Stiffs and Georges

Trump International is hawking bargain rates for the Yuletide season, including price-matching, Saks Fifth Avenue discounts, “guaranteed late check out” (translation: Please stay with us!) and more. The sheer plethora of discounts and giveaways hints at an increasing level of desperation within Trump’s Stump. However, it’s also laudable to see the Donald Trump/Phil Ruffin property [...]

Other cities have major-league sports teams for distraction and entertainment. Las Vegas has Clark County Commissioner Tom Collins (D). The latter has been much in the headlines of late. First, per the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Collins was “was drinking and shooting on his North Las Vegas property on the night of July 3″ … because [...]

There’s a dark horse in the race for a Toronto megaresort … very dark. It’s Onex Corp., known to you and me as the owner of the Tropicana Las Vegas. Onex subsidiary Casino ABS owns four of the largest casinos in Alberta. So Onex owner Gerald Schwarz has some justification for saying, “We know how [...]

If the question of casino expansion were put to Empire State voters this November, the outcome would probably be adverse. That’s the conclusion of a Benenson Group survey. If the fact that Benenson is President Barack Obama’s pollster of preference doesn’t impress you, the size of its sample (800 souls) ought to: Most pollsters skimp [...]

Having spent all weekend and most of yesterday laboring over an in-depth think piece for CityLife (a future-of-Vegas thing), I’ll admit to being pretty well fried. But the news never sleeps — much as one might wish otherwise, sometimes — so I’ll do my best for you.
Kazuo Okada either won or lost his first skirmish [...]

Way to go, Joe Canfora! The Merit Casino CEO shows how impressive a statistic can sound when taken out of context. By stating “there are more slot machines per 100,000 people in Iowa than there are in Illinois,” Canfora craftily implies that the Land of Lincoln is somehow underserved. Let’s look at other numbers, shall [...]

There’s no one more depraved than a politician looking to close a revenue shortfall. So we’ve learned from the drive-by shootings hailing from the amoral outlaw band otherwise known as the Nevada Legislature. As sage political pundit Obi-Wan Kenobi observed, “You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.”

According to the Las [...]

Despite a decidedly underwhelming financial performance in 2009, MGM Resorts International CEO Jim Murren managed to take home $13.75 million in overall compensation. Last year, he had to make ends meet on $9.8 million. Snarkiness aside, this actually shows that — at least to some extent, the system works. The shriveled worth of MGM stock [...]

Other than as a medium for sports betting, mobile-gambling devices have resolutely failed to catch on in Las Vegas casinos. Provider/operator Cantor Gaming has made a few inroads but mostly at one-off properties like M Resort and the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino. By law, mobile gizmos like Cantor’s can only be used in public [...]

The Las Vegas electorate had a lovely parting gift for Victor Chaltiel and Sheldon Adelson.
Which is to say that Carolyn Goodman didn’t win the Las Vegas mayoralty outright yesterday but is a relatively low hurdle away from inheriting husband Oscar Goodman’s throne. Basically if she picks up the conservative vote — and avoids further rookie [...]

Obviously, the headline from today will be approval by the Nevada Gaming Commission of a partnership between Caesars Entertainment and Israeli-owned, Gibraltar-based 888 Holdings. Since it is simultaneously getting permission to shack up with Internet casino operator 888 and opposing ‘Net-betting locally, Caesars was able to dazzle Nevada regulators with the pretzel logic that what’s [...]

“Jim Gibbons … started out wanting to be governor because there was an office called governor and he was next in line. But instead of being changed by the experience, of rising above himself, his pride and his stubborn ideology, Gibbons sank beneath them.” — Las Vegas CityLife Editor Steve Sebelius on [...]

Congratulations, Sheldon Adelson! You’ve just upped your street cred — and become the butt of 1,001 pimp jokes. Is the Las Vegas Sands CEO going to start hangin’ with Snoop Dogg and 50 Cent (or maybe Eliot Spitzer and Hugh Grant) after the big prostitution bust that went down in the wee hours of this [...]

It seems like David G. Schwartz is everywhere today. Las Vegas’ resident casino expert has not one but two stories out on The Cosmopolitan. From what he writes, Cosmo execs have convinced themselves they’ve reinvented the casino. It hinges upon something known as “the curious class,” a demographically indefinable mass of people who don’t come [...]

Last week, S&G unearthed a contribution from self-professed “too liberal” Sheldon Adelson to flaming homophobe Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN). Turns out, she’s not the only apostle of intolerance with whom Adelson has crept under the covers. Last Sunday, the Las Vegas Review-Journal’s Howard Stutz exposed that Adelson had funneled money to Sharron Angle (a veritable [...]

It’s conceivable. And, if former Nevada Gaming Commission Chairman Brian Sandoval (left) gets his wish, it’s justifiable. So let S&G be first to put that idea into play. Since Sandoval’s “home rule” proposal would address Nevada’s budget deficit by simply letting state-level services descend upon individual counties like so many unfunded mandates, that raises a [...]

Not even the cachet of Carey Hart and occasional appearances by Pink were enough to keep Wasted Space going. The Hard Rock Hotel is calling it quits on the club, bumping it in favor of a race and sports book. Not coincidentally, the HRH had just inked a pact with Cantor Gaming to bring the [...]

It’s getting rather slippery on the tiled floors of Venelazzo and its Macao offshoots, what will the frequent bloodbaths that are becoming a hallmark of Sheldon Adelson’s reign as creator and CEO of Las Vegas Sands. The victim sent over the Bridge of Sighs was Sands China CEO Steve Jacobs. His fated was as good [...]

Last week, I tried to work up a piece entitled, “Atlantic City, R.I.P.” After all, the Boardwalk had just come off a catastrophic June, impacted by table games in Delaware. Since table games were in process of sweeping Pennsylvania, from west to east, the demise of Atlantic City as a major casino capitol seemed a [...]

Reckless rhetoric. Last week, S&G called B.S. on senatorial aspirant Sharron Angle’s faux solicitude for the unfinished casinos along the Strip. Turns out, if she had her way, there’d be at least one more: Aria, plus all the other components of $8.8 billion CityCenter. Taking up a meme from Religious Right dirty tricksters Floyd Brown [...]