would-be Danny Ocean planned
Doing some research for my epochal article on the Strip’s recovery from the travails of the early 1980s, I found this quote in a Boston Globe Magazine article written by Connie Paige: This year’s visit…was different. Life seemed to have switched into neutral. Snatches of conversation with some of the army of casino workers…soon made
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news about gamblingWith almost 14 million combinations to try, this would take, on average, seven million attempts – about 67,000 years if you play twice a week. Success would be guaranteed after 135,000 years. If you choose your numbers at random, however, success is never guaranteed, and tame mathematicians tell me that the average time to strike
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news about gamblingI’ve got an article in the Las Vegas Business Press today that elaborates my earlier thoughts on the Las Vegas business travel flap: At the height of an unprecedented national crisis, a group of American leaders traveled to one of the countrys most expensive tourist destinations, where they set about the business of righting the
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news about gamblingThe third UNLV Gaming podcast, a talk by author Bill Zender (Casino-ology) is up, both on the UNLV Gaming podcast page and in iTunes. Or you can download the mp3 file right here. For more information, see:UNLV Center for Gaming Research: Podcasts.
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what's newHere is a cool way for you to waste some more time at work: A Las Vegas version of the classic "Concentration" game with images of Las Vegas Casino Carpets. Uncover all of the blocks by matching the pictures of the Casino Carpets. Coolvegasmap – Las Vegas Picture Game – Casino Carpet Pictures. Have fun!
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what's newThe UNLV Gaming podcast continues to get high-level media attention, including an article in the latest Rebel Yell: UNLV’s Center for Gaming Research is bringing its unique Gaming Research Colloquium Series into the Web and the rest of the world by featuring each lecture as a downloadable podcast. “It’s a chance for people who can’t
RY on the UNLV Gaming podcast series Read More »
what's newDennis Conrad. Conrad on Casino Marketing. Reno: Raving Consulting Company Press, 2008. 240 pages. Casino marketing is a tricky business. It’s basically sales without a tangible product. There’s not even a warm and fuzzy afterglow most of the time, because the games that casino marketers ask their customers to play are negative expectation. Most people
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book reviewsIt’s not just me–there’s actually a selection committee involved. And there are definitely strings attached. But if you are a professor or graduate student who wants to do some research in the collections at UNLV, you might be interested in this: The Center for Gaming Research at the University of Nevada Las Vegas http://gaming.unlv.edu invites
I’m giving money away again Read More »
what's newI’ve traveled through Baltimore-Washington International Airport a few times, and there’s not a lot to do there. This proposal to allow a massive slot casino at the airport might change that. From the Baltimore Sun: A Baltimore County lawmaker is proposing slot-machine gambling at Maryland’s major airport, but Gov. Martin OMalley called the casino a
There’s a right reason for legalizing expanded gambling and a wrong reason. The wrong reason is, “the state needs more money.” Guess what’s afoot in Illinois? From the Chicago Tribune: Hoping to squeeze more money out of the state lottery, Illinois Senate President John Cullerton wants to sell tickets online and hire a private company
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news about gamblingSome of you might remember how, in Back to the Future II, Biff owned a casino that was an obviously-redressed Union Plaza. I’m sure there are people out there who can’t look at the Plaza today without thinking about Biff and his sports almanac. Well, I was perusing the photo archives when I found this,
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life in vegas, news about gamblingJohn McPhee. The Pine Barrens. New York: The Noonday Press, 1968. 157 pages. This is a non-fiction classic that, forty years on, still is a brisk and entertaining read. McPhee sketches the geography, history, and people of the Pine Barrens, a surprisingly undeveloped section of the country’s most densely-populated state. McPhee starts with “The Woods
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book reviewsJonathon Keats. The Book of the Unknown: Tales of the Thirty-Six. New York: Random House, 2009. 221 pages. Mysticism is a dangerous beast for fiction writers. At its best, writing about mystical ideas can be inspiring, magical. At its worst, it is obscure and inaccessible to non-initiates. So a book inspired by ideas from medieval
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book reviewsBeverly Gage. The Day Wall Street Exploded: A Story of Wall Street in Its First Age of Terror. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. 416 pages. There are many parallels between the terrorist attacks of September 16, 1920, and September 11, 2001. Both were aimed at New York’s financial center, came as the culmination of
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book reviewsThis is cool–a Tetris-like game that uses poker cards instead of blocks. It’s for the Xbox 360, and I’m posting about it here because the backgrounds were inspired by the carpet photos on this site: Drop cards to create the best poker hand you can in each row. Earn more points for better poker hands.
Promising a new course that nevertheless begins and ends where the old one did, Elite Racing has just announced the 2009 Rock n Roll Las Vegas Marathon: The Rock ‘n’ Roll Marathon Series Hits the Streets of Vegas The rockin’ mix of running and music will be all aces along the Las Vegas strip. Register
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life in vegas