Penalty box looming for Tocchet?

Yesterday, a piece I wrote on a “modest proposal” for legalizing sports betting ran in the LV Business Press. But today, sports betting is, of course, still illegal in most states. Former Flyers forward (and current Coyotes assistant coach) Rick Tocchet learned that the hard way: he’s been accused of promoting gambling, money laundering and […]

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gambling & culture

Super bets

The Super Bowl has come and gone, bringing jubilationt to the city of Pittsburgh, disappointment to the Pacific Northwest, and uneaten guacamole in refrigerators around the country. I suspect, but can’t confirm, that there is some sadness at sports books todays, as the favorite beat the spread. Prop bets are always an interesting part of

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gambling & culture, life in vegas

Putin POed

Gambling is Russia is growing, but that doesn’t mean that Orthodox churches should be turned into casinos. At least that’s what I think this Interfax story is about: Russian President Putin criticized the gambling industry representatives who seek to use facilities belonging to the Russian Orthodox Church for their own purposes. ‘There is nothing good

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gambling & culture

Happy New Year!

In Las Vegas, it’s New Years all right…Chinese New Year. I’ve often said that casinos are in the forefront of commerce-driven multi-culturalism, and this is yet another example: Strip resorts are proclaiming, at considerably expense, their jubilation at the advent of the Year of the Dog. From the LV Sun: Marketing to Asian — particularly

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news about gambling

Not so smokin’

New Jersey recently banned smoking indoors–unless you’re in a casino. Proponents of the ban have said that it was a political move–they could not have gotten the measure passed with the combined clout of casinos, bars, and restaurants. So they picked off the bars and restaurants, and have now come for the casinos. From Newsday:

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atlantic city

Carpet images added

Check out the Die is Cast casino carpet gallery for two new galleries: Indian casinos and riverboat casinos. Sure, they each only have two casinos, but both have a panoply of carpet designs. I also added some Lake Las Vegas carpets. I had an interesting phone call yesterday that shows what a tremendous error in

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what's new

The Commish

The World Series of Poker is getting bigger and bigger. With so much attention drawn to the tournament, you need someone to lay down the law. Hence, Harrah’s Entertainment has appointed a commissioner of the WSOP. From Yahoo: Harrah’s Entertainment, Inc. (NYSE: HET – News) today announced that Jeffrey Pollack, vice president of sports and

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news about gambling

The perils of growth

Post-Katrina Biloxi will look very different from the city before August 29, 2005. There’s a good piece in the Sun-Herald about an amibitious proposal from Harrah’s and some unintended consequences of the burgeoning condo boom: Harrah’s Entertainment, the world’s largest gambling company, will invest more than $1 billion to build two casinos in Biloxi, said

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life in vegas

What happens at the coffeehouse…

With the whole “Sin City” marketing strategy, it feels like a lot of Las Vegans think that they invented hedonism. I mean, people have been getting plastered and doing stupid things for millennia. I guess the genius of Las Vegas is that its promoters have boiled this down to a soundbite. Doing research for Roll

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haphazard world