{"id":14886,"date":"2014-10-29T12:30:40","date_gmt":"2014-10-29T20:30:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/?p=14886"},"modified":"2022-09-29T06:31:33","modified_gmt":"2022-09-29T14:31:33","slug":"the-village-idiot-knuckle-dragging-in-maryland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/the-village-idiot-knuckle-dragging-in-maryland\/","title":{"rendered":"The village idiot; Knuckle-dragging in Maryland"},"content":{"rendered":"

Every city has its cross to bear. In the case of Las Vegas<\/strong>, it’s former steroid user, baseball player and serial dumbass Jose Canseco<\/strong>. He obviously skipped firearm-safety class the day they told you to make sure your gun is empty before cleaning in it. Luckily for Canseco, no vital organs were injured, just a finger in his left hand. (Had he shot himself in the head, would the bullet have found anything to hit?)<\/p>\n

* On a distantly related note, Caesars Entertainment<\/strong> continues to burn through cash. It offered Toby Keith<\/strong> $325,000 to perform one show<\/a> at Planet Hollywood<\/strong> and make an in-person appearance at\u00a0Toby Keith’s I Love This Bar & Grill<\/a><\/strong>. Still, that pales next to the $4.5\u00a0million<\/a>\u00a0put before Kanye West<\/strong> to perform nine shows at The Axis, at Planet Hollywood<\/strong>. If I were Celine Dion<\/strong>, I’d be a bit miffed, since the Kanye payday exceeds the $476,000\/concert she pulls down at Caesars Palace<\/strong>. And who does more for Vegas tourism?<\/p>\n

* Card-counting may be legal in Maryland<\/strong> but nobody told the casinos. The heavy-handed, dragoon tactics are in object lesson in what happens if you have the temerity to display skill in your casino play. Maryland Live<\/strong> is the offender in question, as you can see from the verbal beatdown (and half-nelson) put on blackjack player Justin Mills<\/strong>. Director of the\u00a0Maryland State Lottery & Gaming Control Agency Stephen Martino<\/strong>\u00a0said that\u00a0\u201cusing intellectual capacity to keep track of cards is not prohibited by state law or regulation.\u201d Cordish Gaming<\/strong> obviously didn’t get the memo<\/a> but Anne Arundel County<\/strong>‘s attorney’s office saw nothing worth prosecuting on either side.<\/p>\n

And Big Brother’s reach is extending. The Washington Post<\/em> reports\u00a0\u201clicense plate recognition systems, tracking software to follow certain people through the casino and 360-degree, high-definition cameras that record with so much clarity that surveillance operators can zoom in after the fact.\u201d Well, that makes you feel nice and welcome, doesn’t it?<\/p>\n

Ironically, in light of its Cro-Magnon tactics, Maryland Live had actually recruited Mills as a player and had sent a limousine to bring him to the casino<\/a>. It ended the evening \"maryland-live\"<\/a>banning him for life. (In a further irony, Mills was actually $2,800 in the hole when casino staff detained him.) What Mills did was “extremely prevalent because it is not illegal,” says professional alarmist Beverly Griffin<\/strong>, whose Griffin Investigations<\/strong> helps casinos around the country persecute advantage players. Griffin helps enforce the implicit pact between gamblers and casinos: We’ll let you play if you accede to the likelihood of losing your money.<\/p>\n

“We do not have a comment, except to say that as a private facility, we reserve the right to refuse service or limit play of any casino customer,” sniffed Maryland Live spokeswoman Carmen Gonzales<\/strong>. Sensing a PR opportunity, Horseshoe Baltimore<\/strong> General Manager Chad Barnhill<\/strong> said Horseshoe was\u00a0“not opposed to highly skilled players visiting our casino, provided they don’t attempt to unfairly disadvantage other guests or collude to impact the integrity of our games.”<\/p>\n

* Those of you who miss Asteroids<\/em> and Centipede<\/em>, don’t worry. Atari<\/strong> is developing social-gaming versions of them, which will “will go live on Facebook<\/strong> and as a stand-alone Web site and will be available in both desktop and iOS-Android<\/strong> mobile versions with a mix of casino games and updated versions of the company\u2019s iconic catalogue.” Seattle<\/strong>-based FlowPlay<\/strong>, developer of VegasWorld<\/em>, is going in as Atari’s joint-venture partner. This is the first step towards Atari taking a dip in the waters of Internet gambling. Atari is also rolling out\u00a0slots, blackjack, video poker, solitaire, and bingo. Real-money Atari Casino<\/em> is expected to debut “later this year,” which doesn’t leave them much time to get it ready.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Every city has its cross to bear. In the case of Las Vegas, it’s former steroid user, baseball player and serial dumbass Jose Canseco. He obviously skipped firearm-safety class the day they told you to make sure your gun is … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[70,133,4,7,22,72,6,25,8,9],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14886"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14886"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14886\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31705,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14886\/revisions\/31705"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}