Entries from August 2008 ↓

CROWN says it is still in the hunt for “compelling” US casino acquisitions despite slashing some of its existing US investments by $181 million.

Crown took the knife to the $414 million book values of minority stakes in Harrah’s Entertainment and Stations Casino Group, just six months after buying them.

Its 19.6 per cent stake in Fontainebleau in Las Vegas was included in the writedown, along with a $45 million loss flagged earlier this year when it quit plans for a Crown Las Vegas casino resort.

Despite the new writedowns Crown chief executive Rowen Craigie said the company, while cautious, had not become completely gun shy.

Source

The Worlds Greatest Gambling Scam was not pulled off in a Casino, but aboard the Titanic.

One of the greatest gambling scams of all-time did not take place at a poker table but it was certainly hatched on one. Believe it or not, it happened onboard the Titanic, the night before the great ship hit the iceberg. The guy who pulled it off went down with the vessel, but before dying he recounted the scam to a young stowaway while they lay clinging to a life raft in the icy waters of the North Atlantic. The first thing the bowled over lad did upon his rescue was to tell anyone else who’d listen.
Among Europe’s elite and wealthy on the passenger manifest for that fateful voyage was a good old Anglo-Saxon con artist. His name was Piers Mason and he was as dashing and charming as they came. He travelled with a well-heeled and very attractive woman named Isabel, who for some reason resented the upper crust of society and liked teaming up with Mason to rip off its elegant members.
Mason was quite aware of the roster of fortune holders making that historical crossing and wasn’t about to miss it for the world. He had called in all his markers and then begged, borrowed and stole every penny of front money he could without knowing exactly how he’d use it on the ship. The one part of his plan he was sure of was that removing those rich pigeons from their money had to be done through some form of gambling.

Read the rest of the story over at Richard Marcus Books.

Ouch Bodog looks like its losts its precious domain names.
This is definetly not something you want to do if you have spent a bundle of money dominating all sorts of gambling terms online.

It appears that at least in the short term Bodog Entertainment Group is going to be forced into using the alternate domain newbodog.com for all of it’s gaming customers. The online gaming and entertainment giant appears to of lost control over the domains bodog.com and bodog.net due to a United States legal judgment over a Process Patent lawsuit filed in Las Vegas last year.

The patent belongs to Las Vegas resident Mel Molnick of 1st Technology LLC and broadly covers the process by which gambling is performed over the internet. 1st Technology LLC has been successful in receiving substantial settlements from other gaming companies in the past. The lawsuit against Bodog was for just over $48.5Mil USD.

With his grip on Asia’s gambling capital slipping, Stanley Ho has gone on the offensive. Let´s just call this a massive offensive. The king of Macau´s Gambling Industry is changing everything by tearing down his flagship casino.

Last month, the Hong Kong-born gambling magnate announced plans to tear down his flagship Lisboa casino and hotel and build his biggest and most opulent showcase yet, at a cost of $1.54 billion. The 86-year-old also pushed through a long-delayed initial public offering for the company he controls, SJM Holdings Ltd., raising $494 million despite stock-market jitters.

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Automagically updated Poker Tables are coming to the Vegas Strip.
This could start a trend that changes all of Vegas.

PokerTek, Inc., the industry pioneer and worldwide leader in automated poker tables and related software, is pleased to announce that Excalibur Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas is installing 12 PokerPro tables. Excalibur is both the first casino in Nevada to install automated poker tables and the official field trial site for PokerPro in the state. Pending final regulatory inspection and approval, Excalibur plans to open the new room Friday, August 22 at 6 p.m.

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For a long time lenders would toss money at the gambling industry. With the economic woes casinos are having. That has all but stopped.

Way back when there was a time when casino developers could get anything they wanted in the forms of loans. They usually were awarded low interest rates and for the most part had no problem paying back the loans once the casinos were built. That was then, this is now.

Lenders are backing off of giving out loans to casino developers. The industry has shown for the first time that it is not immune to the problems of the economy and lenders are taking notice.

Source

Much of the new $500 million Horseshoe Casino in Hammond, Ind., is about more of what it had and more of what the majority of the competition already has.There are more slots, more table games and definitely more space.

It is all about attracting Chicago Residents to Hammond to spend money on this new Indian Gaming Casino about an hour outside Chicago. Casino management is also bringing in big names like Bette Middler to perform at the ¨Shoe¨to help attract more clientele. Time will only tell if this theory works or not.

In Pennsylvania a Casino Project many thought was dead in the water will roar back to life next week after regulators approved changes to transfer the license to another developer.

The roar of construction trucks and cranes is expected to return within days to the site of a stalled Pittsburgh casino project after state regulators approved a plan Thursday by new investors to rescue the venture from the brink of bankruptcy.

Chicago real estate billionaire Neil Bluhm, who is spearheading the new partnership, said approval from the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board means the deal can close and contractors can be paid the more than $50 million they are owed.

“We’re getting ready to start wiring money tomorrow and we should be under construction by Monday,” Bluhm told reporters after the gaming board’s 7-0 vote. “I think it’s a great decision for the city of Pittsburgh and the commonwealth and this will be a great project.”

Casino earnings dropped across the board amongst publicly traded casino companies, but not as far as analysts once thought. Atleast according to Poker News:

Several publicly traded casino companies have posted their second-quarter earnings over the last couple of weeks. While results were mixed, Wall Street loved the news, sending almost every gaming stock higher on the results. Wall Street had apparently been expecting the worst and received better.

The most uplifting news came from Wynn Resorts. While Wynn saw some erosion of its Las Vegas revenue, its property in Macau more than made up the difference. And unlike most of the other companies in the casino sector, Wynn actually grew their bottom line year-over-year, posting earnings of $271 million versus the $89 million from last year’s second quarter.

Oklahoma is home to more than 90 Indian casinos of various sizes, shapes and qualities. That makes up 25% of the Indian Gaming Casinos in the United States.

These are the Indian tribes that own casinos in Oklahoma: Absentee Shawnee. Apache. Arapaho. Cherokee. Cheyenne. Chickasaw. Choctaw. Citizen Band Potawatomi. Comanche. Creek. Delaware. Eastern Shawnee. Fort Sill Apache. Iowa. Kaw. Kickapoo. Kiowa. Miami. Modoc. Osage. Otoe-Missouria. Ottawa. Pawnee. Peoria. Ponca. Quapaw. Sac and Fox. Wyandotte.

Sometimes its just darn difficult to located casinos in Oklahoma. Never fear Oklahomans are very friendly and will share the neccesary info to get you where you are looking to gamble.