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Walking with a Vegas Ghost Sometimes it's nice to reminisce. It might be my way of ensuring that dementia or Alzheimer's Disease hasn't set in. Some people think it should be called CRAFT's Disease (for Can't Remember A Frigging Thing). I don't think that I've got it, at least I can't remember if I've got it. Where was I um, let me think oh yeah I remember now. A while back I took
a walk down Las Vegas Boulevard South; otherwise known as "the Strip" with an
old, but still employed senior Casino Executive that I befriended back in the early '80's. I'll call him "Mel" because that's not
his real name and he certainly doesn't want his current employer, a major resort operator,
to know about ALL of his past exploits, especially those on the player's side of the
table. Mel is a bit of a gambler, the same
way that Tiger Woods is a bit of a golfer. We had a great breakfast at Mandalay
Bay's Bayside Buffet. He had just got off of
work and wanted to take a walk up the Strip while stopping in at each casino to make one
series of bets at the craps tables before moving on to the next house in line. Great idea I thought. He said that we'd have to avoid his employers'
joints along the way. Fair enough, we started
right there at Mandalay. I had resolved to use my $220 Inside Regression method at each place,
unless we found an empty table to play at. In
which case, I would have reverted to my normal betting method that's used when it's my
turn to shoot. That bet looks like this:
$220 Inside Regression Put $50 each on 5 & 9, and $60
each on the 6 & 8 After any of these numbers hit,
regress each bet down to $10 & $12 respectively ($44 Inside) You now have a locked in profit of
$26, no matter what else happens. With every
other subsequent hit, press that number and it's twin (5 with 9: and 6 with 8).
Iron Cross w/ Gold Streaks Bet $50 on the Field and Place the 5
for $50. Place $60 each on the 6 & 8. Lay the 4 for $500 + $11 vig. If the 7 shows, he has a profit of $19. As each number hits, he reduces the
Field, 5, 6 & 8 bets to $10 & $12 respectively, with $44 in action. He then reduces the No-4 to $100. If two more numbers hit, he takes the Lay bet down
completely, and collects on the subsequent Place & Field bets. So started our odyssey with an
immediate profit from Mandalay in pocket for the both of us. Mel said that to truly relish the experience, we
would WALK the entire trip and not enjoy the use of monorails, taxis, buses or trolleys. It was hot out.
Not just whew, its a hot day out today. Im talking about spontaneous human
combustion-type HOT! We started our walk to Luxor while Mel reflected
upon the fact that Mandalay Bay now sat on the land that had been previously occupied by
the former: Hacienda Hotel & Casino Mel explained that Las Vegas was in
trouble in the 1950's after the failing of the Royal Nevada Casino Hotel, and there were
desperate attempts to keep the Dunes and Riviera afloat.
In 1954, a new project that was to be called The Lady Luck was being planned
for this property by a guy from Sacramento who was in the burger business. "Doc" Bayley who owned the Fresno and
Bakersfield Hacienda Hotels was tapped to run this 256 room place, so he changed the name
to The Hacienda. The Gaming and Control Board initially
denied the gambling license because one part-owner who had a previous license at the New
Frontier and Golden Nugget was deemed to have an unsuitable link to "unsavory"
characters. Apparently his paltry income
couldn't justify the source of his substantial "investment" money. The Hacienda was nicknamed
"Hayseed Heaven", and began a new trend by appealing to the family market with
several pools, a miniature golf course, and a go-cart track. This trend would be re-visited by the major casino
corporations again in the 1980's. It didn't
completely work either time as they saw in the early '60's, and as we saw in the '90's. In 1970, for $5 you could get a large
air-conditioned room, $10 in free casino chips, two gourmet buffet brunches, green fees
for their golf course, a free champagne party daily from 5 to 6:00pm, and free miniature
golf. "That was a great deal"
said Mel, "they served more champagne than all the other Strip joints combined." "There was a neat stage in the
Jewel Box Lounge where I used to watch The Ink Spots after work. We'd all get together and have a huge steak in
their gourmet Charcoal Room. Sometimes
Sinatra would come in with his crew. He
favored this place and the old House of Lords at the Sahara. That guy loved steak, and his crew ate like kings. A lot of times he'd pick up the tab for the entire
room, especially if he recognized a "lucky" dealer among us. We'd sometimes go out to the ranch with maybe
twenty or thirty people, saddle the horses and just ride for a couple of hours. A mob-front outfit named Argent Corporation bought
the Hacienda in 1972, but they were forced to sell it after a big "skimming"
operation was discovered. The Fiesta Room showcased
America's only nude ice revue. That show
later moved to downtown's Union Plaza Hotel, calling it "Nudes on Ice." The female skaters would get so cold that you
could dial a telephone with their nipples. You
got a Prime Rib Dinner and the Naked show for six bucks including unlimited booze. Around 1980 they added 300 rooms to their 10
buildings, then expanded to 1,140 rooms all built around a Spanish-Mission style
theme." We proceeded to make one series of bets
at Luxor, Excalibur and Tropicana. Surprisingly, each series produced a fairly decent profit. As one concession, Mel allowed the use of the overhead walkways and escalators to cross the "new Four Corners".
I was very grateful to this one
concession to modern convenience. Mel may be
twenty years older that me, but he thrives in sauna-temperature heat. He said that its from all those years hanging around with the boys. Since Mel isnt gay, it can only mean one
thing. After having a very short, but still
profitable hand at the Tropicana, we exited and he pointed out the portion of the MGM
Grand that was:
The Marina Hotel and Casino Mel said that he and a lot of other
casino personnel enjoyed a large number of "cold ones" in Shipwreck Kelly's
Lounge on a VERY regular basis. Apparently a
few of his "wise-guy" friends really liked the Port of Call Restaurant because
they served the freshest seafood and fantastic veal for about $9.00. He said that there were many current
casino executives around town that either started out or moved up the casino ladder
because of their posts at the Marina. Apparently
the management was known for grooming top-notch executive material. This was one place where most dealers felt pretty
comfortable playing at, after their shifts were over.
Kirk Kerkorian proceeded to buy the
Marina in 1989, and promptly changed it to the MGM Marina. He decided not to destroy the
resort that he closed in 1990, but to build around it, making the Marina a part of his
dream. The entire front hotel tower section
that forms a part of the complex was the original Marina Hotel. The original 100 acre Tropicana Country Club
was located where the current parking garage and Adventure Park is.
I had stayed at this place on my first
visit to Las Vegas in the mid-'70's so I knew the ambiance of the old place. Mel talked about his favorite subject other than
women which is entertainment, and said the Bagdad Theatre showcased Little Richard and
Blood, Sweat & Tears for $2.25 per person with all you could drink on a regular basis. There was more alleged mob involvement
with the ownership of this place too, when Mae George purchased 24% of the resort. Her
business adviser was placed in Nevada's infamous Black Book of individuals banned from
even entering the property of a gaming establishment. Four mobsters who ran the resort on
behalf of Detroit and St. Louis mob interests had also bilked another $250,000 and
received prison terms for a job well done. It was then sold for $5 million, and a new
19-story tower and 7,500 seat Performing Arts Center replaced the Aladdin golf course. Mel
thought that it was important to note that $5 million is what it currently costs MGM to
build ONE
luxury super-suite in their Mansion project. Mel was there when Neil Diamond did two
shows followed by a boxing-card with the Larry Quarry and another one with Ernie Shavers
where all seats were $10. It was the same price for Alice Cooper, Paul Anka, the Moody
Blues and Gladys Knight & The Pips, plus there were 1-drink minimum shows by Cheech
& Chong. In 1979, the Nevada Gaming Commission closed the hotel for continued mob-linked activity, but Judge Harry Claiborne opened it three hours later saying he had "special powers". The lawyer for the hotel was subsequently indicted in connection with a $1 million kickback scheme. Im sure there was no link between the two, and the criminal conviction was just an unhappy coincidence. Right?! By 1980 there was a price war as to who
would own the Aladdin. Singer Wayne Newton and Ed Torres had bought the property for $85
million, over Johnny Carson's bids. Newton and Torres had personality conflicts over the
resort's entertainment. Torres bought out Newton in 1982, but found himself fighting off
the Teamsters Union Pension Fund as creditors, forcing a foreclosure. "Those
Teamster's are great guys, but they aren't the kind of people I would want to owe money
to." smiled Mel. More charges of mob infiltration closed
the Aladdin again for over a year. Ginji Yasuda, a Japanese mystery-businessman bought the
property in early 1987 for $54 million. Mel
worked for him and said "
this guy had no idea how to run a casino
he
couldn't even organize a trip to the bathroom let alone manage 800 employees and run an
1100 room hotel. He used the corporation's
$25 million jet to fly his wife to New York on afternoon shopping excursions while we were
losing millions, so Yasuda went out and borrowed $6 million from Japanese gangsters to
keep the Aladdin afloat. The only good thing
was that the Asian mob-guys liked pop music, so we brought in Billy Ocean and Rod Stewart
and stars like that." I recounted one of my own visits. Ginji liked to watch all the casino and hotel
action from the confines of his penthouse suite on a bank of closed-circuit TV monitors. He had seen our group of high-rollers at check-in
and came down in his private elevator wearing pajamas and a bathrobe. He welcomed us all personally, then after finding
out we were hungry from a delayed flight, he led us to Wellington's Steakhouse where he
unlocked the door, seated us and proceeded to the kitchen where he cooked thick slabs of
Black Angus steaks. He joined us as we ate
our steaks and drank some Kirin beer out of his stash that he had flown in directly from
the brewery. He said it was fresher that way. There was a very unusual TV-screen
quarter-horse racing machine near the elevator. It
was pre-loaded with videos of dash-type races and you could bet different numbered horses
at different odds. It was a lot different
that those carnival-type racing games that you see in some of the cheesy casinos today. Ginji had the North American rights to those
machines, but I have never seen them at any other casinos since then. In 1989, Yasuda refused to reveal the
true source of his loans, which cost him his license. What was once one of the largest
casinos in the state was now an old relic compared to the then new Mirage and Excalibur. "But" quickly added Mel "we still
brought in some interesting name entertainment like Bon Jovi, Jefferson Starship, Heart,
Stone Temple Pilots, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Vince Gill, Patty Loveless, Tears for
Fears, Alanis Morissette, Pearl Jam, Brooks & Dunn, and Steve Miller. Even today, there isn't a single casino that
has that kind of back-to-back-to-back entertainment seven days a week. We did that for nearly a year-and-a-half, plus we
brought in an Andrew Lloyd Webber extravaganza and a Brazilian-spectacular production,
just to "flesh-out" the schedule." In 1994, New York real estate developer
Jack Sommer took over the resort for $80 million and imploded it in 1998 and started
construction of the current Aladdin. We hit
the new disjointed, terribly laid-out casino for our one series of bets and made out like
"thieves from 1,001 Arabian Nights", then beat a hasty exit.
Mel and I then made our way through
Paris, Bally's, Barbary Coast, Imperial Palace, Casino Royale, and Harrah's. Each casino gave us varying amounts of fun and
profit. Most of those
casinos gave us more fun than profit.
We both had a bottle of Harrah's own
brand of bottled water, and we paused at the foot of the people-mover sidewalk in front of
the Venetian. Ignoring the placard carrying
protestors, and the gauntlet of human flesh-peddling magazine-pylons, we both had some
fond memories of the predecessor to this property:
THE SANDS
Mel had started work here way back when
Frank Sinatra sold a small ownership stake for about $400,000. Mel would linger after a
shift to watch Nat King Cole and Sammy Davis, Jr., Red Skelton, Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis,
Bob Newhart, or The Rowan & Martin Show. "If you were "connected"
in those days, you could get into the steam room known as the Clubhouse of the Clan. The Sands was bought by Howard Hughes for $14
million in 1967 and added a 17-story cylinderical tower containing 777 rooms. The real original "Rat Pack" was
definitely packing them in." offered Mel.
Now I knew how Mel got acclimated to this scorching gas-oven desert
heat. "For the Copa Room dinner show you
could get Pepper Steak, Colorado Rainbow Trout, Roast Turkey, Rock Cornish Hen, Prime Rib,
or New York Sirloin Steak for about $12.00 including the show. So here you are, having a 20-ounce rare slab of
Prime Rib, drinking bottles of Cognac and watching Frank Sinatra ham it up with Joey
Bishop, Peter Lawford, Sammy and Dino all for $15.00 including tip. Can you imagine what that would cost today? You couldn't get out of the gate for under $500,
at least, probably $1,000 for decent seats!" he exclaimed.
In 1981, Summa Corporation was
forced to sell properties because they thought Hughes was creating a casino monopoly in
Vegas. As he looked at the Bridge of Sighs
at the Venetian, Mel stared straight ahead and said "Can you see them saying that
today. Park Place has the Hilton, the
Flamingo, Bally's, Paris, Caesar's, etc. and they thought Hughes was a meglo-maniac, man
they ain't seen nothin' yet!" The Pratt
Corporation took the Sands over with plans to go after the Mexican and Latin American
market, but the Mexican economy "tanked", and the Sands was left holding bad
markers and trade dried up to almost nothing. Kirk Kerkorian purchased the Sands in
1988, making it the MGM Sands before flipping it for a cool $24 million profit in less
than six months to the Interface Group who started the whole COMDEX trade show. "Anyway, they sold out to Shelly Adelson
before closing it in June of 96. I went to a reunion at the Copa Room right before
it closed. Some of the old-timer's were
there, but the place had turned into an absolute dump.
It's a shame how some of these corporations have no soul, and definitely no
heart. They don't understand the heritage or
respect history. Of course everyone remembers
it being in the movie "ConAir" starring Nicolas Cage. During the auction of everything in the
hotel before demolition, I managed to buy two of the original chandeliers that hung in the
Copa Room. They now grace the main entrance
hallway in my house out in Henderson", added a smiling Mel. We played at the Venetian and each got
to shoot because the $10 table was completely empty.
Mel's efforts were terrible, and I said that it was good that he had a great
full-time casino career because his prospects of being a Precision-Shooter were definitely
limited. He retorted that it was good that I
was a professional craps player, because if I was a casino dealer "you'd start
"whacking" the really obnoxious and repulsive customers, and I'm not talking
about using a craps stick to do it with either."
I chuckled at his back-handed compliment and I proceeded to experience a
very decent hand that he counted as having 32 rolls, with 27 of them paying off on my
Inside Regression bets. Satisfied that we had extracted our
"pound of flesh" out of what he called the "most ornate whorehouse outside
of Italy", we proceeded to play at the
Desert Inn, which was still very open, but not very much alive back then. From there we walked past Silver City
which was closed.
We then headed into the Riviera. We both didn't like the immediate smell that
accosted us while walking through the food-court. The
scent reminded me of a casino in Macau where both the Portuguese and Hongkong influence in
gaming is great, but the odor that your clothes absorb, leaves you smelling like a
Madiera-dipped dry-garlic-rubbed freshly-slaughtered piglet. Only the Riviera didn't smell quite as appetizing. The stench seemed like a hotel guest's pet Kamodo
Dragon had gotten stuck in the ventilation system and died a horrible death. Nothing
say's "Welcome to the Riviera" quite like the bouquet of decaying flesh. The Riviera tables were kind, but we
were uninspired to stay very long when Mel was recognized by one of the pit critters who
made a comment to me about hanging out with certain "other" corporations'
lowlifes. Mel retorted "Why do you say
that
are your lowlifes any better? And by the way, (name deleted) are you shopping
around for a new boyfriend, or is that little blonde 17 year-old still ripe enough for
you?" The entire pit crew and all the
players laughed hard, and he started to walk away. I said "Hey, have you heard the
joke about the blind elephant and the blind snake?"
He stopped, and I continued "These
two animals run into each other and agree to touch each other to figure out what the other
one is. The blind snake feels the elephant's
foot and leg and says it's all rough and bumpy and strong and tall so he decides that it
must be some kind of talking palm-tree. The
blind elephant then takes a turn touching the snake.
He say "Hmmm, you're slimy and
scaly, you've got little beady eyes, you hiss when you are mad, you're low to the ground
and you have no balls
you must be a Pit Boss!" With that, the whole area burst into fits of
laughter, and the guy just slithered away. We chuckled a little further as we
cashed out and made our way to the Sahara. On our way to the Sahara, we passed the
derelict shell of another former strip queen:
The Thunderbird / Silverbird / El
Rancho
For Mel, the one thing that he best
remembered was the fact that this place started what today is a Las Vegas legend: THE BUFFET "It started out as the "Chuck
Wagon" that first opened at 11:00 pm. It
was a way to get the coffee-shop really clean without any customers in it." he said. "Buffet prices were $1.83. In '77, the
Dune's owner Major Riddle bought it and changed the name to Silverbird. They brought in The 5th Dimension for
entertainment, and they Later in 1981, Ed Torres purchased the
Silverbird, added a Spanish-style mission front, and renamed it El Rancho. He added a
tower, a 52-lane bowling center and expanded the casino to 90,000 square. Mel indicated
that Torres' greatest accomplishment lay in building Joe's Stone Crab Restaurant, where
"they had these 30-40 inch long crab legs that must have come off of some hellish
mutant crabs. The nuclear accident had just
happened at Three Mile Island up in Pennsylvania. So
as I'm eatin' them, I'm wondering if maybe these things got irradiated and might actually
come back to life and squash my head in a vice-like grip, cause I'm tellin' you man, these
were gigantic legs. Some of them were longer
than my
legs, and the whole deal was six bucks!" he said, still amazed after all these years. The El Rancho didn't fare any better
than the Thunderbird and Silverbird and it closed in 1992. The New Jersey Horseracing
Association subsequently purchased the El Rancho but they couldn't get financing. One plan
was to sell it to CMT (Country Music Television); install a TV studio and broadcast live
entertainment from the lounge and showroom; theme the casino as Country & Western, and
make the hotel tower look like two "gi-normous" back-to-back cowboy
boots. They commenced demolition, but ran out
of money and walked away. Turnberry
Associates purchased it for $45 million, and there are plans to co-develop it into a
casino site. Mel and I made our way to the Sahara
Hotel, where we got onto their $1 table and proceeded to reap the benefits of a
Precision-Shooter that neither of us had seen before.
"No matter" Mel said, "let's see where this guy takes
it." The hand lasted about 65 minutes,
but with a crowded table and slow payoffs, we estimated that he had about 40-50 good
throws. That was enough to more than double
the profit that we already had in hand. That
being that, we decided to celebrate at Paco's Hideway for dinner. Good Luck & Good Skill at the Tables and in Life The Mad Professor
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