A reliable source sees some light at the end of the Lady Luck tunnel: "CIM took ownership of the timeshare property last Oct. as LL Timeshare. Just this month they're doing the individual deed assignments."

Don't get your hopes up for a big makeover of the Gold Spike, downtown's skankiest casino. However, some modest improvements are being requested, including improved fire sprinklers and "upgrading the restaurant," which would barely qualify as a lunch counter.

Gloom over Macao: Coverage of the Macao market has been initiated by Majestic Research and it's less than thrilled with what it found, including a April-May flattening of the mass-market sector. Also, the physical amount of play at Venetian Macao "is still below its share during its first few months of operation last year." (Guess the novelty factor has worn off.)

Game occupancy -- the number of positions in play -- is described as well below average ... 25% below average. Again, this may reflect the plopping of a casino behemoth onto the market, as opposed to rolling out its gargantuan new amounts of casino capacity in stages (and by that I don't mean a "soft opening"; Las Vegas Sands has had enough of those). "There continues to be very little play at The Venetian's high end mass market tables," the report concludes.

PBL Melco's Crown has "ramped significantly" in its mass market play, although it's now sacrificing some of that for VIP play "much of which occurs behind 'closed dooors,'" and therefore beyond Majestic's ability to measure.

Business at Wynn Macau, meanwhile, was observed to have "increas