Tuesday, January 1, 2008

Las Vegas

I was first introduced to Las Vegas in late 1994, and the first time I actually participated in "evil" gambling activities was in early January of 1995. I was in a turmoil about a situation that existed in my family at the time, and boy was it nice to be able to forget about things at the tables! It was a thrill I'd never known -- on that first trip, my friend and I were in Vegas for two days, and we spent over 30 hours of that time sitting at low-minimum (i.e., $1.00-$2.00) blackjack tables in Binion's Horseshoe, the Golden Nugget, and the Lady Luck (where we were staying). As often happens, I came out slightly ahead, and the hook was set.

For the next seven or eight years, I maintained a sort of love-hate relationship with Vegas, marked generally -- of course -- by steady losses at the tables interspersed with a few small wins. But the important thing to me was that Vegas was affordable entertainment, a place where I could go regularly to feel alive without blowing a ton of money
.
The rooms downtown were generally affordable; the blackjack was relatively inexpensive no matter what my luck was; good deals on food abounded; and there were myriad other things to do, like seeing shows (many of which were already expensive and required occasional splurging), riding roller-coasters, going bowling, climbing on indoor climbing walls, etc. The city obviously had its unsavory underbelly -- how could it not with all those undocumented aliens trying to shove cards into your hand advertising "exotic dancers" and what-not? -- but that was easily ignored.

Unfortunately, casino gambling then became increasingly more-popular in this country than it had been, which I attribute to both the proliferation of Indian gaming and a series of extremely effective advertising campaigns. The natural consequence of increased demand for Las Vegas (notwithstanding a great rise in supply, as more and bigger hotels went up) was that prices for everything -- lodging, food, entertainment, and gambling itself -- gradually rose and then, from my perspective, skyrocketed. Nowadays, you're lucky to find a room, at any time of the year or on any day of the week, for less than $75/night, even at hotels where I wouldn't have considered staying ten years ago. Buffets, once a ubiquitous bargain, can cost up to $30 at the better Strip hotels, and food quality is always suspect at the less-nice hotels. I haven't seen a production or headliner show in years, but I can only imagine what they cost now.

Worst of all -- or perhaps best of all -- the gambling has gotten much more expensive, often with significantly more-disadvantageous rules and various mechanisms designed to foil card-counting. Most "noobs" in Vegas these days have no clue how they're being ripped off when, say, the payout on a blackjack (i.e., Ace + facecard or 10 on the first two cards) is 6:5 instead of the traditional 3:2, or how strongly a continuous-shuffling machine reinforces the house advantage in blackjack -- or, for that matter, how much statistical advantage the house retains when it allows only 2x odds on pass-line and "come" bets in craps. No, the "noobs" will play just about any game offered -- and poorly at that -- so why shouldn't the house push the envelope in that regard?

Of course, in economic terms what this all means is that I've essentially been priced out of Las Vegas; at some point the idea of going there passed over the line for me from low-cost, low-risk excitement and entertainment to being an intolerably expensive, higher-risk grind. I keep thinking the corporate suits who took over the town in the late 1990s will eventually take things too far and run Vegas into the ground, but the "market" hasn't come close to topping out yet, particularly with the current poker boom ongoing. I still don't regard playing blackjack or craps as inherently, or at least monstrously, evil (something that puts me slightly at odds with my religion), but where Vegas has gone, I refuse to follow if only for economic reasons. It's left a hole in my life that I haven't been able to fill by other means, but I have no hope now that Vegas for low-rollers will ever come back.

Still, much as Rick and Ilsa (in Casablanca) would always have Paris, I will always have good memories of various trips to Vegas in the 1995-2001 timeframe.