Atlantic City

In honor of this cool city, I’ve put together some cool facts that I bet you never knew about Atlantic City:

• All the street names on the Monopoly board are found in Atlantic City, except for just one, Marvin Gardens, which can actually be found in Margate.
• Four and half times more steel was used to build the Taj Mahal Casino resort in AC than was used to build the Eiffel Tower in Paris!
• The first Miss America competition took place in Atlantic City in 1921 and the show was hosted there until 2005.
• The world’s largest pipe organ can be found in the Boardwalk Hall where the Miss America pageant was held.
• The first ‘twist’ dance was introduced by Chubby Checker at the Rainbow Club, Wildwood in 1960.
• Cape May was a popular swimming spot for residents in Victorian days.  However, the dress code was slightly different to what we can expect to see on beaches today.  For one, men and women swam at different hours. In addition, women wore dresses and shoes in the water while swimming, and men had their own strange attire – woolen short and shirts!
• Also in Victorian Days, the promenade in Atlantic City was a place to see and be seen. It was the area where respectable gentry would walk up and down the beach area, wearing their finest clothes and making an outing out of it.
• Wildwood’s shoreline is one of the only ones on the East Coast which is not diminishing. In fact, the beaches have the potential to expand by up to 100 feet in a single year!
• The TV series, Boardwalk Empire, which tells of gangsters in Atlantic City during Prohibition years, is actually filmed in Brooklyn, NY!

For several weeks now, I’ve been waiting – with the rest of my fellow online gamblers – to see whether Christie would have the courage to take his state to the forefront of gambling legislation and give the bill the final green light.  Unfortunately, tonight I was shocked to learn that the governor has vetoed the bill and send it back to the State Legislature with suggestions that the matter would best be resolved by national referendum.  I cannot tell you how frustrated I feel, and I can only sympathise with New Jerseyians who could almost touch a legal and regulated online gambling platform… only to have it taken away from them.

On a different note, Iowa seems to be making slow but steady steps towards its own intrastate online gambling system. The bill that will hopefully see this become a reality passed through to the Senate floor by a 9-6 vote and I’m holding thumbs that the whole process doesn’t come to nothing like New Jersey’s bill did.  The Iowa online gambling bill will allow state residents to play at regulated poker sites. Operators of these poker hubs would need to pay $3 million front for the right to run them, and the amount would be deducted from tax revenue in the long run. 

The great thing about these bills is that they have the potential to bring in serious money for cash-strapped states, battling with growing deficits. The Iowan bill, for example could bring in as much as $30 million a year in taxation and all it needs is a governor with a little vision to see how much of a difference it will make for the state.

But Uston was itching to do more with his mathematical skills and he eventually met up with Al Francesco who taught him all he needed to know about card counting and professional gambling.  Uston eventually quit his job and decided to make a career more to Atlantic City after casinos were legalized in the 1970s. The casinos soon picked up on Uston’s card counting skills and barred him from playing there, but instead of giving up and trying his luck in another city, Uston decided that professional gamblers should not be discriminated against because they had better skills than the average recreational gambler, and therefore took the case to court. Incredibly, the New Jersey Supreme Court agreed with Uston’s arguments and, until today, Atlantic City casinos are not allowed to bar gambling pros. Unfortunately, however, due to the law, casinos have found other ways to maintain a house advantage over players, such as introducing extra decks.

After winning his lawsuit and bringing blackjack to the fore of mainstream attention, Ken Uston decided that it was time to try his hand at writing a book about blackjack. His 1977 bestseller, The Player, revealed many secrets of team players, including his old pal Francesco. He was seen by many professionals as a snitch for letting the public in on their tricks of the trade and it took a long time for his colleagues to let him back into the fold.

Throughout his 20 year blackjack career, Uston continued to challenge some of the best casinos in a number of states and became a famous name in gambling circles. He died in 1987 from a heart attack.

While the Strip remained stable, in downtown Las Vegas the win was down by a massive 19% and by 23% in North Las Vegas. South Lake Tahoe also experienced a double digit fall of 12.9% to $23.7 million.

Areas falling by smaller amounts included Washoe County (-2%), Elko County (-2%) and Carson Valley, down 4%.

Meanwhile, in what should have been one of the busiest seasons of the year, Atlantic City’s casino posted a total win of $347.5 million for August, representing an 11.3% decline from the $391.7 million posted for the same month a year earlier.

In total, slots revenue was down 11.3% in August to $245.1 million, while table games also fell by 11.4% to $102.4 million. Atlantic City has now experienced 24 months of declining casino revenue and is currently down 8.4% for the first eight months of 2010 with winnings of $2.5 billion.

Falling by the least amount was Caesars Atlantic City down by 5.7%, followed by Harrah’s Resort Atlantic City (-6%), the Showboat Casino Hotel (-7.5%) and the Trump Taj Mahal Casino Resort (-8%).

All the rest experienced double digit falls in their revenue, including the Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa (-11.7 %), the Tropicana Casino and Resort (-13.9 %), Trump Plaza Hotel Casino (-14%), the Atlantic City Hilton Casino Resort (-14.5 %), Bally’s Atlantic City (-14.9 %), Trump Marina Hotel Casino (-20.4 %), and the Resorts Atlantic City, down 21.2 %.

Here’s hoping next year will see some gains all around!

Some of the move is economic. Machines that aren’t played but are out on the floor still require maintenance. As a result, if machines aren’t played to a reasonable capacity most of the time, the casino prefers to pull them from the floor. Machines that stop generating interest are pulled to make room. That room can be for machines that do generate interest or it can be room for larger aisles. Over recent years, casino patrons have started wanting more floor space, more air, and a better overall experience.

In January 2005, there were nearly 42,000 slot machines in Atlantic City. These days, there are around 29,000. Atlantic City casino executives point some of the blame at the Pennsylvania casinos which have opened their slot machines to compete with Atlantic City, drawing customers not only from Pennsylvania, but also from many communities in northern New Jersey. For residents of Cherry Hill, New Jersey, for example, the Bensalem, Pennsylvania casino is around a 45-minute drive, while Atlantic City would take about twice that in driving time.

Connecticut, Delaware, New York, Rhode Island, and West Virginia are also noting slumps in slots machine revenues and have taken some of their machines off of the floors. Mitchell Etess, CEO of the Mohegan Sun Casino in Connecticut said “Basically, we’re just reacting to a lack of demand. If there isn’t a demand for a large number of machines, there’s no need to have them out.”

In Delaware, the introduction of table games is hoped to even out some of the loss in slot machine revenue. For Atlantic City, though, the decline just continues. The casinos are going to have to find more ways to appeal to the public. For those who remember Atlantic City before the casinos, the beaches, the boardwalk, the peanuts, and the salt-water taffy have been lost in the blur of casinos. Maybe it’s time to demolish some casinos instead of trying to spread the meager profits among so many casinos and let the city return to its former glory.

The licenses alone have generated $165 million in revenues for the state, leading Governor Rendell to say that “on balance, it will be good for the people of Pennsylvania.” The state expects to see another $15 million in licensing fees this year from two more casinos that have not yet opened up their table games, and the projected income from the 16% tax on table game revenues is expected to yield another $75 million for the state.

While the numbers certainly look great in a time when most states are having extreme difficulties making their budgets work, policy analyst Lucy Dadayan from the Rockefeller Institute of Government at the State University of New York in Albany warns against thinking of tables games as a magic bullet. She says “States cannot become dependent on gambling revenue, as the tax benefits generated from the gambling are usually short-lived and do not keep pace with the growth in spending and other revenue sources.”

She warns that it can create financial damage in the long run and worries about the social and personal implications as well. For those who have a gambling addiction, the added availability of table games, which tend to be higher-stakes than slots and video poker, could mean higher rates of bankruptcy, divorce, and crime. Representative Paul Clymer said “…divorce, embezzlements, bankruptcies, dysfunctional families, and crime. This only takes money out of the local economy. There is no ripple effect. You lose your money, and that’s it.”

Obviously, he forgot that those casinos will hire hundreds of new employers to be dealers, cashiers, servers, and security guards. In a time when many are unemployed, several hundreds of jobs seem like more than just a ripple effect.

For Atlantic City, though, the news is bad. They will have to improve the boardwalk, enhance the resort experience, and deal with the fact that they’re no longer the top casino destination on the east coast.

Come in to the Resorts with a Resorts Casino Club card on a Saturday or Sunday July 10-31, run your card in any slot machine or play at a table with rated table play between 6pm and 10pm on Saturday or 1pm to 6pm on Sunday. A winner will be selected every half hour during those hours. The prize is $500 in E-ZPass credit and $500 in gasoline.

For those who like to go “down the shore” as it is known to the locals, the prize can mean many more weekends in Atlantic City walking the boardwalk, eating salt-water taffy, and playing games at the local casinos.

Kathleen McSweeney, senior vice president of marketing for Resorts Casino Hotel said “We are proud to partner with the SJTA to design a program that will further encourage travel to the shore this summer. Atlantic City is within one day’s driving distance of one third of the country’s population, so this promotion was tailor made for people looking to vacation close to home.”

To get a Resorts card, players must be at least 21 years old. They can sign up for the card at the promotions desk when they are at the casino. That is also where they can verify any additional rules and regulations.

As far as promotions go, this is a pretty nice one. You can play pretty much any game as long as it’s a game that gets you rating. Whether you win or lose, you get entered in an additional drawing with a prize value of $1,000. While it won’t make you rich, it could certainly help you have some more vacation bucks, even if it doesn’t help with much else.

So if you’ve been wondering how to pay for your next long road trip, and you were thinking about trying to roll the dice for it, rolling them at Resorts might just give you a better chance at getting the bills paid. Just remember, there’s no guarantee. It’s just another chance at another super-practical prize that you can really use.

For some people the the thrill of chance is not good enough, some people go to the casino to make money not to win money. Over the years there have been very few successful scams pulled off against casinos but there have been some…

One man, Richard Marcus, is widely respected as a successful casino cheater. He started his career as a straight up gambler, though he gave this up when he found himself broke living under a bridge. He then gained himself a job as a legitimate baccarat and blackjack dealer. It was at this point that Marcus began to plan his casino cheats.

One of which is entitled Savannah and is simple sleight of hand, Marcus was would bet fifteen dollars on a hand of blackjack using three five dollar chips. He would also place a five hundred dollar chip hidden underneath the top three chips, placing the five dollar chips angled slightly towards the dealer so as to obscure the value chip underneath. If he won he would collect, if he lost he would slip the five hundred dollar chip out from the pile when the dealer turned his back and play it again in the next hand.

This sleight of hand is the essence of the Richard Marcus school of casino cheating. He didn’t work alone but formed a team of casino cheats who would enter into some of the biggest most luxurious casinos in the world with the object of bleeding the house dry. With his team he would play all manner of confidence tricks using pretty women as distractions to casino dealers and practicing for hours on end the intricacies of the sleight of hand, the hand movements and gestures that appeared innocuous but were in fact the sign language which he used to communicate with his team of professionals.

He waited to retire before telling all to the world but when he did he really gave the casinos something to think about. You can see him explaining his antics in his own words here:

New Frontier Implosion – Tuesday, November 13th, 2007:  The King once lived here, Elvis Presley that is.  After over 65 years of business, this Vegas landmark was taken down with an awesome fireworks show:

Stardust Implosion – March 13th, 2007: Another memorable Las Vegas casino, the Stardust was opened for business in July of 1958. In 2006 the doors closed forever and almost a year later it was imploded with style and a cool countdown:

Hacienda Resort Implosion – December 31, 1996: The Hacienda Resort first opened its doors in 1956. In 1996, the resort was destroyed with an amazing show to make room for Mandalay Bay:

The Dunes – October 27, 1993: Operating from 1955 to 1993, The Dunes was brought down with a fiery show to make room for one of Las Vegas’ most prestigious hotels, The Bellagio:

Atlantic City Sands – October 18, 2007: After only being around since 1980, The Sands went through many tough times, including a bankruptcy in 1998. The building went out in style with an incredible fireworks display: