Making a Case for Casino/Riverboat Gaming

(inserts from the book)
“Inside the new Las Vegas"
by Peter Earley.

Mr. Peter Earley has written a great book about Vegas. Here are some excerpts from his book; “Inside the Casino”.

– Special rooms.
I’m 23 years old and fresh out of college and I get a job at the Tropicana and end up working there as the assistant hotel manager. My main job was to make sure the hotel had 100 percent occupancy every night and there was so much demand in the early 1990’s that we often oversold the rooms. If you had 50 people who had reservations and you had no place to put them, that was tough, but when you had 400 and you had promised them all a room and there were none, now that was a real challenge. Ten months into the job, 2 guys come in wearing sunglasses, and trying hard not to be recognized, but I recognized them instantly. It was Charlie Sheen and Johnny Depp and they say, “We need a room.” And I say, “Sorry we are all sold out.” And they say, “Money is no object.” Suddenly, I remember that we have luxury theme suites available. Now these are two-story high-roller suites and each has a different theme and décor. There is the London suite, the Bombay suite, the Parisian suite, and they are beautiful, so I tell these guys they can rent the London suite but it will cost them $ 5 thousand for one night. Charlie just whips out his credit card and I’m thinking cool, I just sold a room for $ 5 thousand. The next morning, I get this call from my boss telling me to get right in. He meets me at the door and takes me to the lounge when the casino vice-president and the vice-president of Asian operations are waiting. “Did you rent out the London suite last night?” one of them asks me. “Yes, I got five thousand dollars for it,” I reply proudly. I figure they were going to congratulate me but instead both of them are furious at me. One of them says, No one is supposed to rent those suites out except for the casino hosts – no one, not even the hotel manager, and certainly not you. You got that?
We had an Asian player stop over last night on a return flight from New York City to Hong Kong and he only likes to stay in the London suite and he keeps two hundred and fifty thousand dollars on deposit in our cage. You got 5 thousand for that room – this guy bets 5 thousand a hand! Now what are we supposed to tell him when he expects to stay in the London suite?” They were really busting my chops. I was so nervous; I knocked over the casino vice-president’s coffee on the table into his lap. By this time, I figure I am doomed. But he says, “Kid we aren’t going to fire you. You can’t be blamed for something that no one told you. But if you’re gonna stay in this business, you’ve got to understand a basic fundamental. This is not a hotel-casino. It is a casino-hotel. Without the casino there is no reason for people to come here, no reason for there to be a Las Vegas. Everything revolves around the gambling and don’t you ever forget it.”

Here is another excerpt from Mr. Earley’s book; “Inside the Casino – Cocaine and Sex.” (A blackjack dealers take on sin city.)
This town really rocked during the 1980’s before everyone started worrying about getting AIDS and the corporate bigwigs started requiring employees to take drug tests. There was cocaine everywhere. We called it enjoying the three C’s of Las Vegas – cocaine, cocktail waitresses and cognac! I was working in a downtown joint where dealers were doing lines in the employee lounge and everyone looked the other way. It wasn’t just dealers back in those days either. I was younger then, of course, and single, and I remember that it wasn’t uncommon for me to have women slip me the keys to their rooms after they had played blackjack at one of the tables where I was dealing. Hell, I had them get up and follow me around the casino when the floor manager would rotate me to different table to give another dealer his break.
One night I had this gorgeous blonde, about 29 years old, sitting at my table. Looked sorta like Marilyn Monroe. She was married to this slug. He was overweight and ugly and he was losing big, so he went to play dice (craps) and she and I started talking. I knew right off she didn’t like her husband because every time she saw him coming she would roll her eyes. One time, she just flat-out says, “Oh hell, here he comes again. Why can’t he just leave me alone?”
Now, this broad doesn’t know much about cards and she is making plenty of dumb mistakes so I started helping her. When she needs to take a hit, I don’t even ask her, I just pull a card out of the shoe and give it to her. If she shouldn’t take a hit, I just skip her without waiting for her to ask for a card. She catches on and just sits there and we start winning. I mean, she is kicking my butt – or should I say, I’m kicking my own butt. She starts giggling and getting excited and pretty soon the shift is about over, so I bring up how I’m going to leave. Now, I’m pressing her for a tip but instead she says to me, “How’d you like to have a drink in my room?” Luckily, there wasn’t anyone else at the table because I could lose my job over this. But I figure no one will know, right, so I say “Sure.” And she starts to take out the room key and hand it to me and I’m thinking: Jesus! The guys watching this from the eye in the sky are going to be busting my butt because this broad has just won a couple hundred from me and they are going to figure that I was cheating for her and now she’s paying me off. So, I tell her just to tell me the room number. About this time, her husband comes up and this gal is slick. She gives him all the cash that she has won so he can keep playing craps and then says that she has a headache and needs the key to their room. He asks her where her key is and she says she lost it. I told you this girl was smart. Now she has his key and her own ‘cause she never really lost it.
Fifteen minutes late, I am in this broad’s room having sex and she is acting like she has spent the last 10 years on a desert island. I get out some coke and we do some lines and all of a sudden there is knocking on the door and I hear her husband’s voice. I figure I’m dead!

part two.
Now I know I’m going to lose my job and probably some teeth too. But this broad is totally cool. She tells him that she doesn’t want to see him because she has been throwing up. She drank too much she says. She tells him that she’ll meet him in the bar in 20 minutes. Now he complains, but she gets him to leave without ever opening the door. Meanwhile, I’m pulling on my pants and getting ready to climb out a window.
Now here is the wacky part. This broad says to me, “Do you know anyone who I could hire to kill my husband?” I said, “What?” She says, “C’mon. All you Vegas dealers have connections with the mob, don’t you?” It was the damndest thing. I got myself out of there and told myself that I would never take another chance like that again. You know what happened? The next night this broad and her husband sit down at my table and they spend the entire night playing there. Her husband wins a couple of hundred dollars and hands me a fifty as a tip. He was a real George (good tipper) and the dumb son of a bitch didn’t have a clue that I had nailed his wife the night before and that she was looking for someone to kill him. As told by a Las Vegas dealer.