Author: Deke Castleman

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Bobby Vegas — How To Look for Advantage Plays (and Van Halen)

Bobby Vegas: Friends Don’t Let Friends Play Triple-Zero Roulette

This post could also be titled, “The One That Got Away.”

Treasure hunts require patience and lots of false starts. Discover an opportunity that gets shut down by the house? Join the club. But finding that elusive 102% game or major house miscalculation? JUMP! (My nod to Van Halen.)

I didn’t jump. I found it. Then missed it. That’s the VIP lesson today. Find. Confirm. Jump.

I’d been studying non-linear recurrence theory and discovered the Birthday Paradox. This is a counterintuitive expression where, within a surprisingly small group of people, two can have the same birthday.

Most people assume, okay, two people, 365 days, half of 365 would be 183 people. Right? Wrong. The correct answer is 23. From 365.

The birthday paradox is Any X = ANY X.

With each pair, the match percentage increases exponentially, because ANY 2 can match. It’s not two people matching one number; it’s any two numbers matching.

With 23 people, its breakeven is a 50% chance of a match. With 30 people, it’s 100%. Believe it or not.

So what does this have to do with advantage play?

Double-zero roulette has 38 numbers. A new game, Double Action Roulette, was introduced at the M years ago. It had two wheels, one inside the other. You could bet on either wheel or both. You could also bet on when one number lands on both wheels. Max bet $5. Payout 1,200-to-one. Massive house edge (17%). And major house mistake.

They’re thinking: two wheels, one number, 1,444-to-one — and not any two numbers matching with just 38 numbers. Jackpot. I’m very excited, but am leaving that day. So I called a roulette AP associate, with whom I was working on another roulette project. “Go to the M right now and hammer this! It’s going to pay off 5 to 10 times a day!” (In other words, $24K to $60K. A day.)

Due to other time commitments, he declined. My plane took off. I looked down at the M, sighing.

Back a few weeks later, I headed straight to the M. Double Wheel Roulette was nowhere to be found. Innocently, ahem, I asked the floor manager, “Where’s Double Wheel?”

“Oh, we had to take that out. It was hitting at least five times a day.”

Go ahead. Hit me. Again. Harder.

My mistake? I never should’ve left town. I should’ve confirmed and jumped. I’d identified a major opportunity. Great! But I also missed a potential $24K a day. Not so great. Painful lesson learned.

Still, that’s the nature of the beast. Keep seeking. And when you find, confirm, then go ahead and … JUMP !

Note: Maybe I was spared. To overcome the massive edge, you’d have to eliminate seven numbers through charting wheel bias. Aspects of live roulette that no longer exist allowed for wheel bias to overcome the house edge. Roulette manufacturers eliminated that possibility with shallower wheels, which are now much more random.

An updated lower-payout Double Wheel version exists at El Cortez. Don’t play it. Also, don’t play Quad Roulette at Palazzo.

And remember, “Friends don’t let friends play triple-zero roulette.” Ever.

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Smoke and Mirrors: Las Vegas’ First Non-Tribal Cannabis Consumption Lounge

Smoke and Mirrors: Las Vegas' First Non-Tribal Cannabis Consumption Lounge

[Editor’s Note: This review is written by Chris Kudialis, author of our recent book Weed and Loathing in Las Vegas — The Cannabis Economy Comes to Sin City. The book is a fun, colorful, and fast read that explores La Vegas’ explosion over the past several years as the Cannabis Capital of the U.S. It also spotlights the shady politics, regulatory corruption, casino clout, anointed players, and moneybags behind the new billion-dollar business. Chris is one of the leading experts on cannabis politics and practicalities in Nevada, so he was the perfect guy to review Las Vegas’ first state-approved cannabis consumption lounge.]

Smoke and Mirrors, located inside Thrive Dispensary on 2975 S. Sammy Davis Drive just one block west of the Strip, on Feb. 23 became Nevada’s first state-licensed cannabis consumption lounge to open for business.

The new “consumption club” is essentially a more upscale version of the tribal-owned Sky High Lounge (the revamped Vegas Tasting Room) on Las Vegas Paiute land less than a mile north of the Fremont Street Experience; that one opened way back in 2019, not needing state approval, since it’s on the reservation.

Smoke and Mirrors serves more expensive and more elaborate menu items in a better-ventilated venue with more nicely dressed and more courteous staff, better furniture, and less blasting of top 40 music. If Sky High is the PT’s Pub or PT’s Gold of weed lounges, Smoke and Mirrors is the Downtown Cocktail Room. No added frills or stuffiness, per se, S&M just exudes a more peaceful, comfortable, and welcoming vibe.

It has so far made a name for itself, perhaps surprisingly, with its unique variety of 12 THC-infused cocktails — not necessarily its array of more than 20 top-shelf marijuana flower strains to smoke or its four concentrate varieties to dab.

S&M owner Chris LaPorte, a Brooklyn native and the mastermind behind the now-shuttered Insert Coins booze arcade in downtown Las Vegas, named the cocktails after Vegas-linked influencers in both cannabis and music. He credits some of his weed lounge’s early success to that marketing.

“The Godfather” is Smoke & Mirrors’ most popular cocktail and honors weed visionary Tick Segerblom with a Sobreo-brand mixer, blueberry puree, lime and pineapple juice, agave nectar, and basil leaves. The lounge’s next most-popular drink, “Evolve,” salutes Vegas-born pop group Imagine Dragons by combining the elements of an apple pie and a hot toddy with Sobreo cinnamon, apple juice, vanilla syrup, a dehydrated apple, and a cinnamon stick.

The 1,300-square-foot lounge serves its drinks with flavorless THC infusions of up to 10 mg per cocktail. You’ll pay a pretty penny for the max-strength 10 mg, though: $30 (before tip). S&M also offers 5 mg and 2.5 mg THC strengths for $23 and $19, or a virgin option for $15. Flower comes in up to an eighth-ounce for as much as $75, while the four concentrates are all about a seventh of a gram and cost $20 each.

Of course, Smoke and Mirrors is not without its flaws. In my most recent visit, the staff asked me to change my table twice, the cocktails took more than 20 minutes to arrive despite being one of the first orders of the day, and the check took just as long to process; the team’s receipt-printing machine wasn’t working.

LaPorte readily admits Smoke and Mirrors’ first few weeks were anything but perfect, as his team of 20 total employees work to iron out the operational wrinkles that inevitably come with opening a first-of-its-kind business in a one-of-a-kind cannabis regulatory environment. Within a few months, though, he expects “a totally new” experience, hence the name Smoke and Mirrors.

“We want to keep people on their toes, curious and excited, but regularly surprised and never sure what’s coming here next,” he told me.

The lounge is similar to dispensaries, in that only adults 21 and older can enter. LaPorte and company can host up to 80 people at once. S&M doesn’t require a reservation, but LaPorte said they’ve been pushing reservations in the lounge’s early days to help meet demand and ensure walk-ins don’t get turned away. You can’t bring in your own weed and state law prevents Smoke and Mirrors from also serving alcohol.

The team will turn away anyone who its hostesses deem too “messed up” to enter, though LaPorte said they’ve yet to deny any customers for that reason through nearly two weeks of being open. S&M allows patrons who get too stoned on the lounge’s products can leave their cars behind for up to 24 hours in its shared parking lot with Thrive.

S&M opens every day except Monday, from 4 p.m. to midnight on Tuesday and Wednesday and noon to midnight on Thursday through Sunday. LaPorte says those hours will likely soon expand.