Because Vegas is starved for retail along the Strip (ha!), Caesars Entertainment has been beavering away busily on Grand Bazaar Shops, in front of Bally’s Las Vegas. Vital Vegas has been sussing out the progress of the mall and it’s not as bad-looking as feared. No, not at all. It’s worse. Decide for yourself.
* If you’re of the persuasion that the Las Vegas Strip has become hopelessly douchey, you’re in good company. Penn Jillette and Anthony Bourdain share your feelings. And, just in time to prove that (pace Bourdain) EDM is God’s new way of telling you that you have too much money, here comes bottle service via drone. Don’t worry, it won’t put too many servers out of work, as you have to have a $20,000 bar tab to qualify.
partake of medicinal cannabis in a smoking section? Daniel Price, needing to toke for medical purposes, requested permission and was practically thrown out onto the Boardwalk. Now he’s back, with a lawsuit in tow. Price got a real runaround, with the Division of Gaming Enforcement and the Atlantic City Health & Human Services Department both shrugging him off. Court seems the inevitable next step. Casino smoking floors seem to slipped through a crack in New Jersey‘s medical-pot law, so the DGE is on course for a ‘teaching moment’ with the gaming industry.* Barred at present from holding online-gambling licenses, Foxwoods Resort Casino and Mohegan Sun have found a clever way around the 
problem. Their Web sites offer free-play games and the opportunity to purchase credits toward non-gaming expenditures (like hotel stays) at the parent properties. “What we’re finding is that it’s actually a useful tool for building a database, getting our brand out there and connecting people to the property,” Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation Chairman Rodney Butler told The Associated Press.
Monetary purchases of extended playing time or for premium games can only be redeemed in the form of reward points at Foxwoods. It already has 50,000 account holders. Mohegan Sun’s online poker is strictly free-play with, again, hotel credits and similar prizes going to the winners. Both tribes want full-scale Internet gaming but Gov. Dannel Malloy isn’t inclined to give it to them.
