I recently read an article about the late Craig Neilsen who, although losing the use of his arms and legs due to an automobile accident in 1985, ran Ameristar casinos from its inception until his death in 2005.
Ameristar was good to me as a consultant. I earned more from my consulting with that company than I earned from all the other companies combined.
Beginning in 1998, there were many times that I would fly into Omaha (to check out their Council Bluffs, Iowa properties), drive down to Kansas City, Missouri, motor across the state to St. Charles, Missouri (just outside St. Louis), and then spend a day on the road traveling to Vicksburg, Mississippi. I usually spent about three days in each city and at each location I would carefully compare the Ameristar casinos with their competitors.
When I was asked to evaluate the Jackpot, Nevada casinos (Jackpot is 50 miles south of Twin Falls, Idaho), I’d fly into Spokane, Washington, and check out all of the eastern Washington and Oregon casinos as well as those in most of Idaho. At other times, I went to locations where Ameristar was considering either building or buying a casino.
There wasn’t a pre-determined format as to how to write my report — so I just made one up on the fly. It worked well enough. So long as Craig Neilsen was alive, I could count on $40,000 a year in revenue for about a month’s work.
In late 2000 and early 2001, my EV for staying and gambling in Las Vegas was higher than $40,000 a month. But if I got a call from Ameristar during that time period, I responded. I knew the gambling situation wouldn’t last forever and even though I was a big favorite playing in the casinos, I could conceivably lose $100,000 or more gambling in a very short time. On the road with Ameristar, the money was guaranteed. And since I never knew if or when the request from them would come, I’d try to be available to say “yes” when the call did come. I wanted the requests to keep coming.
After Neilsen died, his successors at Ameristar chose not to use my consulting services.
When Ameristar owned the Reserve in Las Vegas (now totally remodeled and called Fiesta Henderson), they experimented with loose video poker. That’s when I first heard about Ameristar and introduced myself to them. That experiment didn’t work out for them profit-wise and Ameristar ended up basically trading the Reserve to Station Casinos for two properties in Missouri. Station Casinos couldn’t get along with the regulators in that state, so they traded their Kansas City property (which looked a lot like Sunset Station) and their St. Charles boat (not so great at the time — although the license was valuable — but rebuilt by Ameristar into a gorgeous property) for the Reserve and some cash.
After not being able to make money with loose video poker at the Reserve, Ameristar decided to get out of the “loosest video poker” market. The gambling at their properties was usually “okay,” but their restaurants and hotels were often the best in town. I needed to accept the Ameristar philosophy if I wanted to keep consulting. I would note the pay schedule differences between the Ameristar property and whatever competitors they had, but I wouldn’t goad Ameristar to loosen up.
In addition, their biggest competitor in many of the markets was a Harrah’s — which typically aren’t known for loose pay schedules. So I tried to help Ameristar position itself as a little looser than Harrah’s. (They didn’t always accept the advice — especially in St. Charles). This could make Ameristar an attractive choice for players in the local markets, but still tight enough for the casino to profit.
I often had players tell me that since I was also a player, my only job as a consultant should be to tell the casino to loosen, loosen, loosen, and to keep throwing money at the players. I could have done that, of course–but probably only once. Thereafter, there would be no reason for a casino to hire me since they could easily predict what I would say. Every day, casinos hear from players telling them they want looser games. Casinos don’t need to hire a consultant to tell them the same thing.
These travels were extremely educational for me. I had not traveled very much in my first 50 years. I had actually never been to Washington, Idaho, Colorado, Nebraska, Iowa, Missouri, Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi, Illinois or Indiana prior to Ameristar paying me to go there and offer my opinions. And not only would I see the Ameristar casinos, I would see all the other ones too. I would get email questions from players across the country about the conditions at, say, Harrah’s St. Louis or Vicksburg (both casinos have since changed hands), and I would be able to answer them because I’d been there within the previous year and looked closely at all the machines. (Today I’d have to tell them to look at vpfree2.com . It’s been nine years since I’ve been on a paid Ameristar scouting trip.)
The trips were also very profitable for me as a player. Once in Vicksburg I found a double royal promotion at Horizon casino where they had Hundred Play 9/6 Jacks and NSU Deuces Wild. Plus a slot club with multiple points! Once in northwest Indiana, at the Majestic Star, I found a $5 NSU progressive machine where the casino had parked an extra $50,000 because some other progressive had been closed down. I’ve written about both of these situations previously, but my point now is that I wouldn’t have even been within 2,000 miles of those locations had I not been paid by Ameristar to do some scouting.
In addition, these trips gave me things to write about. Being able to write knowledgeably about casinos all across the country gave me a breadth of experience other writers simply didn’t have. Scouting outside of my hometown for a month every year would normally be prohibitively expensive if I were doing it just to find things to write about. No other writer did that. But I was being paid well for traveling and the extra ideas for my writings were a bonus.
The trips reinforced to me the value of scouting. If you wait until the good games are announced on vpFREE or elsewhere, you’ve missed the boat. The absolute best promotions never get written about until after they are over. (Sometimes not even then.) Consulting with Ameristar helped me learn that when I’m too busy or too lazy to scout, I miss out on a lot of good things.
Ameristar has now been sold to Pinnacle Entertainment. There are a few more I’s to be dotted and T’s to be crossed in various jurisdictions — but it’s essentially a done deal. I don’t expect another company like Ameristar to come along and offer me such a lucrative multi-year consulting situation, but you never know. I’ll always be grateful to that company for the opportunities they gave me. I’m not much of a believer in luck, but clearly it was a lucky day for me when Craig Neilsen decided that his company was better off for having Bob Dancer’s advice.
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