It’s an old cliche with casinos that the house always wins, and obviously that’s true to an extent, otherwise multi-billion dollar casinos wouldn’t be sprouting up all over Vegas at the moment. If the house didn’t win, how could they afford these vast projects, right?
Why, then, do people insist on gambling if they can never win? Well, as these stats show, some people do win, and the prizes on offer are as huge as everything else in Las Vegas.
You go to Vegas, you gamble. Now, you may not go to Vegas specifically to gamble, but you’ll find yourself doing that anyway. The first time I went, I spent a whole dollar at Caesar’s Palace, just to say I’d gambled at Caesar’s Palace (yes, I am that lame!). This year, I spent about $10 – not exactly what you’d call a high roller, but you never know. One year, I will come back with $1 million from the quarter I put into the slots!
Or at least I would if I learned how to gamble properly. I went to the Venetian, and put in my obligatory solitary dollar, and what do you know, I won $21. My gambling philosophy is, if you win more than you put in, cash out quick! So I promptly cashed out, and got my ticket.
In Vegas, the machines no longer pay out actual cash. Cash can be stolen, it’s heavy, and it can be used at other casinos. Tickets that represent how much money you’ve won, on the other hand, are much better. It’s less obvious how much money you’ve won with one, they can’t be transferred between competing casinos, and obviously they aren’t heavy. So all casinos use their own ticket system, with each slot machine paying you in a ticket rather than in 1,000s of quarters.
Now I should have remembered this when playing the slots at The Venetian. But no, I completely forgot, left it at my hotel (Circus Circus), only found it again when checking out, and so ended up with a ticket that could only be cashed at The Venetian (over a mile away)! What else could I do but leave it for the chamber-maid? I am an arse!
Although the strip is only 3.5 miles long, you can’t get anywhere without a taxi driver. You certainly can’t drive down the strip - it’s far too congested, and takes hours. Equally, walking is a killer, as you spend so long walking through the casinos, you don’t have the strength left to walk between them (which is why there are huge moving sidewalks through some of the hotels, to help take the load off - the Venetian even has the world’s longest moving sidewalk, while the one at the Excalibur leads all the way to the Mandalay Bay, albeit in different sections rather than as one giant sidewalk).
So you’re stuck with the taxi-driver to get around town, which also means you’re stuck with his laconic wit and his suggestions for the best places to go around town. And this year, we had some real gems!
I was walking across the strip to Planet Hollywood (the old Aladdin) from the Bellagio, having just watched the Bellagio’s fountains (which are great, by the way, and well worth a look). As I was crossing the road, I noticed four huge blokes all be-decked in black suits. It was their suits that first made me notice them, as no-one wears all-black suits in Vegas in the middle of the day.
I thought no more than that though, and my eye drifted lazily to the tiny blonde girl walking next to them with the expectant smile on her face. As I looked at her some more, my mind started to make a few connections: “I know you from somewhere”, “hang on, they look like bodyguards”, “here, aren’t they your bodyguards?!” Yup, Vegas had two Paris’s that day - it was Paris Hilton, who was in Vegas to watch Prince play at the Rio (among many other things!).
