Luckily, quick thinking security guards were able to convince him to leave the actual casino, although he did remain in the proximity of Arizona Charlie’s hotel, in a grassy area outside the building.

The Bomb. Don't Ride It.

Staff was then able to evacuate the 301 room hotel and casino, while the SWAT squad Armor Unit, and Las Vegas’s bomb squad tried convincing the man to give himself up.

However, something didn’t quite add up and while he was being persuaded to surrender, the man seemed more intent on persuading the armed officers to kill him.

The stand-off lasted for a couple of hours, until 11:45 a.m., when the man finally gave up and the device was discovered to be a fake.

Speculating on the bizarre occurrence, Las Vegas police believe the man was trying to commit “suicide by cop,” but fortunately the professional law officers didn’t fall for his game of bluff.

The man is now in custody while an assessment is being made of his mental health and possible federal charges are considered.

A man who left his toddler son in a freezing van while he gambled in a Calgary casino will not face a criminal charge of child abandonment. The court that heard his case withdrew the charge, provided he pleaded guilty to a lesser charge. The man received a one year conditional sentence.

Now, I’m all for justice AND the freedom to gamble, but this makes my blood boil. Leaving a child or an animal in a car in ANY extreme weather is despicable. According to witnesses, the temperature was minus 9C, and the child was only discovered by casino workers who heard him crying. Firefighters were able to rescue him by breaking into the car.

Please, if you have a child and would like to gamble, find a babysitter. Casinos might be no place for toddlers, but freezing cars are quite a bit worse.

Battlelines are being drawn over plans to build a casino close to Gettysburg, the site of the bloodiest battle of the American Civil War, in what opponents say would be a desecration of sacred ground. More than 160,000 men fought at Gettysburg from July 1-3, 1863. Around 8,000 Union and Confederacy soldiers lost their lives during the three days as they fought in and around the Pennsylvania town, with tens of thousands wounded. The battle is often described as the turning point of the war, when the Union ended Confederate Gen. Robert E Lee’s invasion of the north. It’s where Lincoln gave his Gettysburg address, honoured the fallen soldiers and redefined the purpose of the Civil War.

Unfortunately, things aren’t nearly as cut-and-dry as most people would wish. The recession took its toll on Gettysburg, with unemployment in the area doubled in five years. The casino would bring hundreds of jobs, investors say, and would boost the local economy and help to halt a decline in visitors to the battlefield. More than one million people a year visit the battlefield, but the number has been dwindling over the last decade.

Local politicians this week said they would back the proposed Mason-Dixon Resort and Casino and, in exchange, investors in the project agreed to contribute $1 million annually to treasury of Adams County, where Gettysburg, a town of 7,500, is situated.

The casino, which would have 600 slot machines and 50 gambling tables, would be less than a kilometre from what is now preserved as the 2,428-hectare Gettysburg National Military Park in Pennsylvania.

But opponents say the battle took place over a wider area than the borders of the park, and the casino would be right next to the scene of a Union cavalry advance where a number of soldiers are buried in unmarked graves.

A previous attempt to build a casino near the site was defeated by virulent opposition four years ago.

The Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board will decide whether the casino can go ahead.

Shares rose 1.4% to $30.18 in recent trading. The stock has more than doubled this year. That’s what I like to hear!

S&P only expects gradual improvement in performance of the Las Vegas properties over the next few years. Its upswing in revenue reflects continued strong performance in Macau and encouraging initial results from Marina Bay Sands in Singapore.

Las Vegas Sands earlier this year received a strong reception to the opening of its $5.5 billion Marina Bay Sands casino on Singapore’s main waterfront. The casino operator’s strong performance in the Chinese gambling enclave of Macau and prior-cost cutting also have improved the company’s performance–leading to improved prospects for its lower-than-low credit ratings.

The company generates most of its revenue in Asia.

Over 2,000 people were asked which they would rather give up for a chance to win the jackpot. While nearly half said they’d rather give up sex, only a third said they’d give up the popular social networking site. Not all communication, mind you, or even e-mail, MySpace, or Twitter. Just Facebook.

So what does this mean? Has Facebook really become that popular that people can’t live without it? Or are Britons just having some REALLY bad sex? Would you make the same call? And, if you’re giving up your sexual freedoms for a sum of money, does it count as prostitution? This might be something you should take up with your significant other…and please, don’t put it on their Wall.

Adam Ramsay, 32, was given the Ferrari after flashing his license to the valet at Crown Casino, and was allowed to drive off without showing his valet ticket. He was found several hours later, filling up the tank at a gas station, having just reported to the police on bail for a Romanian credit card scam. He had just been sentenced to 35 months in prison. Ramsay, of Flemington, pleaded guilty to theft of a motor vehicle.

Defence lawyer George Douglas said Ramsay was conspicuous and bound to be caught.

“There aren’t too many red Ferraris in Broadmeadows.”

A four-month sentence was imposed, but has been made concurrent with the sentence already being served.

According to dealers, there is a conflict of interest in the new policy. Since floor men have a role in looking for cheaters and for any sort of better treatment by the dealer, it isn’t a good idea to motivate them to look away from cheating by giving them tips that are primarily based on the players’ winnings.

For example, in the previous arrangement, a dealer couldn’t leave a craps bet on the table after it lost because of the certainty that the floor man would see it and blow the proverbial whistle. Now, the floor man might understand that if the player wins, then the dealer will get more of a tip, meaning more of a tip will end up in the floor man’s pocket. This state of affairs might bode well for casino cheaters, but most casino players are very concerned about fairness and would be concerned that if dealers cheat in the players’ favor at times, there might be times that they cheat against the players.

The Las Vegas labor commissioner, though, was unimpressed. He said that the tip-pooling policy at the Wynn Las Vegas and the Encore is legal. He didn’t even listen to the concerns of dealers. There is some speculation that the tax payments from casino powerhouses like the Wynn Las Vegas are simply too high for politicians to risk hurting. Their lobbies are powerful, but dealers still hope to make another argument against the policy upon appeal.

Some casino workers have countered the claim, saying that most security monitoring is done by security crews away from the casino floor who watch what the cameras capture. Since the security team is not part of the tip pool, there is no danger that the security crew would allow cheating like that to take place.
Players, for their part, have argued about other issues. Some have said that they tip because the casino dealer provides service, and they don’t want to tip someone who has provided no service to them. Moreover, players feel that it shows a disdain for dealers and a lack of consideration for floormen, whose salaries should be raised from the casino’s coffers, not from the pockets of the dealers.

The group is evenly split between and women, with a wide range of ages represented. Some are new high school graduates looking for a challenge, while some are single mothers looking for a job with flexible hours that allows them to spend afternoons home with their children. Trainees are being taught to run blackjack, three card poker, and four card poker. Some will be taught to run roulette tables. Craps is considered a much more complex game to be croupier for, so the new group won’t be working the craps tables.

Across the state, casinos are preparing their dealers for the introduction of table games. The state’s Gaming Control Board has hired a former casino cheater to brief dealers, casino guards, and police on common attempts at fraud. George Joseph is an expert on spotting casino cheaters. He’s explained to casino staff about common problems including illegal bets, bottom dealing, and dice changing. According to Joseph, cheating is most prevalent at the craps table, where mainly seasoned dealers will be operating, but it doesn’t hurt to go over the tricks with them again before the table games go into operation.

All of Pennsylvania’s casinos will be performing a dry-run before they open for business. The croupiers and dealers will open a limited number of tables, and a limited number of guests, mostly family members of staff, will be allowed in to play for fake money. They’ll run through the games, using chips, exchanging them for fake money, and seeing that all of the processes run smoothly. If all is well, then the casinos will know that the dealers have been well-trained and that the casinos are ready to operate.

The police haven’t released a lot of details about Ms. Lund. One wonders what kind of condition she was in to think that walking into a casino with a gun was a plan. Was she drunk? High on drugs? Obviously, she hadn’t really thought this through thoroughly enough. Actually, she hadn’t thought it through at all. There didn’t seem to be a getaway car or driver in sight.

Her lawyer will have an easy time convincing a jury that she wasn’t in her right mind just by presenting the facts of the case. Unfortunately, that isn’t enough to make an incompetence plea stick. The fact that she ran away indicates that she knew she was doing something wrong, and an awareness of wrongdoing is usually all it takes to make a conviction stand.

The heist does bring up an interesting question, though. About twenty years ago, a motorcyclist carried out a series of bank heists in which he aimed a gun at the tellers, took the cash from one drawer, and fled on his motorcycle. Would a method like that work in casinos? At first blush, it seems unlikely. Usually, the cage is in the back, and that’s where the bulk of the money is kept. Stealing chips is useless, as they are easily traceable. Moreover, even if the robber were able to pull off the heist that way, the likelihood of being caught on camera is too high.

In short, if you’re looking to manage a casino heist, you’re going to have to be a little more creative than just waving a gun around and grabbing some cash. You might not have to be as clever as Danny Ocean, but the perfect heist is nearly impossible, and certainly far from simple. If you really want to get money out of a casino, there are two good ways to do it. The first is to become a whiz at poker and win even one of the minor events at the World Series of Poker. The other is to own stakes in the casino. The casino owners are the ones who always take home the cash at the casino.

In Eutaw, Alabama, the governor decided to shut down an electronic bingo casino, leaving some 400 workers jobless. Wednesday night, there was a standoff all night between police and protesters angry over the loss of jobs in a country where so many are already unemployed. Ten legislators and the Democratic nominee for governor arrived to show their support, pumping up the crowd. The crowd blocked the way when troopers tried to secure the more than 800 bingo machines in the Greenetrack casino. Sixteen of the protesters were arrested for trespassing and eventually released on signature bonds of $1,000. Democratic state senator Bobby Singleton of Greensboro, one of those arrested, said “We went to jail for poor folks. We went to jail for justice.”

All this ocurred after recent events in which Republican Gov. Bob Riley and gambling task force commander John Tyson Jr. used recent rulings by the state courts to establish that the bingo machines are slot machines under Alabama law, and are therefore not allowed to operate except in Indian casinos. Over recent weeks, there have been raids of several of the state’s bingo casinos, and the threat of raids has caused others to close down. Victoryland in Macon County, which boasts over 6,000 machines, is the lone casino left operating at this point. The gambling task force is looking for a court order to raid Victoryland and eliminate the casino.

While some have claimed that the action is racist in nature, because many of those who are losing their jobs are African American, it seems clear that the issue is not one of race, but of anti-gambling bias. Greenetrack CEO Luther Winn was one of the protestors arrested. He was quoted as saying “I’m devastated for the 400 employees of Greenetrack who don’t have a job now.”