A Virtual Pandora\u27s Box: What Cyberspace Gambling Prohibition Means to Terrestrial Casino Operators

Recently, there has been increased pressure on the U.S. Congress to act against Internet gambling. While it may be tempting for terrestrial casinos to watch idly as the federal government moves to eliminate a potential competitor, those in the business of gaming must be leery of any federal efforts to halt gambling online. In the final analysis, the same arguments to restrict consumer choice in cyberspace can be easily used against gambling in real casinos-a compelling reason for terrestrial gaming operators to forcefully oppose any federal restrictions on Americans\u27 rights to gamble

Seeking value or entertainment? The Evolution of Nevada slot hold, 1992-2009, and the slot players’ experience

Since the advent of the current economic decline, speculation about the impact of “tighter” slot machines on gaming revenues and visitation patterns has been rife. Indeed, it is easy to make an intuitive link between higher slot hold percentages—that ultimately make the slot playing experience either shorter in duration or more costly, or both—and declines in revenue, handle, and visitation. But examining the slot hold percentages and slot denomination mix in the context of the changes in slot technologies over the years 1992 to 2009, it becomes apparent that there was no sudden arbitrary decision by slot managers to increase hold percentages. Instead, players have chosen, in increasing numbers, to play higher‐hold, lower denomination machines in place of lower‐hold, higher denomination ones. Player choice, not managerial initiative, has been the key determinant of higher slot holds in Nevada, and this pattern likely holds across the national industry

Concentration on the Las Vegas Strip: An Exploration of the Impacts

Looking at two snapshots, albeit from a distance, gives an overview of how concentrated the gaming industry in Nevada has become: In 1998, 23 publicly held corporations owned 65 casinos that grossed more than $12 million that year from gaming. These casinos grossed 75.48$12 million that year from gambling, pulling in 78.0% of that state’s total gaming revenue that fiscal year

Not undertaking the almost-impossible task: The 1961 Wire Act’s development, initial applications, and ultimate purpose

For a Camelot-era piece of legislation, the Wire Act has a long and unintended shadow. Used haltingly in the 1960s, when the Wire Act failed to deliver the death blow to organized crime, 1970’s Racketeer-Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) became a far better weapon against the mob. Yet starting in the 1990s, the Wire Act enjoyed a second life, when the Justice Department used to it prosecute operators of online betting Web sites that, headquartered in jurisdictions where such businesses were legal, took bets from American citizens. The legislative history of the Wire Act, however, suggests that it was intended for a much more selective application, and that the use of the Act to penalize those who provide cross-border betting services to Americans, while perhaps faithful to the broad letter of the Act, is a departure from its spirit. Analyzing the social and political ferment in which the Wire Act and its companion laws were brewed shows that the entire package of ostensibly anti-gambling legislation passed by Congress in the summer of 1961 was actually an anti-organized crime measure that only attacked purveyors of gambling because of their important position in the organized crime chain of command. It was not then intended as a sweeping federal effort to curtail public access to gambling. Further, the fact that the same committee in which the attorney general received his initial education in organized crime proposed, in the following year, an expansion of the Act to cover technologies not specified in the original law, suggests that the Wire Act was intended to cover only a limited range of wire facilities—not the broad spectrum of communications technologies, most of which had not yet been invented in 1961, for which later prosecutors dusted it off

How Bill Eadington Changed Our Lives

Since Bill Eadington’s death in February, we’ve come to appreciate just how influential a figure he is in today’s gaming studies world. Hundreds of academics, regulators, and gaming industry professionals have shared their stories of “How Bill Eadington changed my life.

Erving Goffman’s Las Vegas: From Jungle to Boardroom

Sociologist Erving Goffman’s presence in Las Vegas never yielded a definitive publication. Though it informed his work about action and interaction, his time in Las Vegas—both as a blackjack dealer and a player—remains one of the great what-ifs of gambling academia. This is regrettable, not only because the field would have benefited immeasurably from the analysis of a figure of Goffman’s talent and repute, but because Goffman was in Las Vegas exactly as the city’s casino business was undergoing its most significant shift, from small-scale, syndicate-owned ventures with links to former and current illegal enterprises elsewhere to massive, publicly-traded, mainstream-financed concerns

Jews and Catholics Discussing Bible and Jesus

In a recent paper (Schwartz, 1989), I argued that Jewish-Christian dialogue cannot efficaciously proceed in a conflictory, confrontational manner. Rather, I agree with Paul van Buren (1980) that dialogue is best perceived as conversation between like-minded people, relating with one another to achieve congenial understanding of the differences which divide them. This characterization suggests that participants in interfaith discussions need to be sympathetic yet critical; secure in their own faith, yet accepting of faiths different from their own. These contrary terms of an agreement between partners in dialogue indicate why discussions between Jews and Christians may be difficult—but not impossible