Good question. The current writer must confess to being both too young and too British to ever have seen the show (and likely never will, since all but three episodes have apparently been destroyed), but some trademark QoD sleuthing yielded some interesting facts and related trivia, as requested.
"Dealer's Choice" was a syndicated TV game show that ran from January 21, 1974 to December 12, 1975. It was the first game show to be taped in Las Vegas and, according to imdb.com, the first location was what was then known as Del Webb's Sahara, which must've been shortlived, because the bulk of the first series was filmed, as you recalled, at the Tropicana. Thereafter, it moved to the Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank.
When the show debuted, it was hosted by actor Bob Hastings, who'd never hosted a show before. Evidently it showed and he was described by one reviewer as having a delivery "a lot like a carnival barker." He was quickly fired and replaced by Jack Clark, who continued to host the show until it ended, along with "glamorous assistant" Jane Nelson.
As far as the format was concerned, from what we've read it was all about gambling. Here's a show summary from TV.com:
"Three contestants competed in a series of mini-casino games, which used roulette wheels, dice and cards. Games included (but were not limited to) Aces Out, Any Pair… More Loses, Blackjack (a member of the studio audience was chosen to play the dealer), Dealer's Derby and Wheel of Chance [Ed: Descriptions of these different game rounds can be found at Wikipedia.com, if you're interested in more details.] The contestants were given an initial bankroll of 100 chips, and could wager any part of their stake on the games. Chips were awarded or subtracted according to a specific game's rules. A contestant dropped out if he/she lost all his/her chips. After a series of rounds, all players having chips won prizes, with the top winner advancing to the bonus round (a player also advanced by default if both opponents lost all their chips). In the bonus round, a player vied for an announced grand prize (usually a trip or a car). He/she rolled a special die that had cash values on five sides and a spade on the sixth. To win the prize, he/she had to reach $1,000 without rolling the spade (which lost the prize and all accumulated cash); the player could stop at any time and keep his/her accumulated winnings."
One of the more interesting things about this show is that the brain behind it was a man named Ed Fishman. That might not mean a lot to many readers, but when we ran it past Anthony Curtis, he absolutely knew who he was, although he didn't recall the game show.
Fishman not only invented the first slot club card, but was responsible for the first-ever blackjack tournament, which also took place at the Sahara, back in 1978, with a top prize of $75,000. It was his idea to put accessible ATM machines in casinos, he was a pioneer of riverboat casinos, and he was one of the founders of Casino Player magazine. The one thing he wasn't good at, apparently, was gambling, as he explained in an interview with Casino Player:
"I literally couldn't wait for the cameras to go off [after filming "Gambler's Choice"] so I could get to the tables. I was a great player for the casino because I had no discipline. So if I was playing at Caesars and I happened to have a winning streak, all of a sudden I would see in my mind the sign over Caesars changing to Fishman's. By the time I was finished I didn't have money for the valet.
"After taking lessons from Ken Uston and others on counting cards and team play, I realized that I didn't have it. I don't have the discipline to sit around and wait until everything is right. But I loved the business, so I took my game show experience and my love of gambling and made a game right there."
The game was that first blackjack tournament: "Through trial and error we ended up with 1,408 people. They came from seven countries. NBC Sports covered the whole event. My dad was at the registration desk, and my brother, a lot of friends. It was like a golf tournament, people came a few days early to practice their blackjack. The casino loved us."
Following the success of this first experiment, Ed Fishman went on to format the tournament concept to apply it to craps, roulette, slots, and baccarat and in the course of it all he hit upon the idea of finding out information about the players so casinos could market to them effectively. From building a database of names, he went on to found Players Club International, the first-ever "slot club," which for the first time focused on awarding comps to the average player, as opposed to high rollers only. He hired actor Telly Savalas (of "Kojak" fame) to be the celebrity face of Players Club International with the catchphrase, "Tell 'em Telly sent you." They soon had some 350,000 names in their database and Fisher eventually sold the company to Harrah's for $425 million.
So, while the "Dealer's Choice" game show was pretty short lived, it turned out to be the start of great things for its creator.
