Gambling remains the bedrock of the
Las Vegas experience. At most recent count,
28 other US states had joined Nevada in
offering commercial casinos, and all except
two had legalized some form of gambling, but
thanks to its colossal volume of business,
Las Vegas still does it better than the
rest. Ninety percent of visitors to the city
gamble, with an average budget of $500, and
in the end everything else is just frippery;
it's the gambling that makes every flourish
possible. The shows and restaurants, tigers
and volcanoes - no matter how profitable any
might be - are all just designed to make you
stick around longer and spend more money on
the slots and tables.
While the casinos these days prefer to
talk about "gaming" rather than
gambling, no one plays for fun alone. It's
the gut-wrenching excitement of staking your
own hard cash in pursuit of a fortune that
keeps the tension at fever pitch. Most
visitors have their own preferred form of
gambling, with the three main choices being table
games such as blackjack or craps, played
in the public gaze and surrounded by
glamorous trimmings; slot machines ,
a more private pleasure in which the
potential winnings are enormous, and you're
spared the fear of not seeming au fait
with the rules; and sports betting ,
with its hyped-up atmosphere and scope for
proving that you know more than the bookies.
The fact that the gambling industry is
still booming is a credit to the casinos'
ability to change with the times. During the
first few decades of Las Vegas's supremacy,
the typical gambler was male and likely to
be familiar with a wide range of card games
thanks to years spent in military service.
Slots and other machines, however, overtook
the tables from 1983 onwards, and they now
generate around 65 percent of Nevada's
gaming revenue. In the face of the large
proportion of modern visitors who see casino
games as complicated and intimidating, the
casinos are desperate to make gambling as
easy, user-friendly and innocuous as
possible. All offer free lessons,
instructional videos on their in-room TVs,
and the like. On the surface, those
well-dressed and welcoming dealers make
things seem democratic and casual, but all
that deference serves in fact to make anyone
who sits down at the tables feel like part
of an exclusive and sophisticated elite.
Despite Las Vegas's reputation as a
stronghold of crime , there's no
suggestion that gamblers themselves are
being cheated. The casinos don't need to
cheat; they know they're certain to make
money. Yes, the occasional high-roller can
seriously damage the corporate balance sheet
- thus Australian TV magnate Kerry Packer
once won twenty consecutive hands of
baccarat in twenty minutes at the Mirage
, at $250,000 per hand. Overall, however,
the odds are stacked in the casinos' favor.
In the case of table games, each has some
combination of a quantifiable "house
edge" incorporated into its rules, or a
set way of skimming the top off players'
winnings. With slots, it's even more
straightforward - they're simply programmed
to pay out less than they take in, though
only the casinos themselves know just how
much less.
The average slot machine on the Strip
generates $125 profit per day; each table
game makes an average of almost $2000.
Gambling is of course supremely addictive, and Las Vegas not surprisingly has a
higher percentage of problem gamblers than
any other city in the world. The generally
accepted advice for visitors who want to
experience the thrill while minimizing the
risk is never to gamble more than you're
prepared to lose. In addition, if you want
to play for any length of time, don't bet
more than around one-fiftieth of your total
budget at any one moment. Thus if you've set
aside $250 with which to gamble, it makes
sense to play $5 slot machines, or bet with
$5 roulette chips; if you've got $50, play
with $1 stakes. Remember that even if the
house edge on your chosen game is as low as
two percent, that doesn't mean you'll lose
two percent of your money and walk away with
the remaining 98 percent. It means that if
you play long enough, you'll almost
certainly lose it all.
As for where to gamble , that
really depends on how you see gambling. If
you think it's all about fun and glamour,
then the Strip is the place to be,
though the high minimum stakes at the
largest casinos can mean you'll lose your
money uncomfortably fast. If you feel that
an authentic gambling hall should be gritty,
grimy, and peopled by hard-bitten
"characters," you may be happier downtown
. If you see betting as a business, and want
as much bang for your buck as possible, head
instead for a locals casino , and
especially the members of the Stations
chain, which tend to offer more generous
odds at video poker and the like.
For the moment, all gambling has to take
place in public. Even though the top casinos
try to give the impression of setting
exclusive areas aside for high rollers,
anyone is entitled to stroll in and watch.
Insiders predict an imminent change in the
law, however, to allow private gambling
rooms or separate "clubs" within
public casinos; the London Club in
the Aladdin appears poised to lead
the way.
Table games
Casino "games" are not really
games in the same sense as the games you
might enjoy at home, where each player has
the same chance of winning. They're
carefully structured business propositions,
in which the casinos know that over time
they are...
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Slot machines
Well over a century since the first
"one-armed bandits" appeared in
the saloons of San Francisco, slot machines
are more popular than ever. Thanks to glitzy
new technology and highly competitive odds -
not to mention some truly huge...
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Sports betting
Although Nevada is the only state in the
country where it's legal to place bets on
the outcome of sporting events, large-scale
sports betting is a relatively recent
addition to the Las Vegas scene. The first
casino to open what's called a...
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