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How a Few Regulators Saved the Nevada Gaming Industry | Vegas Seven

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In this week’s Green Felt Journal, I consider how strict regulation with room for discretion helped save Nevada gaming in the 1960s: Sawyer’s “hang tough” policy emerged at a crucial time: Bobby Kennedy’s Justice Department would ratchet up pressure on Nevada casinos starting in 1961, and without the good-faith efforts of Sawyer’s appointees to clean […]

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National Finals Rodeo Goes Beyond Local Economics | Vegas Seven

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It’s really easy for me to notice when NFR is in town because it’s marginally harder for me to park at UNLV. But what does NFR really mean to the rest of the city? I’ve already gone the economic impact route, so this time I started thinking a little less literally: It’s hard not to

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What Macau Can Learn from Las Vegas | Vegas Seven

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In this week’s Green Felt , I consider how Las Vegas might just have a few lessons for Macau after all: Once those architects began planning resorts, however, it became apparent that Asia was not Las Vegas, and that what worked so well here for the previous generation—large slot parlors with table-gaming cores—was not at

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Is Nevada Moving Away From Gambling? | Vegas Seven

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In this week’s Green Felt Journal, I consider the 150-year history of Nevada and gambling, and wonder what the future will hold: The original match wasn’t exactly a marriage of convenience, but it wasn’t a forbidden romance, either. When Nevada joined the Union in 1864, it soberly criminalized the gambling that had been rampant—as it was

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As New Jersey Moves to Legalize Sports Betting, Nevada Stays One Step Ahead | Vegas Seven

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In this week’s Green Felt Journal, I discuss how Las Vegas faces change: Now let’s broaden that concept and consider how Las Vegas not just the casino industry responds to changes dealt to it externally. For example, earlier this month, gay marriage became legal in Nevada. Almost immediately, the question being asked wasn’t whether Nevada’s

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For the Gaming Industry, How Much Is Too Much? | Vegas Seven

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This week, I offer some thoughts on casino saturation in the Green Felt Journal: One-third of Atlantic City’s casinos have closed this year. Simultaneously, new casinos are under construction or on the drawing board in surrounding states. So how many casinos are too many? More pressingly, has the industry reached the saturation point? via For

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2014 NPA Award winner!

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This week, the 2014 Nevada Press Association awards were announced. I was fortunate to receive two awards From UNLV Special Collections’ blog: Special Collections is excited to announce that our colleague, David G. Schwartz, director of the Center for Gaming Research, recently received two awards in the Nevada Press Association’s 2014 Better Newspaper contest, thanks

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What Atlantic City Needs to Learn From Las Vegas | Vegas Seven

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As an Atlantic  City native and an observer of the casino scene, I’ve gotten asked my opinion on what’s happening there. I’m glad to have the chance to write a column that summarizes how I feel. It’s a bit of a history lesson and a cautionary tale: Atlantic City casinos prospered in those years because

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The Strip’s New Monkey Business | Vegas Seven

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Here is this week’s Green Felt Journal, on the opening of SLS–and what it means: The Sahara’s closing on May 16, 2011, was significant in more ways than one: It was not only the demise of one of the Strip’s few remaining classic casinos, but it essentially marked the depth of the Great Recession. So

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For Online Gaming, Slow and Steady’s Just Right | Vegas Seven

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In this weeks’ Green Felt Journal, I consider whether a “slow” rollout of online gaming in the U.S. is such a bad thing: Beyond the neon of Nevada and Atlantic City, gaming used to be something the nation spoke about in either whispers like that cousin who never made good or screams like that cousin

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How the Sidewalk Took Over the Strip | Vegas Seven

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This week, I’ve got a cover story in Vegas Seven that traces the development of the precursor of today’s Strip retail boom, Hawaiian Marketplace: You’re walking south down las Vegas Boulevard, past a nondescript strip mall promising beer, wine and four-for-$9.99 T-shirts when you see it: the carved head of a bronze-helmeted warrior poking serenely

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A Fresh Study Sheds Light on the Habits of the Vegas Visitor | Vegas Seven

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In this week’s Green Felt Journal, I look at how the Vegas visitor is changing–and what that means: The big question is, Why do people come to Las Vegas in the first place? Naturally, there are many reasons, so GLS Research, which compiles the profile, asks subjects for the primary purpose of their most recent

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The Languages of Gaming | Vegas Seven

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In this week’s Vegas Seven, I take a look at what the addition of a bilingual game at a North Las Vegas casino means: The Lucky Club’s move speaks to the growing presence of Spanish-speaking players in and around Las Vegas. And it’s not without precedent. In 2010, Buffalo Bill’s casino in Primm started offering

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The Festivalization of Las Vegas | Vegas Seven

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This week in Vegas Seven, I contribute to the cover coverage of EDC with a feature on how EDC has paved the way for the festivalization of Las Vegas: It takes one thing to go from outsider to establishment in Las Vegas: success. When Pasquale Rotella’s Insomniac Events first brought the Electric Daisy Carnival to

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The Man Who Gave Regulation a Good Name | Vegas Seven

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In this week’s Green Felt Journal, I look back at the legacy of Bob Faiss, who immeasurably shaped gaming in Nevada and many other places: Faiss shaped the evolution of Nevada’s gaming regulation as an attorney who represented some of the state’s largest casinos, but never lost sight of what he considered truly important: what

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Putting the ‘World’ in the World Series of Poker | Vegas Seven

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In this week’s Green Felt Journal, I explore how the World Series of Poker has changed during the past decade at the Rio: When Harrah’s Entertainment—now Caesars Entertainment—bought Binion’s Horseshoe in January 2004, it also acquired the World Series of Poker. Harrah’s more or less sold the Downtown hotel-casino to West Virginia-based MTR Gaming three

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Burton Cohen: The Man You Wanted Running Your Hotel | Vegas Seven

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Here is this week’s Green Felt Journal, a tribute (in mostly his own words) to Burton Cohen: Cohen grew up in the hotel business in Florida, and his 16 years of practicing law made him a perfect chief executive, able to read contracts and grasp their subtleties but also aware of operational realities on the

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MGM’s Park and the Future of the Strip | Vegas Seven

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In my latest Green Felt Journal, I riff on remarks MGM chairman Jim Murren made about his company’s Park development and the future of the Strip by imagining what the Strip will look like in 2019: An interesting way to ponder the Strip’s trajectory is to follow Murren’s lead, play the long game, and imagine

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