University of Nevada Las Vegas| Gaming Studies Research Center | Dave Schwartz |
University of Nevada Las Vegas |
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Casino [ptz]
formerly the Gaming Studies Weblog |
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 Thursday, August 07, 2003 TRIBUTE UPDATE
This morning, I changed out the items at the New York-New York 9/11 Tribute. I had some great help, so it didn't take me nearly as long as last time. If you are going to be in Las Vegas, you should definitely check out the tribute. It's on the corner of LV Blvd and Tropicana, right below Lady Liberty. SAFE HAVEN NOT SO SAFE A man-made artificial island in the English channel is not working out as a safe haven for internet commerce. Story from Online Casino News: A widely publicized project to transform a man-made platform in the English Channel into a 'safe haven' for Web businesses too hot for terra firma has failed due to political, technical and management problems, one of the company's founders said. The former chief technology officer of HavenCo said on Sunday afternoon that he left the project because his business partners had become nervous about hosting ‘objectionable’ material and were leading the company toward financial ruin, with only about six customers remaining. A HavenCo representative disputed Lackey's characterization of the company's problems and said he was no longer in a position to know details about its workings. 'We have a moderate-sized installation which is growing monthly, very many more than the alleged six customers and their servers in operation, and in the last eight months or so have been able completely to reengineer our network and its international connectivity arrangements,' the representative said in e-mail on Monday. When HavenCo launched in June 2000 to widespread press acclaim, including a ‘Wired’ magazine cover - its founders promised to transform a windswept gun tower anchored six miles off the stormy coast of England into a co-location facility that would be a virtual home for businesses that were too controversial to place their servers elsewhere. The name of the company was derived from the concept of a safe haven from governments around the world that have become increasingly interested in Internet regulation and taxation. ANOTHER STORY ABOUT 'TERROR FUTURES' This one is from Reuters Technology Report on yahoo.com. The idea of using markets to predict future events is creeping into the mainstream, apparently: To John Delaney, chief executive of online exchange Tradesports.com and originator of "Saddam futures" before the Iraq (news - web sites) war, the Pentagon's proposed exchange was not as ridiculous as critics advertised. His company plans to take up some of the ideas the government abandoned. "If you find something so macabre and distasteful to think about -- a terrorist attack on Washington -- if you don't even want to think about it, that's the type of intelligence people need, the likelihood of that happening," he said. Earlier this year Tradesports received widespread notoriety for its "futures" contracts on when Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) would be deposed as the leader of Iraq. Now it has contracts on when Saddam will be found, along with another on the likelihood of weapons of mass destruction being uncovered in Iraq. Another Web site offering betting on current events is NewsFutures.com. Its contracts include whether Arnold Schwarzenegger will be elected governor of California and whether British Prime Minister Tony Blair (news - web sites) will lose his job this year. In response to the Pentagon furor, Tradesports started a new contract: whether John Poindexter, the controversial head of the agency responsible for coming up with terrorism futures, would keep his job by the end of August. It didn't take long, with Poindexter soon resigning under the cloud of this latest scandal during his tenure. For some economists who have studied the prophetic power of markets, the fundamental idea of betting on political events is not that far fetched. "There's a lot of evidence that suggests markets are a very good way of aggregating information. The idea is good and worth exploring," said Justin Wolfers, an assistant professor of economics at Stanford University, who has studied the subject. "The most actively traded contracts in foreseeable futures are political contracts. With contracts like political and geopolitical contracts, you have information flow. Information drives market and you're going to have a lot of trading," he said. Before the Web site for the Pentagon exchange was wiped clean, some of the contracts to be offered were based on the probability of a nuclear strike by North Korea (news - web sites) and of the assassination of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat (news - web sites). That unleashed widespread anger in Congress, where Democrats and Republicans alike branded the proposed exchange "harebrained," "unbelievably stupid" and a way for traders to profit from turmoil and death. The Defense Department promptly buried the program. Then there's the problem of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Because some people believe that there will be instability, will that itself destabilize a situtation? SUBURBAN XANADU REPORT Nothing new on sales ranks; the book has hit a plateau, apparently. Hopefully, I'll score some media exposure and break through soon. I'm having a signing at the Barnes and Noble in Summerlin on September 18, at 7pm. If you are in town, be there! It will give you a chance to have your copy of Suburban Xanadu signed by the author. What better way to reward yourself?
Wednesday, August 06, 2003 SITE NEWS
Nothing new posted today. I'm just trying to get a handle on what works and what doesn't in the resources section. Two suggestions for new pages: organized crime and (the second one) international gaming, particularly in Europe and Asia. FINE DINING As regular readers know, I often post my thoughts about my experienes around Las Vegas. Honestly, I get to see some interesting things. Last night I had dinner at Nine Fine Irishmen, the new Irish pub/restaurant at New York-New York. It's more than just a theme restaurant--there is a real story behind the Irish patriots for whom the restaurant is named. Next time I eat there, I'll read the whole story. Anyway, I highly recommend that you stop in next time you are in Las Vegas--it's a new must see. TERROR BETTING ON LINE, AGAIN Well, the Pentagon DARPA thing fell through (as chronicled here and elsewhere), but there is another online terror pool that is opening: A new website Terrorpools.com has been launched, which some might say has more shock-value than pure game-play value. In its Terror Pools Game ™ registered players can bet on future terrorist events and win prizes and rewards if their bet proves right. The only catch, the website claims is that you shouldn't be a member of the 'Coalition of the Willing', a terrorist on the run, or someone looking for Weapon of Mass Destruction (WMD). With a monthly subscription of $3.75, the site is operated by the MPC Trust. While the creators of this game say it’s 'purely satirical in nature', it’s bound to raise a few eye brows and disturb a few. Players can win from $10 to as much as $1,000 per month by correctly predicting events and the first time members log on they are given 1,000 WMDs more like bonus points to get started. Following Pentagon's proposed website trend, current bets include predictability deaths and war and mostly bad news, like Osama Bin Laden and or Saddam Hussein's deaths, Tony Blair's resignation and disturbingly even a bet on whether the new World Trade Center will be attacked during its completion. Read the full story here. EXTORTION DOESN'T PAY The couple who were paid $2 million to keep quiet about (allegedly) bogus sexual harrassment allegation are now "as poor as church mice." This should give the problem gaming people something to chew on, but I don't expect to see this couple as poster children for treating problem gaming. Big coincidence: now that they are broke, their lawyers have resigned from their extortion cases. Read the full story here from the LVRJ. PROBLEM GAMING PROBLEMS? "Keeping it Fun" week encourages gamblers to gamble responsibly. A good idea, certainly, but there are some who knock the idea: For cynics, Responsible Gaming Education Week is the perfect straight line. "Don't split tens," or "Play max coins," that's Las Vegas-style gaming education, the cynics crack. But casino industry critic the Rev. Tom Grey, executive director of the National Coalition Against Legalized Gambling, Tuesday said Responsible Gaming Education Week -- and this year's "Keeping it Fun" slogan -- are no laughing matter. "For gambling to be fun, you'd have to remove the losing," Grey said. "It's much easier for the (casinos) to set aside a week and call it education than to acknowledge and account for the cost of the product. "Government and the gambling industry has decided that this week obviates the social and economic cost of those who gamble," Grey said. MGM Mirage spokesman Alan Feldman, however, disagrees. "This is not something we do one week a year," Feldman said. "We don't get religion one week a year. This is just the public face of what we do every day of the year." This week marks the sixth incarnation of the event -- sponsored by the American Gaming Association, the casino industry's Washington, D.C.-based lobbying arm. Responsible Gaming Education Week is designed to "heighten awareness of disordered gambling among employees, patrons and the general public," according to an association press release. This year's campaign is centered on a brochure with the same "Keeping it Fun" title. Casino employees will wear buttons, stickers or ribbons with the slogan "to prompt customers to request a copy of the brochure," the association noted. Approximately 83,000 brochures are expected to be handed out this week, down from the 230,000 brochures the association distributed in 1998, the first year Responsible Gaming Education Week was held. Read the full story here from the LVRJ. SUBURBAN XANADU UPDATE Nothing new to report; the numbers are just about the same. See you tomorrow.
Tuesday, August 05, 2003 SITE NEWS
The improvements to the Resources section have arrived. The section is now divided into three parts. News and information has links to the headlines, news, statistics, and financial info sites that I have found, as well as this weblog. Subject Areas has individual pages for specific gaming topics. These are not as in-depth as the subject guides for gaming research, and are really only supposed to point patrons towards sources of information. So if, for example, you wanted information about anti-gambling groups, you would head to the "Advocacy Groups" page, which has links to sites in favor of and against gaming. You can also find information about horse racing and poker, two areas I haven't really stressed on the site previously. The last section, information about information, has a page with links to other acadmic institutes and centers, a page with links to portal sites, the research tools, and the ever-popular arcade. Now that I have the framework of the new section down, I'm going to be fleshing the various pages out. Since I'm not an expert on all of these areas, I greatly appreciate any input. MORE (TRANS)HUMAN THAN HUMAN Any excuse to reference White Zombie is good. In this case, there is a fascinating article from The Register about the minds behind the Policy Analysis Market, AKA, the terror futures market the was axed by the Pentagon: If there was an other-worldly feel to the news last week that the Pentagon was investing in an online futures exchange to reward terrorist atrocities, then the following few days have been even stranger. Rather more than any 'sexed-up dossier', which is a dispute about the integrity of intelligence material, this episode tells us far more than we would have dared to guess about the protagonists and their motivations, and what they think 'intelligence' really is. While we've seen economists and pundits rush to the defense of the aborted 'terror casino', very few commentators have examined the curious ideological motivations behind the ill-fated Policy Analysis Market, which at times appear determined to outdo any occultist. The phrase "not of this world" might spring to mind as you read on. Although the disgraced Iran Contra felon Admiral Poindexter duly carried the can - by Wednesday well-placed sources were leaking that he is to leave his post at the Pentagon's R&D division, DARPA - the idea was actually initiated before Poindexter arrived. So let's meet the brainchild behind PAM, the blond haired and photogenic Robin Hanson, assistant economics professor at George Mason University. With phlegmatic good grace, Hanson announced the news on the Extropian Bulletin Board, that PAM had been axed. Hanson isn't himself an "Extropian", he says, but many of his followers are, so maybe it's a good time you were introduced. And since they're being touted as the radical out-of-the-box thinking that US foreign policy needs, we must not delay. Read the whole article here. MULTISTATE MAYHEM Texas is joining the Mega Millions lottery game. Read the story from the LV SUN. SUBURBAN XANADU UPDATE amazon.com sales rank: 892,362; 2 reviews. barnesandnoble.com sales rank: 115,235; 2 reviews
Monday, August 04, 2003 SITE NEWS
Summaries of the WSOP through 1985 are up. I am redesigning the resources section and adding several new areas. WELCOME TO THE TERRORDAQ A BBC News article explains why a "terrodaq" (I guess that's like the NASDAQ of terror) is inevitable, and why that's not a bad thing, that's a good thing: Professor Leighton Vaughan Williams, director of the betting research unit at Nottingham Trent University has been researching the accuracy of the predictions on websites which trade event-based futures, such as the Ireland-based Tradesports.com which happily takes bets on the fortunes of both Saddam Hussein and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. And his conclusion? When real money's at stake, the predictions are very accurate indeed - and significantly more correct than the results of shadow markets such as the BBC's Celebdaq which use pretend money. Indeed so accurate are the predictions, he maintains, that people reading newspapers in the run-up to the Iraq war had "much lesser insight" into when fighting would start than people who were keeping an eye on what trades were going on. Finally, a great quote from the Department of Defense, in defense of the idea that got them into hot water: "Research indicates that markets are extremely efficient, effective and timely aggregators of dispersed and even hidden information " Read the full story here. BORGATA APPEALS TO YOUNGER CROWD From the Courier Post, a story about how the Borgata is (allegedly) drawing a younger crowd. Anecdotal reports, though, seem to indicate that they are drawing many older people, as well. "We will reach consumers who are not coming here," said Robert Boughner, Borgata's CEO and visionary. "Our goal is to take significant share away from our competitors and, over the longer term, increase the size of the market, both demographically and geographically." Not that Borgata rejects the bread and butter, buffet and slots market. In a conference call Wednesday, Boughner said 63 percent of the names on the casino's database are over 50. Only 21 percent are under 40. But those percentages should change as the hotel casino grows the market. "Borgata is targeting a younger crowd, like Trump Marina. It's going for the traditional customer but is also trying to expand the customer base," said Lawrence Klatzkin, an analyst with Jeffrie & Co. Clearly, Scott and Twana Davisson, both 31, from Montclair, are not Atlantic City regulars. Indeed, they'd fall into what Boughner dubs Atlantic City rejectors. They perceived the resort as run-down, the opposite of the fantasy land known as Las Vegas. Word of mouth "I never had an occasion to go here," said Twana, a first-time visitor to Atlantic City. She and her husband, Scott, waited in line last Saturday night for a table in Noodles of the World, with friends Kirk Taylor, 31, of San Diego, and Dirk Digger, also 31, of New York. The group heard about the Borgata and its Las Vegas-style atmosphere through Taylor's mother, a travel agent. That they chose to try the Borgata sight unseen speaks to the import of word of mouth buzz. A big deal "People are making presumptions," Boughner said. "It's the first new place in 13 years. That's an advantage. New is a big deal. Clean is a big deal. Fresh is a big deal. We also have the luxury of real estate with access and visibility." But the Borgata is depending on more than word of mouth. Its advertising campaign includes a series of ads - some two-page spreads - in upscale lifestyle and consumer magazines, and come fall, prime time television. The ads are in magazines such as Details, Maxim, Playboy, Stuff, Passport, Philadelphia,, Boston and Surface. They also run in Hamptons Magazine and Gotham Magazine, publications skewed to a younger and hipper audience.nificant share away from our competitors and, over the longer term, increase the size of the market, both demographically and geographically." Not that Borgata rejects the bread and butter, buffet and slots market. In a conference call Wednesday, Boughner said 63 percent of the names on the casino's database are over 50. Only 21 percent are under 40. But those percentages should change as the hotel casino grows the market. Read the full story here. SUBURBAN XANADU UPDATE amazon.com sales rank: 892,362; 2 reviews. Moving slightly up. barnesandnoble.com sales rank: 115,019; 2 reviews Rank on the Love and Casino War list of best-selling Vegas books: At 100 out of 100, holding onto bestseller status by my fingernails.
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What is Casino[ptz]? In a sentence: "A weblog featuring news, notes, and opinions from the world of casinos and gambling." Casino is self-explanatory; ptz refers to a surveillance camera that can pan, tilt, and zoom, thus offering the operator a better perspective and more detailed shot. Casino [ptz] was maintained by Dave Schwartz, coordinator of the Gaming Studies Research Center at the University of Nevada Las Vegas. As of now, Casino [ptz] is not being updated. Instead, you can find Dave's wit and wisdom on his own website, www.dieiscast.com. \ Go there now, for casino carpets and more. The opinions expressed are those of Dr. Schwartz and not those of UNLV or any of its students, staff, or faculty. If you have any questions, please direct them to Dave at dgs@unlv.nevada.edu. ---------------------------------
Quizzes Test your knowledge with two quizzes I have devised for your enlightenment and entertainment. 1. Do you know gambling? If you've read this weblog, I'll bet you do. Take the... (view the Scoreboard) This quiz features ten questions about gambling, mostly in casinos.
2. Do you know casino history? Take the... (view the Scoreboard) This quiz features ten questions taken from the pages of Suburban Xanadu. If you've read the book, the quiz should be a snap. Or, take the quiz and see what you are missing. -----------------------
Classic posts Mystery
Creature from Maryland Dave's book quoted in Parliament Bird
gets Trumped Slots, urban design, and destination dreams Don't be afraid, the clown's afraid too Hastert blasts casinos/2 tiger tales --------------------------
In Memoriam
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Other blogs Alberta Gaming Research Institute Library Online Casino Legalization Blog
Email Dave if you want him to add your blog. --------------------------
Who is Dave Schwartz? Dave Schwartz is the coordinator of the Gaming Studies Research Center at the University of Nevada Las Vegas, which means that he spends most of his time at work doing three things: 1) Extending and improving the collection of books, journals, and primary materials about gambling known as the Gaming Collection. 2) Working on digital initiatives, such as this weblog and the GSRC site, that facilitate the understanding of gaming research and gaming issues. 3) Answering questions about gambling from media and researchers, or directing them to the answers.
Before coming to UNLV, Schwartz worked in the Atlantic City casino industry as a surveillance officer. He is also the youngest person known to have received a Ph.D. in History from UCLA.
Schwartz is the author of Suburban Xanadu: The Casino Resort on the Las Vegas Strip and Beyond, which is an intelligent, accurate account of the creation and legacy of the Las Vegas Strip. Click on the link for more information about this best-selling book, or just buy it from amazon.com. --------------------------
In his own words: "To answer the biggest question I get, no, I don't gamble. I know the odds and, having spent more hours than I care to remember watching people gambling, it doesn't excite me at all. So why do I study gambling? Because the industry and the interactions fascinate me. "Las Vegas is an interesting place to live, and my job gives me a good window on the city. In a typical day, I might go from talking about gambling books with a system player to answering a question from a reporter from a major newspaper to meeting with casino executives. So I think I can bring a unique perspective on the industry and the people who make it work." To learn more about Dr. Schwartz, go here. ---------------------------- The unofficial Casino[ptz] mascot
It's the mystery mammal, of course. Dave is currrently developing a "Mystery Mammals" cartoon idea. Hey, if "Father of the Pride" works, maybe animal cartoons will become the next big thing. ------------------------------ Just because Dave just likes these images, and hopes you do as well.
It's always important to remember your roots. Dave has chosen this image to constantly remind him just where he came from. It is a heraldic crest gone wrong.
Oh yeah, Dave also likes to see his name in lights. This is a genuine, non-photoshopped image...or is it?
Casino carpet is almost (but not quite) abstract art. This is from a real casino floor in a real Las Vegas Strip casino. Guess where and win a prize!
Here are some closing thoughts from Orff's Carmina Burana, "Fortuna, Imperatrix Mundi" (Fortune, Empress of the World): O Fortune, Somehow I don't think you'll find that in any casino advertisements. But Carmina Burana would be a great casino show, particularly sectons 2 and 3, which deal explicitly with gambling, drinking, debauchery, and sex. The opera is almost an adaptation of the 13th century version of "what happens in Vegas (or, in this case, Beuren), stays in Vegas. Certainly it has all the elements of a great revue extravaganza. |
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