I probably shouldn’t admit that while in Las Vegas recently for a friend’s thirtieth birthday party I spent more time playing “for amusement only” video games than trying my hand at the likes of blackjack or craps. Even more embarrassing, I’d do it again.
My reason for investing hours in old-school video classics like Asteroids and Galaga alongside kids born since Reagan left office was simple: Past visits to Las Vegas casinos have been just eventful enough to leave a slightly sour taste in my mouth. In addition, having recently finished the wonderfully entertaining new book 24/7: Living it Up and Doubling Down in the New Las Vegas, whose author recounts losing many thousands of dollars at a single sitting, I was determined not to gamble — er, game — until the very end of my three-day visit. That meant finding other diversions, which I figured couldn’t be too hard in a city where you can body surf in an artificial wave pool, bungee jump, look at van Goghs, and visit a whole museum devoted to Liberace in a single afternoon.
My first stop was a slots “tournament” at the Las Vegas Hilton. Watching people play slot machines is about as exciting as reading Nietzsche, but I was curious about this ultimate Vegas con, especially when I learned there was an entry fee of $ 600. Would casinos, many of which hold these tournaments monthly, really try to market slot success as based on anything other than pure luck?
No, as it turned out. The Hilton’s ebullient tournament director happily told me there was no pretense whatever of anyone’s winnings being tied to “skill.” What’s more, the $ 600 fee included three nights in the hotel, a “prize” of at least $ 100 (and as much as $ 25,000 for the first-place winner), and an apparently endless succession of free buffets. This, I concluded, was probably one of Vegas’s better deals, right up there with the $ 4.95 prime rib at the San Remo.
My next stop was the Gambler’s Book Shop, a small store a few miles off the Strip that claims to have “the largest selection of gambling books, videotapes and software in the world.” I had no basis for comparison, but before long, I’d counted over 50 titles just on blackjack. Separate sections covered how to win at video poker, roulette, sports, and just about every other game you can bet on. I even found a book on the best ways to throw dice.
As I pawed through titles like Blackjack for Blood and Guerrilla Gambling, the place started to pall. When I caught myself reading a treatise on cheating at blackjack, I knew it was time to leave.
Strolling through the larger-than-life hotels proved more uplifting. At New York-New York, my friends and I rode the roller coaster, which has so many loops, corkscrews, and jarring turns it’s a wonder the trial bar hasn’t filed a class-action suit on behalf of riders.
And it was hard not to be amused by Paris Las Vegas, where the employees don’t parler francais but do wear berets, kepis, and fitted blue suits. There are signs pointing toward Les Toilettes and Le Theatre des Arts alongside a sign for that famous French institution, the Sports Book. The hotel restaurant? Napoleon’s, of course.
At the Tropicana, the Casino Hall of Fame was genuinely entertaining, a well-maintained museum devoted to Las Vegas legends. Amidst tributes to Elvis, the Rat Pack, and various gangsters was an exhibit entitled “Fires and Explosions,” which included extensive video footage of the 1980 fire at the MGM that killed 87 people. The episode, a narrator intoned, “made visitors wonder whether they were safe in Las Vegas” — which made me wonder whether the local tourism authority had ever paid a visit to the Casino Hall of Fame.
When on my last night I gave in to the gambling demons, I at least managed to find a casino — the fabled Binion’s — offering single-deck blackjack. This required traveling “downtown,” which is definitely downmarket.
Even so, just as on the Strip, when you withdraw money from an ATM in hundred dollar increments you’re given not twenties but $ 100 bills.
Not that I had any complaints about Binion’s. Even a relative novice can more or less count cards, playing with a single deck. And besides, I was dealt a blackjack on my opening hand by a dealer who broke the monotony by telling one crude joke after another. An hour later, up a whopping $ 25, I bailed out. “True luck,” I’ve read, “consists not in holding the best of the cards at the table; luckiest he who knows just when to rise and go home.”
MATTHEW REES
