Question of the Day - 19 September 2025

“The change was industry-driven and is a good example of our licensees actively addressing anit-money-laundering (AML) concerns. There was no requirement for those licensees to notify the Nevada Gaming Control Board. The Board was not involved in the policy change,” says Shelley Newell of the NGCB. She suggested we contact the four casino companies that initiated the change of policy—Caesars Entertainment, Venetian/Palazzo (owned by Apollo Management), MGM Resorts International, and Wynn Resorts.

Well, we'd already tried … and struck out. The Big Four proved completely unresponsive on the issue. Perhaps that’s because money laundering has been a hot-button topic in Las Vegas of late. MGM, Wynn, Resorts World, and previous Venelazzo owner Las Vegas Sands all paid hefty fines for laundering funds on customers’ behalf. It’s clearly a touchy subject within the industry that nobody wants to discuss.

As for the chip-redemption policy, during the pandemic, some Las Vegas casinos — at least the four companies mentioned — agreed to honor one another’s poker chips. This was undoubtedly a health-related move, as it cut down the number of times that chips had to be redeemed and issued. You can still, say, take poker chips from Caesars Palace and redeem them at the Horseshoe (both owned by Caesars Entertainment). But from the Horseshoe across the street to Bellagio (owned by MGM)? No go, no longer.

Since even the NGCB won’t talk about the prevalence of money laundering on the Strip, we can’t measure the seriousness of a poker-chip problem, if any. It does take one more tool out of a money launderer’s pocket to prevent the chips' migration from, say, Wynncore to Venelazzo next door. But it’s hard to measure how rampant the problem was before the reciprocal-redemption policy was shut down.

Basically, the reciprocal poker-chip redemption was an extraordinary policy, hatched during (we hope) an extraordinary time. Its usefulness had probably run its course and it was an invitation to try and launder money. Since there are less than a dozen poker rooms on the Las Vegas Strip at present, we suspect that relatively few will be inconvenienced by the new policy.