Dipping into the dispatch box, S&G finds the following tidbits, courtesy of the nice people at J.P. Morgan:

Alex Yemenidjian is serious about revamping the Tropicana Las Vegas. He's just inked a contract with Bally Technologies for a player-tracking system and other BYI goodies ...

... fading interest in MGM Grand Detroit has caused MGM Mirage to take it off the market. Also, with the company looking at price concessions to its CityCenter condo buyers (i.e., forfeiting money it was counting on to finance CityCenter), it may need to borrow against its Detroit palace, one of the few MGM properties still unencumbered ...

... Atlantic City, like Macao, is and will probably always be essentially a daytripper market. So there's symmetry in the fact that China State Construction Engineering Corp. has been signed to finish the stalled Revel project on the Boardwalk, to the tune of $1.7 billion. A July 11 opening is predicted. This is the best news to emerge from Atlantic City in quite a long while.

Speaking of good news, gaming revenues for Nevada's July are in and, basically, they don't suck. Yes, the Silver State was down 8% and the Strip was 11%. But June's year/year comparisons were far suckier (-15% on the Strip), so there's some consolation to be had. In fact, compared to a series of truly craptacular year/year comparisons -- all in double digits, except for last May -- it's darn near cause for celebration.

Table game drop was down overall but the casinos played lucky, particularly at baccarat. (Watch the first-season Mission Impossible episode "Odds on Evil," if you need a quick primer on this game. You'll get scintillating performances by Martin Landau and Barbara Bain in the bargain.)

Slot play is way down (-17.5% win on -15% handle) and North Las Vegas, bouyed by Aliante Station, was the only part of Clark County to have a positive month. Laughlin got hammered pretty badly (-19%) and neither Reno (-21%) nor South Lake Tahoe (-33%) seems likely to ever fully recover from tribal competition across the border, Tahoe especially. If there was a moment for some "unbundling" by overexposed companies, this is it.

Didn't get the memo. Would somebody break into the R&R Partners biosphere and let oxygen into the office of Billy Vassiliadis? "Billy V" was the author of this boneheaded pensée, which he shared with the Los Angeles Times:

"You've got to drop your rates, but you don't want to create a sense that this is a discount experience or that the experience itself has been diminished."

What the ... ? Las Vegas' recent success was built on the perception (and actuality) of a "discount experience," and lower prices are unlikely to "diminish" a tourist destination that is now synonymous with exclusivity and unaffordability. Vassiliadis, like Sheldon Adelson and the Las Vegas Convention & Visitors Authority, seems convinced that the current doldrums are -- to use my favorite Internet-board gaffe -- "a blimp [sic] on the radar."

They need to wrap their heads around the reality that 2004-like levels of business were damned good at the time (superb, in fact) and that Vegas needs to get back to the value-based messages that fueled the preceding 15 years of growth. Or, as David G. Schwartz writes in a particularly trenchant DieIsCast.com entry: "Of course, unpredictable events can make a hash of any predictions, so it’s possible that five years from now the casino industry will be employing 100,000 more people than it does today. That would be after the federal government offers Americans a $10,000 annual tax credit against travel to Las Vegas, and Las Vegas alone."

Seems like some folks in the marketing bidness should be taking Dr. Schwartz's classes.

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Both the opening of Sands Bethlehem, and recent expansions of Meadows Racetrack & Casino (+29%) and Mohegan Sun at Pocono Downs (+21%) drove an 18.5% increase in slot revenue this July. With $19.6 million in gross revenue, Sands was only good for fifth place, barely behind Mohegan Sun ($19.8 million).

Adelson's new slot parlor was well off the pace set by Philadelphia Park Casino & Racetrack ($30.8 million) and The Meadows ($29.9 million). Harrah's Chester didn't perform too shabbily, either, pulling in $27.3 million from the one-armed bandits. Both it and Philadelphia Park were less than 2% down from their July '08 revenues, putting paid to the theory that Sands Bethlehem would draw -- at least in any significant degree -- from the Philadelphia area. Only nearby Mt. Airy Resort & Casino is taking a serious hit.

Downtown Reno's nicest casino, the spacious Silver Legacy, is taking a big step downmarket by succumbing to the cheesy allure of RoboPoker. Even that bit of good news for PokerTek wasn't enough to keep Aristocrat Leisure from writing down its share of the company.

Steve Wynn is The Man, at least in Macao, according to the controversial Jim Cramer. I agree.

Why then, is Wynn Resorts COO Marc Schorr cashing out at a time when the stock is arguably undervalued? Maybe he's just one more American who got overextended in the go-go Bush Era.

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Sig Rogich's choo-choo to nowhere. Some parts of Sig sold separately.

"Even with the Victorville-Palmdale link, which is not a dead certainty, a Las Vegas rider who wanted to see the Magic Kingdom would have to travel from Sin City to Victorville to Palmdale to Sylmar to Burbank to Los Angeles to Norwalk to Anaheim.

"Start early if you want to see the fireworks." -- CityLife Editor Steve Sebelius on the Harry Reid/Sig Rogich juice train. Speaking of "juice," über-lobbyist (and Reid crony) Harvey Whittemore has prevailed again in one of the greasiest juice jobs I've ever seen. Poor John Ascuaga's Nugget; it never stood a chance.

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Occasionally, S&G readers allow me to share their off-list bon mots with the general public. Such is the case with one Pacific Rim-based gentlewoman who's familiar with the sights and sounds of Macao. Evidently, it's a place where voluptuousness is craved all the more for being in short supply. Hence, the gyrations of a certain Carmen Electra at Crazy Horse Paris prompted this sage observation:

"Macau sure could do with some of this type of sizzle"

No doubt ... but we need Ms. Electra here. (And aren't you gents glad S&G was given a non-gratutious rationale to post yet another photo of Carmen?)

On a serious note, the Electra guest gig stirred up local media "buzz" far out of proportion to its duration. In terms of oomph for the buck, it's given the Holly Madison push at Planet Hollywood a serious run for its money: more evidence that stars are born, not fabricated. Whatever one thinks of Ms. Electra's troubled personal life, she's a "stage creature" and Vegas could use a few more right now.

Supporting the troops. Big ups to the El Cortez for giving $15 dining credits to active-duty servicemen (and women) at its Café Cortez and Flame steakhouse. Our military is grossly underpaid for guarding our liberties (such as appreciating Carmen Electra), so anything the casino industry does by way of a "thank you" deserves S&G's salute.

If you're in the Reno area and are an aficianado of the stellar cable TV service known as Cinemax, I consider it my civic duty to alert you to the following fact: Monique Parent (aka "The Thinking Man's Sex Symbol") will be spokesmodeling -- or something of that ilk -- at a Reno-area Costco next week.

Among the prolific Parent's many titles is the Citizen Kane of erotic films, Play Time ... or so they tell me. <cough> So if you've admired Ms. Parent's fine, wry thesping in Dark Secrets or The Key to Sex, stop by and show your gratitude.

Just a suggestion.

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Down in Florida, the tide may be turning in favor of the Seminole Tribe. Both the Florida Retail Federation and Restaurant Lodging Association have thrown their support behind the status quo, as represented by Gov. Charlie Crist's Class III casino compact. Crist's unilateral gambling expansion has the not-so-small problem of being unconstitutional but this latest turn of events ratchets up the pressure on solons to pass a version of the compact that meets judicial muster.

That'll be no problem with the state Senate but the uptight House would like to roll back the Seminoles to slots-only status (and would get rid of the casinos altogether, if only they could in their benighted heart of hearts). The table-game genie isn't going back into the bottle -- at least not until the federal courts have their say -- so the Solomonic question at hand is how to level the playing field for private-sector racinos without sacrificing the Seminole tax revenue that Crist secured. Easier said than done, obviously.

"Is too!" "Is not!" Both MGM Grand Detroit and Greektown are refuting a report in the Detroit News (with which MGM has taken issue before) that they'd 86'd former Philadelphia 76er Allen Iverson from their casinos. Let's face it, the man is a boor but he's a wealthy boor, so neither casino is likely to turn him away as long as he only bounces basketballs, not checks.

Headless casino. Not only did Harrah's Entertainment sack the GM and five other execs at Harrah's Reno, it won't be replacing them. At almost any other company, running a casino by remote control would come as a surprise but Harrah's has the reputation of employing a ruthlessly standardized business model. Besides, the company has to free up some dough to pay its new Internet/World Series of Poker guru Mitch Garber, whose former employer, PartyGaming.com, just cut a deal with the feds.

The luck of the Fertittas. Dodging yet another bullet, Station Casinos extended negotiations with its debtors by another month. While some form of bankruptcy at Station is inevitable, the company continues to fend off a takeover attempt by Boyd Gaming. However, Station says that when it comes to the terms offered to unsecured creditors, it's hanging tough. If that's the case, what's to discuss? (Or is Station being more flexible than it's letting on publicly?) My money, so to speak, is still on Station brass and co-owners Colony Capital retaining possession of Station and at a substantial discount to its market value, too.

An obscure racino company is cleaning house and relocating from Las Vegas (where it had no logical business being headquartered) and back East, where all its business is. The board of Empire Resorts really wasn't minding the store, was it?

The company might at least saved a bundle on long-distance charges if it had condescended to have its corporate offices in New York State, where its physical operations were, and not in tax haven Green Valley. But don't cry for outsted CEO David Hanlon, who parachutes out with 100 grand and plus another hundred large for nine months of "consulting services." These days, nothing succeeds like failure -- provided it's done on a grand scale.

Update: These are the same clowns whose Maryland slot application got tossed because they didn't bother to include the mandatory application fee when they filed.

Pennsylvania's biggest gaming screwup is history ... sort of. Former Mount Airy casino owner Louis DeNaples is guilty as hell of hanging out with the wrong crowd but innocent of perjury and will maintain one degree of separation from the casino, which remains in the DeNaples family. The Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board can claim a semblance of victory but the four-and-a-half-year imbroglio is a lingering embarrassment to a body whose vetting process has been inarguably the sloppiest in the U.S.

The PGCB needs to pay more attention to background checks and less to "juice" (see Barden, Don) -- and also to develop questionnaires that aren't so "imprecise and potentially confusing" they could open applicants to charges of perjury. It would also behoove Pennsylvania to quit "stovepiping" PGCB and state police investigations. Were it not for a lack of information-sharing (prohibiting by Keystone Kop, er, State law), this whole mess would probably have been avoided.

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That $33 million jackpot scored by Reno resident Rachael Renée Romanick highlights two fallacies surrounding progressive slot jackpots. The first is the urban legend that Megabucks always "hits" at the newest casino. (It's a useful myth, seeing how it would motivate slot players to flock to, say, M Resort on the perception that Megabucks was about to go into a "hot cycle."*) After all, Ms. Romanick's big win occurred at lowly Terrible's Rail City, a Sparks casino** that's not only practically unknown outside Washoe County, it's in bankruptcy too.

Second, casino executives ought to quit railing -- pardon the pun -- against revenue-participation games and take a minute to kiss the shoes of IGT. After all, it's the latter who's responsible for paying the jackpot. Imagine the difficulty Ms. Romanick might have collecting from stoney-broke Herbst Gaming (owner of Rail City) ... or any of a number of casino companies whose solvency is currently open to debate.

* -- a term that a former editor of mine unforgettably dubbed "useless voodoo"

** -- Is that Herbst CEO Ferenc Szony doing the voice-overs on the Rail City Web site? It sure sounds like him and Szony loves to put a personal touch on his casino promotions.

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At least one good thing happened today. In other news ...

"Infidelity is not relevant ... in Nevada": Faced with being all over the teevee and not in a good way, Gov. Jim Gibbons set off a series of distractions. First, he tried to score a photo op with the BMOC. (Midnight Jim's blustery public comments form a droll contrast to the obsequious tone of his letter to POTUS.) Then he managed to piss off the Armenian community. Whoops, there go those campaign contributions from MGM Mirage, governor.

Maybe those dollars will go to former casino owner and outgoing Reno Mayor Bob Cashell. He's the latest Nevada Republican to pass up the chance of taking on Sen. Harry Reid, preferring his odds against the decreasingly viable Gibbons. Cashell says he's got "well-connected" backers down here in Southern Nevada.

Ensign for President? Despite having been an ineffectual fundraiser and candidate-recruiter during his tenure at the RSCCC, Nevada's junior senator (and Circus Circus scion) appears to have his eye on the Oval Office. S&G encourages such presidential aspirations, if for no other reason than that all the other presumptive candidates for 2012 are from the anti-gambling subset of the GOP. Since Ensign's nickname on Capitol Hill used to be -- and perhaps still is -- "Johnny Casino," he can expect to hear a lot of that on the campaign trail.

Elsewhere ...

The chicken is back! The tic-tac-toe-playing chicken is the new star attraction at Greektown. When you're $777 million in the hole, a bit of fowl play can't hurt. The chicken is only playing Detroit through June 9 but an extended engagement would be advisable: With MGM Grand Detroit openly on the market, Greektown's chances of finding an interested buyer just took a mighty wallop.

St. Stanley. The benediction of the American Gaming Association will be bestowed upon Stanley Ho during G2E Asia. Quoth AGA President Frank Fahrenkopf, "we are excited to hear his thoughts during his keynote address.” Yes, Frank, especially the part where Stanley starts ranting about the pernicious effects upon Macao of American capital, as he is so wont to do these days.

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Yesterday's Chapter 11 proposal by Station Casinos was paradoxically both inevitable and premature. From the day Station drew on its revolving line of credit to fund operational expenses, the handwriting was on the wall. However, Station chose to precipitate a crisis by opting not to make an interest payment ... even with $350 million in the bank.

Already one is hearing grumbles that Station ownership is trying to bust the balls of its bondholders, who balked at the last refinancing plan, to put it kindly. In return for an accelerated redemption date, senior debtors are being asked to take 50 cents on the dollar (mostly in the form of more paper), while junior debtors will have to settle for 10 cents on the buck -- a considerable premium to the current value, one must in fairness note. Or they could call Station's bluff and send the whole kit 'n kaboodle into bankruptcy court.

Aliante: A Station too many?

The Fertitta clan, Colony Capital (co-owners of Station) and the secured lenders have all signed off on this ... of course. They're the ones with the least to lose, should it go through. Colony and the Fertittae are sweetening their previous offer with a promised $244 million cash infusion. It would be cricket if Frank III and Lorenzo Fertitta ponied up $60 million -- if said contribution is proportional to ownership stake -- considering that they've taken considerably more than that out of the company in recent years. Together with their sister and brother-in-law, the boys toted home nearly $495 million from the buyout alone.

What's not on the table are asset sales, even though Station has more undeveloped real estate in the Vegas Valley -- plus the Reno area -- than you can shake a stickman at. (Not to mention that expansion is currently pointless in a market that has lost its elasticity for the time being and is, in fact, constricting). Evidently call-center employees and 401(k) contributions are expendable but pipe dreams like Viva are sacrosanct.

Investment service Moody's estimates that as many as 17 casino companies are at risk of default right now. (Scary!) Should Harrah's Entertainment fall, the enormity of ensuing "SPLASH!" will drown out the Station fiasco -- but it shouldn't. In effect, if not in intention, private equity buyouts of casino companies have become a sham whereby management gets its company back for pennies while leaving bondholders holding the bag, too. That's disgraceful.

Speaking of Moody's, the Las Vegas Review Journal's "Inside Business" blog has an amusing Wall Street-into-English translation of a Moody's investor note on Landry's (owner of the Golden Nuggets) that's a dense thicket of cover-your-ass verbiage. I was going to say Moody's "waffled all over the place," but I don't care to insult waffles.

As for Landry's CEO Tilman Fertitta, he has more reason than most to delve into today's coverage of the calamity at Station. After all, the Fertitta brothers helped Tim Poster and Tom Breitling "play" him during his bid for the Nuggets. So, no love lost there. In fact, I'm sure that Tilman is sitting down for an extra-large schadenfreude supper tonight.

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After a fitful start, blogorrhea is sweeping the business desk of the Las Vegas Review-Journal, resulting a veritable flood of news nuggets today ...

Planet Hollywood prexy Michael Mecca has resigned to pursue the proverbial "other opportunities" at a time when revenues have been up. On the next Vegas Gang, Jeff Simpson predicts -- with unassailable logic -- that Mecca is going over to Crown Ltd. to head up James Packer's North American gambling operations (in which case Mecca will have his work cut out for him, but congratulations all the same).

A less-charitable alternative theory would be that Mecca has been scapegoated by Planet Ho for having been in charge when it got dragged into the Omar Siddiqui scandal. (The indicted ex-Fry's Electronics exec lost $9 million there in one gambling session alone.) Planet Ho's lawsuit against Siddiqui got tossed last month.

"No more wire hangers!" Whatever the case, somebody leaked Siddiqui's player profile to the San José Mercury News and, geez, this "whale" sure is a whiny little bitch. (Sorry, I meant that to read, "a high-value, loyal customer and a good friend of our casino staff, who look forward to his every visit.")

Good news for visitors: The Nevada Department of Transportation is at least talking about widening I-15 south of Tropicana Ave. Whether NDOT can get the money from Gov. Jim "Scissorhands" Gibbons is another matter, but it can at least remind Midnight Jim that he himself identified California as Nevada's Numero Uno tourism priority in the course of disparaging Asian marketing as "a waste of taxpayer money."

And who knew that the Circus Circus RV park was the new "in" place to stay?

Randy Black, aka Mr. Thrift. Many of his employees are out of work, the former Si Redd's Oasis may be a hollow sepulchre these days and his Black Gaming has defaulted on debt. But we don't need to pass the hat for the self-aggrandizing Black Sr. quite yet.

Seeing financial havoc all around him, Black decided that austerity measures are for other people (like his employees) and awarded himself a nearly 4% raise for this year, escalating to 5% for each year afterwards. Whatever meagre EBITDA Black's Mesquite casinos achieve, 5% of that will be redirected into Black's pockets as a "management fee," on top of $21,200 in other goodies.

At a time when Nevadans from all walks are being asked, or sometimes told, to accept wage freezes and outright reductions, Black's greed is a disgrace to the state. R-J reporter Arnold Knightly is to be commended for keeping tabs on SEC filings and ferreting out not-so-niceties like this.

In other news ...

Folies Bergere: 49 is the new 50.

From showgirls to no-girls: What's Ron Thacker's first official act as president of the Tropicana Las Vegas? What else but shut down Folies Bergere well shy of its 50th anniversary? The no-frills spirit of Columbia Sussex remains, protestations to the contrary, clearly alive and well [sic] at the Trop.

Thacker's press release made noises implying that the Trop had a replacement for Folies waiting in the wings but, when pressed by Norm(!) Clarke, a Trop flack could only weakly respond that it was "exploring options" and was "definitely not closing up shop." (The Trop gave the Las Vegas Sun a different, more definitive story, saying it does have a new show en route.) Unspecified property improvements are also promised. Pardon my skepticism, but we've heard that before -- and are still waiting.

Geez, first Titanic and Bodies take a hike over to Luxor (where they're doing even bigger business). Now this. Since it's a just a wee bit too cold for swimming right now, is there any reason left to visit the Tropicana? Bueller ... Bueller?

Harmon blame game: It looks as though the truncation of The Harmon into a 25-story stump is ultimately the fault of the same people who overlooked scofflaw remodeling jobs at sundry Harrah's Entertainment properties: Clark County's ever-(not)-vigilant building inspectors. "What? Fifteen floors of deficient rebar you say? Gosh, I guess I missed it. My bad. When's lunch?"

The Las Vegas Sun's story comes with a helpful graphic that shows how Perini Building Co. and its subcontractors ineptly installed and then further compromised the rebar that ultimately turned the (would-have-been) 49-story Harmon into what we might call The Half Harmon. In the accompanying video, Clark County's Ron Lynn threatens the culprits with a "potential disciplinary hearing." Oh, they must be quaking in their boots.

Peppermill exec in line for state job. No, not the beloved Peppermill restaurant on the Strip but rather Reno's Peppermill Resort Casino. Director of Marketing Kim Stoll is one of six finalists for the job of Nevada's tourism czar. Not making the cut was underqualified Gibbons crony Kirk Montero. Then again, Gibbons wants to eliminate the selfsame job that he tried to gift-wrap for Montero, so maybe the also-rans in this competition are its real winners.

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Could Herbst Gaming President Ferenc Szony be headed to the Cosmopolitan? That was one of the rumors bruited about at G2E last week. It would make sense. Szony, one of S&G's favorite gaming executives, is no stranger to operating in difficult markets. Right now he's got the unenviable task of pulling the Herbst Gaming jalopy out of the deep ditch into which the Herbst brothers piled it.

Also, the Cosmo still has no gambling expertise on board, a glaring omission for a casino-based property that's already got more than a couple of strikes against it. In Reno, Szony's had to keep the Sands Regent afloat in an out-of-the-corridor location and a declining market ... and by all accounts, he's succeeded. He's got the right stuff, casino-wise, and should have been running a Strip property years ago. If the Szony-to-Cosmo rumor isn't true, it should be.

Fontaine-blown? While over at the Convention Center, I heard a dire forecast regarding the future of Fontainebleau Las Vegas. Namely, its splendid isolation, surrounded by various 'failsinos' like Crown Las Vegas and Echelon, may result in very attenuated business. One greatly hopes otherwise, but don't discount the James Packer Factor: The Aussie heir has displayed a reverse Midas Touch of late and he's a key Fontainebleau investor.

Not a Harrah's property.

The 11% Solution. More grim news from G2E -- Harrah's Entertainment is contemplating cutting its maintenance budget by as much as 89%. Considering the disgustingly filthy condition of the Harrah's Las Vegas parking garage last Thursday night, I believe it. That place looked like it hadn't been swept up in weeks, if not months (though the casino itself was quite spic-n-span). The hobo encampment near LVA HQ is quite tidy and well-policed by comparison.

So Frank P. in Negaunee, if you're reading this ... beware!

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