Joseph Helgerson. Crows & Cards. Boston: Houghlin Mifflin, 2009. 352 pages, with notes for further reading and a glossary. I don’t usually read or review books for the 8-12 crowd, but I don’t see many books in that market about ante-bellum riverboat gamblers. That being said, I really enjoyed Crows & Cards. In Zeb Crabtree,
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book reviewsIt’s all relative–these guys are still worth billions more than just about anyone who reads this. But their worth significantly less now than they were before, so they lost a great deal of wealth. From KLAS: Forbes Magazine is out with its annual ranking of the world’s billionaires, and the new list confirms the recession
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news about gamblingThe fifth episode of the UNLV Gaming Research podcast series is up, and it’s a great one: Jacob Avery, our February 2009 Research Fellow, talks about his sociological research into poker, which started in an Atlantic City card room and has taken him to UNLV Special Collections’ Reading Room. Avery, a graduate student in sociology
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gambling & culture, what's newI guess this is what’s going to become of the Cosmopolitan. from the LV Sun: Hilton Hotels Corp. of Beverly Hills, Calif., said Tuesday its creating an eclectic brand called Denizen Hotels and is working to bring that brand to Las Vegas and other major destinations. "Denizen Hotels, a lifestyle brand that will attract business
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haphazard world, life in vegasThe revenue numbers for January are out, and they are not good, if you are in the casino business or are supported by it. From Bloomberg: Casino gambling revenue dropped 15 percent on the Las Vegas Strip in January and tumbled 19 percent in Atlantic City last month as the U.S. recession curbed spending on
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news about gamblingThis morning I was lucky enough to get a few minutes to interview Dr. Bill Eadington, director of the University of Nevada Reno’s Institute for the Study of Gambling and Commercial Gaming. The Institute has two programs that I think will be of particular interest to a wide audience. The first is the Graduate Certificate
Utah is one of two states that has no legal gambling, but that might be changing–online at least. From the Salt Lake Tribune: Prominent poker players have teamed with big Las Vegas casinos to push for a law legalizing — and heavily regulating — online gambling. Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff likes the idea, as
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news about gamblingAbout 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