Cantor’s new brand: Slots for tots

Other than as a medium for sports betting, mobile-gambling devices have resolutely failed to catch on in Las Vegas casinos. Provider/operator Cantor Gaming has made a few inroads but mostly at one-off properties like M Resort and the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino. By law, mobile gizmos like Cantor’s can only be used in public areas (i.e., where their use would be subject to Nevada Gaming Control Board scrutiny).

In obvious desperation, Cantor CEO Lee Amatis is now pimping a bill that would lift all restrictions on where said devices could be played with. His company has long been running TV ads depicting this very thing, so you can be sure this isn’t a sudden surge of inspiration on Amatis’ part. Of course, it’d canter a cart and horses through the state’s ability to keep “pocket casinos” out of the palms of underage patrons.

That may not be Amatis’ objective but he clearly doesn’t mind if it happens. It’s kind of refreshing to encounter such breezy amorality in a public forum. NGCB Chairman Mark Lipparelli muttered a few pro forma qualms but no one actually had the balls to testify against AB 294, putting it on a path to making Nevada the first state to offer juvenile-friendly gambling.

The original enabling legislation was written by Cantor back in 2005 and anonymously slipped into the Lege’s hopper. Since bills could be introduced sans sponsor it was the most virgin birth in two millennia. This time around, Assm. William Horne (D, left) is bearing Cantor’s baby. The clearly unscrupulous Horne is the same legislator who proposes confiscating unclaimed slot winnings from casinos to help balance the state budget.

The ever-tractable solon is also a handy helper for online-poker interests (opposed by most brick-and-mortar casinos in the state) thereby managing to work as many sides of the street as possible. If male brothels ever catch on in the Silver State, ask for Horne’s services. The motto of his law firm is “Passion. Commitment. Integrity.” You can’t fault the man’s sense of humor, I’ll give him that.

S&G‘s resident expert on Internet gambling, IAM Corp. CEO Peter Karroll dismisses AB 294 as a “weak stop-gap” to hold the online-gambling tide back. Contending that younger, tech-savvy players are already playing online, he poses the obvious question: Who would come to Las Vegas (or Reno) just so they can sit in their hotel and gamble on a bastardized Blackberry? As others have observed, you don’t spend billions of dollars building a casino just so patrons can crawl into bed for some “pocket pai-gow.”

Karroll points out another potential drawback: The sheer nuisance factor of having Cantor-style gambling going on in “bathrooms or even in Cirque du Soleil if this bill is passed.” Venelazzo is one of the properties where this kind of thing could happen and I neither want A) surveillance domes in bathroom stalls nor B) some douchebag shooting digital craps next to me when I’m trying to enjoy Jersey Boys for the third time. Places like Cantor-friendly Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas have thousands of slots, hundreds of table-game positions, large sports books … how much is enough? Why not just scrap the casino floor altogether and just hand every guest a Cantor-like gambling device when they check in? It’d sure save a helluva lotta money.

Making sense. If any lawmaker in Nevada shows true probity with regard to the gaming industry, it’s Assm. James Ohrenschall (D), who kept Midnight Jim Gibbons‘ greedy mitts off the problem-gambling fund — well, much of it — in the previous Legislature. This year, Gov. Brian Sandoval (R) and his Carson City allies have a message of gambling addicts and it’s as follows: Screw you.

But I digress. Assm. Ohrenschall (left) is the moving force behind a bill that would enable Nevada regulators to farm out the task of vetting new slot games and devices to private labs. It’d be a windfall for GLI, out in New Jersey, if it passes. If one’s goal is to streamline the regulatory process, it’s a common-sense method of doing so and it might (in a best-case scenario) free up the already underfunded Control Board to focus more on audits and on the increasingly labyrinthine financial arrangements in which casino companies cloak themselves. Anybody who’s tried to figure out the three-card monte that has followed the Harrah’s Entertainment and Station Casinos LBOs — or seen NGCB investigations of corporate irregularities (especially ones that occur out of state) feebly sputter to a halt — knows that Nevada’s regulatory system is hopelessly inadequate when it comes to coping with the 21st century casino industry.