Caesars takes the lead; Fortune Cup comes to Vegas

In the wake of yet another senseless mass shooting, Caesars Entertainment is making guest security a priority (not to imply that it wasn’t earlier). From now on, Caesars security personnel will be empowered to enter guest rooms once every 24 hours, regardless. This kind of thing, had it been implemented at Mandalay Bay, could have caused the discovery of butcher Stephen Paddock‘s one-man arsenal before he went full-automatic on a Jason Aldean concert crowd. Caesars is also considering — and ought to — giving panic buttons to employees for situations in which they feel endangered. Think of what a few well-placed panic buttons might have prevented at Wynn Resorts. It’s not a Vegas-only policy but one that Caesars will implement globally. Similar policies have been adopted at other casino-resort companies but not always with this degree of stringency. (In some, a room can go two days without a mandatory check.) Culinary Union workers were originally to be tasked with combining housekeeping with security, but Caesars sensibly revised the policy when the Culinary balked.

MGM Resorts International, of all companies, is still a laggard, allowing a 48-hour window between room checks. This is just too much and, after 10/1, whatever happens here is going to have to include a heightened security presence. Talk about a “target-rich environment”! And it’s not just a Vegas thing. A sexual assault at Bally’s Atlantic City increased pressure on the company, as did the meth-lab incident at Tropicana Entertainment‘s eponymous Atlantic City resort. Whatever the motivation, Caesars is doing the right thing and ought to be applauded.

* VitalVegas needs to send Tiny the Tumbleweed over to Resorts World Las Vegas to check out reports that construction has ground to a halt. Again. At its present pace, Resorts World will be beaten to the finish line by Wynn Paradise Park. Remember, the Genting Group megaresort was supposed to have been finished by now.

* You’d think it would be easy enough to keep the Nevada Gaming Control Board apprised of hiring changes at your casino. That’s part of why human-resources departments exist. Well, the Skyline Casino either thought it was too special or was just too lazy to keep its paperwork in order. That’ll cost the casino four grand (a drop in the bucket, really) plus some mandatory compliance training, which we think is the real punishment.

* Derek Stevens continues to endear himself to gamblers. Having made a splash with Sigma Derby, he’s going to be complementing it at The D with Fortune Cup, the newest emulation/improvement upon Sigma Derby. Its features include a nine-foot-wide racing oval and real-time video of the “race,” oalong with 10 positions per game. We hope it’ll be popular but not so much as to endanger Sigma Derby‘s existence. (Stevens has the next-to-last Sigma Derby game in Nevada.) As Stevens says, “Fortune Cup is our way of paying homage to the games that made us fall in love with Las Vegas in the first place.” Amen.