Question of the Day - 21 July 2020

Well, as you say, skipping an entire digits worth of floor numbers certainly makes Las Vegas hotel towers seem taller. But we believe the real reason is all about superstition. Gambling, obviously, is a superstitious business and Las Vegas is a superstitious city that attracts superstitious people on both sides of the tables.

Asian cultures, in particular, seem to have more superstitions, numerical imperatives, and subtle idiosyncrasies going on than Western cultures. Numerology is a big part of the Eastern paradigm. Numbers have magical powers. When your number comes up, it tells you something about your place in the cosmic scheme of things. Through play, the gods show you your standing in the universe and you accept it.

Casinos occasionally, and always inadvertently, cross the line into a player’s superstitious universe. You don’t, for example, put bookshelves in your baccarat room, because in Chinese, the word for "book" sounds very much like the word for "lose" (the Mirage reconfigured its baccarat room to get rid of the bookshelves). You don’t build a six-story lion’s head with his open muzzle doubling as the casino entrance, a sure sign of submission to a predator (the MGM Grand reconfigured its lion entrance). And you never book an Asian player into a room with the number four in it. In some Asian languages the word for "four" ("si" in Chinese Mandarin and "shi" in Japanese) also sounds like the word for "death."

Eight is the magic number, considered to be highly auspicious in Asian cultures, thanks to its similarity to the word for "prosper." Casinos in Australia, such as the Crowne in Melbourne, have as the last four digits of their phone numbers lucky 8888 and the Rio, historically a popular casino with Asian players, commissioned original "lucky" artwork in the shape of a painting featuring multiple figure eights for its high-roller Palazzo accommodations, which were also designed around the principles of feng shui. In Las Vegas, "lucky" number 7 is preferred, as evidenced by numerous casino phone numbers.

The floor-number game all started at the Rio, which took the avoidance of the number four to new heights, so to speak, when it put up a 42-story tower, but skipped floor four itself and all the 40s; the rooftop restaurant, bar, and observation deck, along with the Presidential penthouse, are on the "51st" and "52nd" floors. They did so, they claimed, in deference to Asian beliefs, but it’s not too hard to picture the Rio designers chuckling when writers and others interested in truth in numbers have to explain that at the Rio, 51 and 52 really mean 40 and 41.

Naturally, since the Rio saw fit to pretend that its tower is 50-odd stories, the subsequent Palms, situated catty-corner from the Rio across West Flamingo Road, couldn’t very well erect a 46-story tower that was shorter than the Rio’s at a real 41 stories. For reasons we're uncertain of, the Palms also skips floors 32 through 39, and "unlucky" floor 13. Accordingly, when you press the button for the Apex Social Club on the "55th" floor of the Palms, you’re whisked to the actual 46th.

Other examples of this floor-count massaging include the Wynn, which skips the 13th floor and the 40s, plus floors 1 through 4, so the first floor is the 5th and although the top floor is the 60th, in reality it's only the 45th.

Encore follows the same pattern as its sister property.

Mandalay Bay skips the 40s and the 50s, so although the House of Blues Foundation Room purports to be on floor 63, in actuality the property has 43 floors.

Confused yet? We are!