{"id":418,"date":"2008-09-02T13:15:00","date_gmt":"2008-09-02T21:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/blogs\/dmckee\/index.cfm\/2008\/9\/2\/Case-Bets-South-Point-Gustav-Monte-Carlo-Gold-Spike-Excalibur-etc"},"modified":"2008-09-02T13:15:00","modified_gmt":"2008-09-02T21:15:00","slug":"case-bets-south-point-gustav-monte-carlo-gold-spike-excalibur-etc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/case-bets-south-point-gustav-monte-carlo-gold-spike-excalibur-etc\/","title":{"rendered":"Case Bets: South Point, Gustav, Monte Carlo, Gold Spike, Excalibur, etc."},"content":{"rendered":"

Why does a holiday weekend suck? Because it means that instead of having to dig through three<\/em> days' worth of the Las Vegas Review-Journal<\/em> on Monday (a depressing task under the best of circumstances), a Tuesday start means at least four<\/em> days of windfall from what Hugh Jackson<\/strong> calls "the dead tree of record" through which one must cut brush. Solution? Chop it up into Insta-Blog fodder! Like …<\/p>\n

Horse dies at South Point<\/strong>, in front of 500 undoubtedly traumatized spectators. Leaving aside the equine tragedy<\/a>, if South Point<\/strong> can only rustle up 500 attendees for a Friday-night event, its equestrian center may be even more of a gold-plated albatross than was originally thought.<\/p>\n

Gulf Coast casinos ordered<\/em> to close<\/strong>. Good grief, has common sense taken a leave of absence down there? Why was Mississippi<\/strong> required to force the issue<\/a>?<\/p>\n

Monte Carlo not up to code<\/strong>, says Clark County. Whereupon neither the county nor MGM Mirage<\/strong> takes responsibility for remediating the situation, each putting the onus<\/a> on the other.<\/p>\n

Wall Street comes around<\/strong>. The Street has a manic-depressive attitude toward gaming stocks and is coming out<\/a> of its latest episode of depression. Even so, some of these stocks look ridiculously undervalued, especially Las Vegas Sands<\/strong>, which The Street used to think was worth three times as much.<\/p>\n

Speaking of Sands<\/strong>, there's confidence and then there's foolhardiness<\/a>. Then again, given the company's genius at protracting litigation to superhuman lengths, its sanguine attitude may be born of experience.<\/p>\n

Somnolent editors awake from nap<\/strong>, find that Nevada's economic model isn't working, call for more of the same<\/a>, go back to sleep. (BTW, here's one of those "Nevada Democrats<\/a>" the editorial reflexively derides.)<\/p>\n

First Nevada Palace fell<\/strong> and now the Gold Spike<\/strong> is half-renovate<\/a>d. We're going to have to come up with a new shorthand for "bottom-of-the-barrel casino" now that we won't have the Spike to kick around anymore. Stephen Siegel<\/strong> has done more with the place than his predecessors, absentee owners Tamares Group<\/strong>, accomplished in three years (unless you count the offerings they took out, like table games).<\/p>\n

Still, Siegel's being a wee bit charitable when he says "most people underestimate the Gold Spike." Stephen, it is impossible<\/em> to underestimate the Spike, the only Nevada casino for which I would have used "vile" as a description, back in its Tamares days.<\/p>\n

Comment threads in newspapers<\/strong> can be a very mixed blessing, but much of the back-and-forth that follows this story<\/a> about electronic poker at Excalibur<\/strong> is well worth reading, as it provides a great deal of hard information and<\/em> a player's-eye perspective on the experiment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Why does a holiday weekend suck? Because it means that instead of having to dig through three days' worth of the Las Vegas Review-Journal on Monday (a depressing task under the best of circumstances), a Tuesday start means at least … 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":[98,28,51,11,122,35,125,12,47,31,9,38],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418"}],"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=418"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}