We were recently "cleaning house" and found a box of old Las Vegas magazines, mostly from 1998 and 2000. Most were the entertainment variety, What's On, Showbiz Weekly, Best Read Guide, etc. A couple of funbooks, one from the Lady Luck featuring a free two-minute phone call to anywhere in the U.S.! And a free funbook and scratch card from the CBS Sports World Casino. Where was that? The one that caught my eye was the February 2000 issue of Casino Player. I see Anthony Curtis as a contributing editor, and articles by Bob Dancer, Deke Castleman, Michael Shackleford, and Arnold Snyder among others. My question is: What was the relationship between the Las Vegas Advisor and Casino Player? I see they are still in print today.
To begin with, CBS Sports World Casino was a small short-lived joint in the space occupied by Big Red's. Red's was also a small casino that opened in 1981 and closed in 1982 on the east side of the north Strip, just north of Convention Center Drive and south of the Peppermill in what's now a shopping center with Ross Dress for Less, Walgreen's, and Denny's. The property was redeveloped into the CBS Sports World Casino, which opened in 1997. After the TV station threatened to sue, the CBS was dropped from the name. It lasted until 2001, then closed. We visited on occasion and it was a nice enough casino, it just didn't have much to recommend it compared to all the big joints around it.
As for our connection to Casino Player, the magazine came to us for content. We liked them and felt that the two outfits were a good synergistic fit, so we (Anthony, Deke, Dancer, Snyder, Jeff Compton, Jean Scott, and others) contributed to the magazine over a number of years. Anthony was well acquainted with the publisher, Glenn Fine, and editor-in-chief, his younger brother Adam; they were based in Atlantic City and A.C. visited their office when he was on the East Coast for various reasons.
Anthony wrote feature stories on playing the games with an advantage for many many years; from time to time, we thought about repurposing them into another book by A.C., but that never happened for various reasons.
The Fine brothers also launched Strictly Slots, Poker Digest, and Atlantic City Insider" magazines and the trade periodicals Casino Journal and National Gaming Summary. Anthony wrote a monthly column for Strictly Slots for a number of years.
It should also be mentioned that along with the Fine brothers and Roger Gros, whose name might be familiar to some of you, given that he's been part of the gaming-media industry for many decades, Len Cipkins was the fourth leg of the founders of the Player publishing company. Len later came to work for Huntington Press as the publicist, so there was that connection as well.
The Casino Journal Publishing Group went through some changes along the way, selling its trade division to GEM Communications in 2000. Adam Fine died at age 39 in 2008; Glenn Fine went on to other things, while his staff took over publishing duties. After the Fine brothers' era, LVA writers kind of faded away. But for the years in which you mention in the late 1990s and early 2000s, we were regulars in all the Group's magazines.
At that time, magazine and book publishers with a focus on gambling were battling for market share and, ultimately, supremacy. We were friendly with most of them and we watched as, one by one, they fell by the wayside. In terms of book and newsletter publishing, we eventually outlasted them all.
Casino Player and Strictly Slots magazines are still published, both 12 times a year.
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Raymond Ray
Dec-02-2024
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Randall Ward
Dec-02-2024
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