internationalcasinoreview Bellagio discontinues US$25,000 chip News NORTH AMERICA


Bellagio owner MGM Resorts International is discontinuing its standard $25,000 chip following an armed robbery of a reported US$1.5m in casino chips from a craps table in mid-December. A man wearing a motorcycle helmet stole the chips before escaping on a motorcycle at around four in the morning. Anyone holding chips of this denomination, including the robber, must redeem them by April 22 after which they won’t be worth more than the plastic they are made from. MGM Resorts spokesman Alan Feldman revealed that the remaining chips were taken out of use within an hour of the robbery with the venue immediately filing to discontinue them. The Bellagio robbery was the 10th casino heist in Las Vegas during 2010.


‘Top heavy’ gambling expansion fails to make it through Illinois House


When Illinois’ 10th casino finally opens in Des Plaines, the ‘Prairie State’ will have one gambling position for every 719 adults. The House though failed to vote on further expansion. Perhaps one gambling position for every 110 people was a step too far.


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The Illinois House adjourned in mid January without voting on a gam- bling expansion bill and so put the brakes on a proposal that would have brought nearly 90,000 gambling positions to Illinois and a giant land-based casino to Chicago. Governor Pat Quinn had


already described the bill as top heavy. It would also have seen four new riverboat casinos and six racinos at the six existing race tracks in Illinois, already approved by the Illinois General Assembly who hoped it would bring US$1bn in tax each year.


The size of the bill had


drawn some stinging criti- cism from the Chicago Crime Commission, which claimed it would certainly lead to crime syndicate infiltration and political corruption. Arthur Bilek, executive vice president of the Chicago Crime Commis- sion, called the legislation ‘dangerous.’ “It is beyond my compre- hension that the Illinois


Ameristar Casino and Hotel in East Chicago, one of nine existing venues in Illinois


in the state of Illinois,” he explained. “We have huge problems. You don’t look at little things to fix it. You look at big things to fix it.” Tom Swoik, executive


Senate has passed this bill,” Bilek said. “If passed, this legislation, more than any other in my memory, would have changed the complex- ion and perception of the City of Chicago and the State of Illinois...and not in


a positive way.” The three tracks outside of Cook County would have been allowed 900 gambling positions whilst each of the three tracks in Cook County would be allowed 1,200 gambling positions.


Golden Nugget serves up piece of the action


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Just when you thought you’d seen it all in Las Vegas up pops the Golden Nugget with the chance to buy, well, golden nuggets from Gold-To-Go, a machine that actually vends gold bars and coins.


As of January 5, 2011, the world famous hotel and casino is the second location in North America with a per- manent installation of a Gold To Go ATM, the world’s first gold vending machine. Fol- lowing the global premiere at the Emirates Palace Hotel in Abu Dhabi, the European launch at the initial European


locations in Italy, Spain and Germany and the North Amer- ican launch at the Town Center in Boca Raton, Florida, the Golden Nugget joins an elite group to offer the rare opportunity to purchase gold from a vending machine. “We’re proud to be the first


in Vegas to offer this amenity,” said Tilman Fertitta, CEO and chairman of Landry’s, parent company to the Golden Nugget. “We offer our guests the ultimate Las Vegas expe- rience and what’s more fitting than an ATM that dispenses gold, especially since the Golden Nugget is home to the Hand of Faith, the world’s largest nugget of gold. It lets


26 February 2011 • northamericanews


our guests who win a little money in the casino go right over to this machine and make a little money and invest it in a wise way.”


A computer inside the


ATM collects real-time prices based on those listed at the online portal Gold-Super- Markt.de. This makes risk premiums unnecessary. The Golden Nugget’s Gary


Del Prete added: “We kind of like the idea that Vegas is sort of over the top. And what better than to have a gold plated vending machine that’s open for basically 24 hours? A one gram piece is pretty affordable; around $60.”


The proposal’s sponsor,


Senator Terry Link, who has failed in the past with similar proposals of gambling expansions due to their size, defended the scale of this proposal “We’ve got a huge deficit


director of the Illinois Casino Gaming Association, had warned that bill was a bitter sweet. He said it had ‘some- thing for everybody and that’s part of the problem.’ He said it was ‘so large that it takes away almost as much as it is giving’ adding that Illi- nois would have had ‘more gambling positions than Indiana, Missouri and Iowa combined.’ Swoik warned that if the bill had passed, existing casinos would risk losing 12 per cent of their revenues equating to up to 800 employees Illinois currently has nine casinos, each of which would immediately be allowed to increase wager- ing positions for 400 cus- tomers, to 1,600 each, and another 400 in 2013. Andrew Zarnett, a gaming


analyst at HY Gaming, said: “We would not be surprised to see much of that proposal come back in 2011, albeit in a smaller magnitude.”


Koreans stole


$900,000 at Foxwoods


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Connecticut state police have charged four Koreans with cheating Foxwoods Resort Casino out of nearly US$900,000 by using a ‘holdout device’ to switch cards whilst playing bac- carat.


Detective Martin Graham said that during 14 visits between September 8 and October 20 last year, Young Su Gy, 60 and Wookyung Kim, 34, worked together to cheat the casino out of $870,505. Video evidence showed that Gy would conceal the device on his left forearm while his associate Kim would wave baccarat score cards to block the view of the dealer. Gy would cover the cards he was dealt with both hands and switch them back and forth, one on top of each other. He would then produce a card that would benefit his wager from the device and swap it for the card he was dealt. State police arrested Gy in


November and charged him with 16 counts of cheating at gambling, seven counts of first-degree larceny,


three 16


counts of possession of a cheating device,


counts of third-degree larceny and six counts of second-degree larceny. Police are investigating the possibility that the group is part of a Korean syndicate of card cheats.


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