Stiffs and Georges

S&G contributor Jeff_in_OKC has been reading the entrails of the recent demise of the Gold Spike (which had seemed to be doing so much better under Spiegel Group) and sees cause for hope. Other nearby casinos weren’t slow to court ex-Gold Spike employees, by the way. Jeff assembles the pieces of the theoretical strategy and [...]

Uh-oh. This is not good. Tamares Group is going to cease taking room bookings at the Vegas Club. In an ominous phrase, it’s “evaluating its options” for the hotel-casino, whose gambling floor and other amenities are but a pallid shadow of what competing properties, even Tamares’ own Plaza, have to offer. It’s basically dead without [...]

‘Twas the day after Christmas and all through the house, shareholders were beginning to cool on the value of Ameristar Casinos stock. It closed ever so slightly down from Pinnacle Entertainment’s $26.50/share offer price. Perhaps I was wrong and $869 million is enough to get this deal done, after all, though I still expect rumbles [...]

As Yahoo’s Jeff Macke cuttingly puts it, he “found a real, live businessman who creates jobs,” thereby providing a Steve Wynn-to-sanity translation, courtesy of CIO Advisors‘ Hugh Johnson. If Wynn were truly being honest, he’d cut to the quick: He’s scared witless that his high-income customers who play at Wynn Las Vegas and Encore, and [...]

Having waited too long and spent too much to ever get around to his long-rumored teardown of the Imperial Palace, the CEO/CFO/COB and prexy of Caesars Entertainment, one Gary Loveman, now finds himself perfuming a pig. Despite having more brand names under the Caesars umbrella than you could shake a Total Rewards card at, Loveman [...]

It may not be a David Lean epic but this video gives you an idea just how heavy the waters were on the Las Vegas Strip, over by Harrah’s Las Vegas. Strangely, local TV stations are concentrating upon the effects of the flooding on outlying parts of the valley, venturing no nearer the Strip than [...]

… and not with customers unfortunately. Las Vegas is currently experiencing torrential downpours and flash flooding — including on the Strip. This suddenly closed the Tropicana Las Vegas‘ “Mob Attraction,” thanks to a wee bit of a design flaw. According to a Trop source, the Mob expo is just off the lowest point of the [...]

On the one hand, I applaud The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas for setting itself apart from the pack by centering much of its appeal upon leading-edge musical acts (like Adele and Florence + The Machine [twice!]). However, it makes Deutsche Bank’s decision to cut corners by not building the once-planned showroom (above) look downright imbecilic [...]

Wouldn’t you love to know what was in Steve Wynn’s most recent pre-nup now that his wife is referring to herself as “Owner” of Wynn Resorts — as our colleague Chuck Monster recently discovered? Andrea Wynn may have a few thousand WYNN shares socked away someplace but she doesn’t even qualify as a “major holder” [...]

That Aquinnah Wampanoag Tribe effort to obtain the coveted southeastern Massachusetts casino license is quickly being exposed as a thing of smoke and mirrors. Sure, the tribe can get a Class II casino on Martha’s Vineyard — it’s a done deal — but the real money’s in Class III. (The Class II VLT parlor is [...]

There’s a new power player in gaming and it’s … Brookfield Asset Management? The Canadian lender is already calling the shots (along with Warner Gaming) at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino, a $1.5 billion quagmire into which Morgans Hotel Group led Credit Suisse. Today, Brookfield officially ousted Sol Kerzner from Atlantis Paradise Island and [...]

With so many fine hotels to choose from in Las Vegas, it’s no wonder that it took disgraced General Services Administration Regional Commissioner Jeffrey Neely no fewer than eight ‘fact-finding’ missions at a cost of $130,000 (or $16,250 per vacation investigation) to settle upon M Resort. This is serious research, people! But hey, as long [...]

Rushing in where angels fear to tread, Kazuo Okada (right) has broken ground on his $2 billion, two-casino megaresort in the Philippines. You may remember the project as a bitter point of contention between Okada and erstwhile BFF Steve Wynn, who alleges that Okada tried to drag Wynn Resorts into it, by hook or by [...]

By way of Ian Sutton’s Gaming Floor portal comes news that Les Artistes Steakhouse, late of Paris-Las Vegas, is fermé … toujours.  Although the hotel-casino has only been open since September 1999, on Caesars Entertainment’s in-house blog this constitutes “a long, storied history.” Now, I’m not aware of any legends or special showbiz mystique surrounding [...]

… goes to the Octavius Tower at Caesars Palace, which opened last month. It’s tucked far enough away from the casino floor to provide some mental lebensraum as well, and it has a dedicated check-in desk. Since it directly overlooks Caesars’ cluster of pools (potentially affording some R-rated views of topless bathers), how much peace [...]

If it seems that the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino’s infamous Rehab pool party has been keeping a lower profile this year, that’s no illusion. The expulsion of Morgans Hotel Group and its party-hearty executive team has brought a de-empahsis on Rehab. As new Executive Director of Nightlife Ian Kohoutek made a point of telling [...]

As everyone knows, both Palms Casino Resort and M Resort recently changed hands, the former going to a pair of hedge funds and the latter to Penn National Gaming. Penn broke with industry tradition by keeping property CEO Anthony Marnell III and his management team at the helm. Although M’s financial performance has been disappointing, [...]

“Nightclubs — we just didn’t fare well with them. There are so many nightclubs. Everyone’s got just one or two. Ours were just marginal.” That’s Treasure Island owner Phil Ruffin’s argument for repositioning the pirate place for a mid-market, middle-aged crowd. The State of Nevada ought to give Ruffin a medal for ridding us [...]

But first … put this in the ‘Told Ya So’ File. The flim-flam man can now resume his fiduciary duties to Trump Entertainment Resorts and doing what he does best: Making delusional claims about his net worth.
Three Vegas casinos reported quarterly results at the tail end of last week and the results might be described [...]

Our next-to-worst fears for Ohio have come to pass: Caesars Rock Ohio has temporarily pulled the plug on both its Cincinnati (above) and Cleveland casinos. It’s the latest escalation in a war between developers and state government, which wants to tax casinos on money wagered, not won. That’s not all. Gov. Jon Kasich (R) is [...]