“Never before has a traveler been able to leave New York City, fly to Mohegan [Sun], enjoy a world class show, have a terrific dining experience, play in the casino and be back home … by midnight.” So says Fly Blade General Manager Evan Licht, touting his company’s new helicopter service from the Big Apple to Mohegan Sun. It’s not for everybody … not at $625 per one-way trip. (If you’ve got a bucketful of Mohegan Momentum points you can bring that price down a bit.) For special occasions, round-trip packages will be organized. Call me pessimistic, but I don’t think this will last. How many high-rollers will want to be choppered out to Mohegan Sun, especially after similar service to Atlantic City has fizzled?
* As the history of Nevada gaming regulation is written, it is inextricably linked with that of the rise and sudden fall of Lionel Sawyer Collins, once the firm of choice in the gaming industry. (Ironically, most of its latter-day clients have been foreigners such as Dubai World, Genting Group and Pansy Ho.) But other law firms have horned in on Lionel Sawyer’s turf and the coup de grace was a mass defection of 20 attorneys to Fennemore Craig. The heart of Lionel Sawyer effectively stopped beating last year with the demise of eminence grise Bob Faiss. Founding member Sam Lionel, going strong at age 95, is leading the exodus to Fennemore Craig. So Lionel Sawyer is now just a chapter in the history books, albeit a very rich and voluminous chapter indeed.
* Despite Sheldon Adelson‘s fulminations, legislators in Washington State are pondering the legalization of online poker. This is ironic because Washington is the only state in the nation to explicity outlaw the activity. How serious is Washington about cracking 
down on gray-market gaming? Last year it smashed a “penny-ante pinochle game” in Snohomish that had been in existence for 25 years. (You can play cards at state-sanctioned Indian casinos and at card rooms.)
“To better protect the people of Washington from potential danger from, and to maintain oversight of the systems used to carry out internet poker, the legislature finds it to be in the interest of the people to establish a regulatory framework by which entities, as authorized by the Washington state gambling commission or a tribal regulator, may offer poker games to players within Washington state over the internet,” reads the bill by state Rep. Sherry Appleton (D). Anticipating low revenues from Washington-only play, Appleton’s bill authorizes the state to compact with Nevada, New Jersey, Delaware — and anywhere else online poker might become lawful. With California, New York, Pennsylvania and Illinois all mulling Internet play, it looks like the train is leaving the station and there’s not much chance Adelson can stop it.
Fly Mohegan = Will not last