From: bhoughto@sedona.intel.com (Blair P. Houghton)
Subject: BARGE
Organization: Intel Corp., Chandler, Arizona
Date: Wed, 26 Aug 1992 17:51:32 GMT

		1992 2d BARGE
	AS-OFFICIAL-AS-IT-GETS WRAP-UP
    and social diatribe on the sin of gambling

Las Vegas is dying.  It certainly isn't growing, in a
philosophical sense.  I spent 4 days in the Mirage, the
best the city has to offer, and was not impressed in the
slightest.  I was expecting it to be grossly overrated,
but it was in fact more like a dive than even my usual
distributions would have predicted.  The casino bathrooms
are in disrepair, reminding me very closely of those at the
Plaza (are you listening, Steve Wynn?).  The hotel staff is
ignorant of casino marketing procedures.  And, perhaps
symbolic of the entirety of the Mirage's problem, the rare,
white tigers are fat and wallow in their own feces.

It's obvious where the money goes:  across the street into
a sinkhole where they're building a lagoon, hotel, and two
pirate ships, in a vain effort to attract the family
demographic away from the Excalibur.

Worse, there isn't a cheerful employee anywhere in the
town, except perhaps at the Frontier, where they get to
thumb their noses nightly at the faux unioneers on the
sidewalk.  The dealers' attitudes run from disinterested to
irritated to rude, and the pit crews are more surly than
usual.  They seem to refuse to react to tipping, and act
insulted by friendliness.

Bally's cardroom is gone, gone, gone.  The consensus is
that the 31 tables at the Mirage are putting many of the
other cardrooms out of business.  The consensus among the
Mirage room's employees is that it will put itself out of
business, as well, once it implodes from the weight of its
own popularity.  It can't expand to hold the increased
traffic.  The casino would never agree to removing
coin-operated machines to make room for poker tables.
Their reason for not simply replacing poker with slots is
that poker is an accomodation to the wives of high
rollers.  The only solace for players is the rumor that the
Pirate venue will have a 15-table room.  By then there should
be no other tables in Vegas, and the 15 tables will be
populated by more of the local sharks who swarm nightly
over the Mirage (is there some genetic connection between
all these guys, or is it merely coincidence that they all
look like David Sklansky's psychotic younger brothers, with
the thousand-millimeter stare that comes from watching
their own, foreshortened version of a horizon--the pot--and
their permanently impatient scowls).  The current room is
so crowded and predatory that serious poker players may
simply forego the hassle and travel to California to play.
I certainly won't be going back to Vegas without a definite
increase in my desire for that atmosphere.

The apparently permanent closing of such a viable and
attractive casino as Main Street Station was merely the
first.  When Bally's goes under, when this third dip of the
current recession cuts finally into the travel budgets of
the last of the possible visitors, and when people realize
that casino gambling at the newer venues that are opening
all over the country is pretty much the same as it ever was
in Las Vegas, then the rest of the Vegas casinos will begin
to topple.  For a while there won't be enough money to
support this sort of city, and there is no longer the legal
or political pressure to contain this brand of immorality
to the state where it was born.

Being a degenerates' degenerate, however, I expect this
won't be the last of the Vegas BARGEs.  It's just that
next time you'll be able to bring the kids...

On to the chronology:

8pm, Thursday:  arrive at Mirage; valet the car; fuck with
dimwits at the front desk; play poker; eat; sleep; play
poker;

2am, Saturday:  meet at the Frontier for a shake and some
fellow-BARGEr bashing; discover Pai-Gow Poker, the game so
slow you have to play mo'; up to the tower at Stupak's for
the raising of the Mikey (we forgot the helium, but the
aerodynamics of his hairfoil were supercritical this time,
so we took advantage of the immoderate winds buffeting the
town and simply lofted him like a kite); back to the Mirage
with Zim, who pretty much gave me $70 at the poker
table...; more poker; more food; more sleep; more food;
more poker[*]; a short hassle with the personnel over
whether they're complete assholes about meal comps; free
food; a quick hemmorhaging of the wallet at poker (one
thing Sklansky never tells you:  the little old ladies who
wander in after Sunday Brunch will bluff your balls off and
grind you to spackle when they have the nuts, then take
your money over to the $30-60 game); more food; more sleep;
a big hassle with the total morons at the front desk about
whether it's possible to be comped even partially for a
hotel room by the poker bosses; have the valet fetch the
conveyance; make like Bob Barker during duck-hunting season
in Kansas and get the flock out of Dodge...

[*] This is, in fact, the highlight of the trip:  from
about 4am to about 7am on Sunday morning, the $1-5 Stud
game got amazing.  First, one of the dealers pretty much
ran from the locker room to the table and bought in for $35
or $45.  I get three diamonds and bet $5 to clear the table
of any other possible lucky-pullers, and he's the only
caller.  By sixth street, I have the flush, ace-high on the
board, but he's got an ace up and is sticking with me, even
when I check-raise as soon as I'm filled.  On seventh
street the pot's about $60-80 and he's down to his last
dime, so when I check-raise him again he tosses in his last
nickel as an all-in call.  I flip the flush; his aces-over
loses, he gets a dazed look (gets it back, actually) says
"well, that was fun," and beats feet for the door like he
was late for a forest fire.  When I make a comment about
the strangeness of it, and realize aloud that I must've
just cleaned that guy out of half his tips for the night,
the dealer dealing the game just shakes his head and says,
"it's happened to all of us many a time."  I felt bad for a
hand or two, but then the game got even more amazing.

Two locals came over from the $10-20 game after about 12
hours of being hammered there.  A jet-lagged golfer, up
early and waiting for a late tee-time, sat down with a pile
of green chips.  A tall, lanky guy from Tulsa sits down
with a few reds and starts betting to the bone and
winning.  Two more dealers quit the shift (the room gets
down to about 10 tables this time of night) and sit down
with us.  Loose isn't the word for it.  Nobody who is
betting is expected to have cards.  No round of betting is
allowed to expire without raising it to at least $5.
People are winning $70-100 pots with A-K hands.  Money is
flying around the table.  I slip into full Sklansky mode,
easing off on bare bluffs and ripping into the pot when I
have even the shadow of a decent hand.  By the time Tulsa
and the Golfer leave, another dealer is broke (not really;
just lost his stake and went to join the $5-10 game) and
one of Sklansky's psycho younger brothers has pretty much
handed me enough money to turn a $30 losing evening into a
$50 winner.  After breakfast, of course, I got it all
reamed out of me by garishly dressed matrons just come from
church...

				--Blair
				  "What the FUCK is an eight-year-old
				   child doing running around between
				   the slots at 3:30 on a Sunday morning
				   in the Mirage?"
				   -actual question, to actual pit boss,
				    who actually couldn't have cared less
Newsgroups: rec.gambling