Argue about the best ways to cheat at a Casino

[3-2-1836]

Why am I not even remotely surprised that the same county that levies a $50+ per-room per-night "resort fee" for every fucking hotel because "fuck you that's why"

Resort Fees are something invented out of thin air by Las Vegas casinos, it's not imposed by the county, that's just a lie the check-in counter tells you when you question it, but it's 100% pure revenue for the Casino.

It's like the 20% service fees strip restaurants are now trying make people pay, when people question it servers will tell you it's imposed by the casinos or the government to get you to accept it, though restaurants are generally willing to concede and remove it if you push back on it unlike the casino resort fees where the casinos tell you to get fucked.

 

[Pee Cola]

Resort Fees are something invented out of thin air by Las Vegas casinos, it's not imposed by the county, that's just a lie the check-in counter tells you when you question it, but it's 100% pure revenue for the Casino.

Is that a throwback from when Vegas was run by the mob? If not, I'm surprised they would leave money on the table like that.

 

[Pee Cola]

The mob didn't give a fuck so long as they were making money. They were the reason Vegas was so cheap. $0.99 jumbo shrimp cocktails? Tickets to the buffet? Comping your room if you spent lost enough money at the tables? Resort fees are corporate Vegas at it's worst.

Makes you wonder who the real crooks are.

 

[Debbie Macomber]

The mob didn't give a fuck so long as they were making money. They were the reason Vegas was so cheap. $0.99 jumbo shrimp cocktails? Tickets to the buffet? Comping your room if you spent lost enough money at the tables? Resort fees are corporate Vegas at it's worst.

The house always wins, but the gambler has to THINK he can win and turn a profit against all his loses. When he loses, oh well, that's the game he chose to play.

But if you automatically take half the gambler's money on room and board as soon as he gets there, that isn't a game and it isn't fun or a risk, it's just a loss with no way to win.

 

[AnOminous]

Chad also told him to stop.

I still cackle at the thought of Russhole losing to a guy literally named Chad.

The mob didn't give a fuck so long as they were making money. They were the reason Vegas was so cheap. $0.99 jumbo shrimp cocktails? Tickets to the buffet? Comping your room if you spent lost enough money at the tables? Resort fees are corporate Vegas at it's worst.

Cash businesses are perfect for money laundering. Nobody is going to question huge amounts of cash going into and coming out of a casino. Get the rubes in, take their money, give them some free food, commingle the rube money with the drug money, perfect laundering.

Corporate Vegas fucking sucks. Mob Vegas ruled. They didn't even bother to rig the games (mostly) because that would have been self-defeating. Just the house-favoring odds made them plenty, and bleeding out the paypigs was not in their long-term interests.

 

[3-2-1836]

Makes you wonder who the real crooks are.

The sole purpose of resort fees is to make their rooms on paper look like $30/night or $50/night in advertisements and on online booking sites like priceline and expedia so when you hit sort by price it will always make their shit at the top of their lists since they always exclude "taxes and fees" as is customary in America.

Here's an example on Expedia, which now includes resort fees in the price and sorts accordingly to fuck the resorts for this, this is the cheapest strip hotel, the Strat.

 

[Friend of Dorothy Parker]

Is that a throwback from when Vegas was run by the mob? If not, I'm surprised they would leave money on the table like that.

I don't think so. Apparently they got wide in the 90s. Which isn't to say the mob wasn't active then, but that date is way later than the heyday. They're just contrived ways to advertise lower rates than reality, as @3-2-1836 lays out.

 

[UncleTusky]

Is that a throwback from when Vegas was run by the mob? If not, I'm surprised they would leave money on the table like that.

Other way around, the idea of loss leaders died and nickel and diming emerged as Vegas became legitimate/corporate. They got even more extreme when the megacorps in charge realized they could make more milking a handful of wealthy/foolish individuals vice being mass market. $100 is chump change to somebody about to gamble $10k away. A stupid mark might even think he's getting a great deal because he is getting glthe fee waived and 'only' paying the room rate (which is not decreased to offset the resort fee).

The Mob was more interested in volume and the veneer of legitimacy. Not an expert but I suspect they leaned on sheer volume to help them cover up any laundering/fraud and that indirectly meant fair or even low costs. Needle in a haystack and all that.

 

[The Dude]

The mob didn't give a fuck so long as they were making money. They were the reason Vegas was so cheap. $0.99 jumbo shrimp cocktails? Tickets to the buffet? Comping your room if you spent lost enough money at the tables? Resort fees are corporate Vegas at it's worst.

The Mob only had a few simple rules:

1. Don't fuck with the Mob and don't fuck with their money. If they caught you cheating or card counting, they took you to the back room, broke your hands and all your fingers with a hammer, then dumped you out on the county line and warned you to never return. If they caught you stealing from them then your life was over. Literally.

2. Don't harass or disrespect the staff or the locals.

3. Don't fuck with the guests on hotel/casino property.

4. Don't talk to the authorities. If they knew you had been talking to the cops or the Feds about the Mob, they took you into a soundproof room and that's the last time anyone saw you alive. Some time later some big guys in cleaners or movers uniforms would haul out a 55gal drum or an old rolled up rug with your frozen corpse in it, drove it out to Lake Mead, take your corpse in the drum/rolled up rug with weights tied to it out to the middle of the lake, and then toss you overboard.

 

[Debbie Macomber]

Cash businesses are perfect for money laundering. Nobody is going to question huge amounts of cash going into and coming out of a casino. Get the rubes in, take their money, give them some free food, commingle the rube money with the drug money, perfect laundering.

Which is why I'm confused by the Skim, in which bosses would take a million a week off the top from the casinos, unreported and thus untaxed. If the point of owning the casinos is to launder money, why would they take money out of the casinos that they'd just have to launder somewhere else to explain where their new yachts and Ferraris came from?

Did they only want the illegal money laundered through the casinos, and the real casino money laundered through businesses with lower taxes?

I too have been wondering why Russell behaved so much worse with Erika, than any other girl we know of.

Early on in the texts Russell tells her his plights, and Erika says she's sympathetic to people with disabilities because she works in special ed. That's it. Because of that, she gave him more attention than any instagram thot he venmoed a dollar would, and he was hooked.

 

[Prokhor Zakharov]

The Mob only had a few simple rules:

1. Don't fuck with the Mob and don't fuck with their money. If they caught you cheating or card counting, they took you to the back room, broke your hands and all your fingers with a hammer, then dumped you out on the county line and warned you to never return. If they caught you stealing from them then your life was over. Literally.

2. Don't harass or disrespect the staff or the locals.

3. Don't fuck with the guests on hotel/casino property.

4. Don't talk to the authorities. If they knew you had been talking to the cops or the Feds about the Mob, they took you into a soundproof room and that's the last time anyone saw you alive. Some time later some big guys in cleaners or movers uniforms would haul out a 55gal drum or an old rolled up rug with your frozen corpse in it, drove it out to Lake Mead, take your corpse in the drum/rolled up rug with weights tied to it out to the middle of the lake, and then toss you overboard.

Business used to be so much simpler.

Early on in the texts Russell tells her his plights, and Erika says she's sympathetic to people with disabilities because she works in special ed. That's it. Because of that, she gave him more attention than any instagram thot he venmoed a dollar would, and he was hooked.

That is just fantastically pathetic.

 

[moocow]

Resort Fees are something invented out of thin air by Las Vegas casinos, it's not imposed by the county, that's just a lie the check-in counter tells you when you question it, but it's 100% pure revenue for the Casino.

Kinda. Ironically, it's almost worse. You're right that the state or county aren't levying the "resort fees" and they're completely made-up, but you can still scowl angrily at Clark County Code, Title 4, Chapter 4.08 establishing the "Combined Transient Lodging Tax," currently 13.38%, and NRS 244.3351 (establishing the counties' power to impose it).

In classic American "fuck you got mine" thinking, Clark County doesn't "mind" the resort fees because ... wait for it ... those are taxable under the CTLT anyway. So ... every tourist who stays on a Vegas strip hotel is paying a 14% tax to make sure every homeless bum and violent street nigger gets free healthcare and drugs.

Roll them bones, suckas!

 

[Stella d'Oro]

Corporate Vegas fucking sucks. Mob Vegas ruled. They didn't even bother to rig the games (mostly) because that would have been self-defeating. Just the house-favoring odds made them plenty, and bleeding out the paypigs was not in their long-term interests.

Even Chris Moltisanti understood that when you're bleeding a guy you don't squeeze him dry right away. You let him do his bidding so you can bleed him next week, and the week after, at minimum.

I too have been wondering why Russell behaved so much worse with Erika, than any other girl we know of.

I recall Sean mentioning on one of his streams that there's an allegation floating around that Russ assaulted a working girl in a brothel. In the emails from Natalie Banks there's talk of another protective order with no name or jurisdiction disclosed so it could be related, but I don't think it's been corroborated here and he's still above ground so it just as easily could be untrue or exaggerated.

 

[Falcon Sebben]

The house always wins, but the gambler has to THINK he can win and turn a profit against all his loses. When he loses, oh well, that's the game he chose to play.

But if you automatically take half the gambler's money on room and board as soon as he gets there, that isn't a game and it isn't fun or a risk, it's just a loss with no way to win.

Exactly. I saw a video of a woman in Vegas who said that her margarita would have cost her $40 had she ordered it in the hotel casino. So instead her husband went to a liquor store, bought tequila and margarita mix for less and they have drinks for days.

Vegas is focusing on the whales while ignoring the fact that their normal customers spend just as much but by pricing them out they're losing business.

The sole purpose of resort fees is to make their rooms on paper look like $30/night or $50/night in advertisements and on online booking sites like priceline and expedia so when you hit sort by price it will always make their shit at the top of their lists since they always exclude "taxes and fees" as is customary in America.

Here's an example on Expedia, which now includes resort fees in the price and sorts accordingly to fuck the resorts for this, this is the cheapest strip hotel, the Strat.
View attachment 8903360

View attachment 8903439

So resort fees are more than what the room costs? So why not just bury that in the price of the room or is this some kind of accounting thing where they'd need to pay more taxes on it or something?

The Mob only had a few simple rules:

1. Don't fuck with the Mob and don't fuck with their money. If they caught you cheating or card counting, they took you to the back room, broke your hands and all your fingers with a hammer, then dumped you out on the county line and warned you to never return. If they caught you stealing from them then your life was over. Literally.

2. Don't harass or disrespect the staff or the locals.

3. Don't fuck with the guests on hotel/casino property.

4. Don't talk to the authorities. If they knew you had been talking to the cops or the Feds about the Mob, they took you into a soundproof room and that's the last time anyone saw you alive. Some time later some big guys in cleaners or movers uniforms would haul out a 55gal drum or an old rolled up rug with your frozen corpse in it, drove it out to Lake Mead, take your corpse in the drum/rolled up rug with weights tied to it out to the middle of the lake, and then toss you overboard.

And everybody was happy except Uncle Sam and the feds. People went to Vegas, spent money, saw a show or two and left having some good memories even if they lost a couple grand. You had a good time in Vegas and if you're having a good time you don't care if you lost a bit of money.

 

[Dropa5pack]

Is that a throwback from when Vegas was run by the mob? If not, I'm surprised they would leave money on the table like that.

The corporations are greedier than the mob, also worse at customer service. It’s wild that the American mafia was better for customers as long as you weren’t trying to cheat or scam them.

 

[The Dude]

The corporations are greedier than the mob, also worse at customer service. It’s wild that the American mafia was better for customers as long as you weren’t trying to cheat or scam them.

And didn't rat them out.

You can say what you will about the Mafia, but they had a lot going for them over modern corporats. The Mafia had a sense of honor. The Mafia had a sense of loyalty. The Mafia had a sense of community and patriotism. Hell, the Italian Mafia helped the American government during WWII to fight fascist Italy and Germany. A lot of mob families refused to get into the narcotics trade or sell in America because they didn't want to poison other Americans, and when they did get into it they would only deal in black neighborhoods because they didn't want to hurt White communities. They understood that there were more important things than pure profit, and they understood that when you're in a customer-focused business that if you don't provide your customers with great service and a great product, then your customer will take their money to someone else.

The modern corporat is none of these things. The modern corporat will get his own family addicted on "medication" if it means line go up. The modern corporat believes that you OWE him your money and you are OBLIGATED to consume whatever cheap slop he slings your way.

 

[reptile baht spaniard rid]

If the point of owning the casinos is to launder money, why would they take money out of the casinos that they'd just have to launder somewhere else to explain where their new yachts and Ferraris came from?

Laundering is much more important now with everything being tracked, back then you only needed to launder what you needed to use "legit" which wasn't much, really.

 

[AnOminous]

1. Don't fuck with the Mob and don't fuck with their money. If they caught you cheating or card counting, they took you to the back room, broke your hands and all your fingers with a hammer, then dumped you out on the county line and warned you to never return. If they caught you stealing from them then your life was over. Literally.

Agreed on actual cheating. You'd definitely get your shit fucked up. Card counting was more of a grey area. It isn't cheating. They'd usually just say you're not allowed to play blackjack here any more. That's also the current policy in Corporate Vegas.

 

[Rudolf's Friend]

And didn't rat them out.

You can say what you will about the Mafia, but they had a lot going for them over modern corporats. The Mafia had a sense of honor. The Mafia had a sense of loyalty. The Mafia had a sense of community and patriotism. Hell, the Italian Mafia helped the American government during WWII to fight fascist Italy and Germany. A lot of mob families refused to get into the narcotics trade or sell in America because they didn't want to poison other Americans, and when they did get into it they would only deal in black neighborhoods because they didn't want to hurt White communities. They understood that there were more important things than pure profit, and they understood that when you're in a customer-focused business that if you don't provide your customers with great service and a great product, then your customer will take their money to someone else.

The modern corporat is none of these things. The modern corporat will get his own family addicted on "medication" if it means line go up. The modern corporat believes that you OWE him your money and you are OBLIGATED to consume whatever cheap slop he slings your way.

Vegas hasn't been that way since the late 80s when they started tearing down the old resorts with new megaresorts, probably since the late 60s when Howard Hughes came in and bought so many casinos that he got sued over fears that he was going to have a monopoly on the casinos while he rotted away in his suite..

The Great Rat-Faced Shogun of Whore Island:

The Last Droolerai

 

[Irene and 22 others]

Agreed on actual cheating. You'd definitely get your shit fucked up. Card counting was more of a grey area. It isn't cheating. They'd usually just say you're not allowed to play blackjack here any more. That's also the current policy in Corporate Vegas.

Is card counting even feasible if the dealer is using a twelve deck shoe? Maybe a person can get a small edge when most of it has been played through if they've been able to see and track all of the cards dealt, but the casinos are good at countering the so called "systems" that people try to use. Some even claim that the casinos are the ones who publish the books, etc. on card counting so that they can draw in more suckers who think they now have an edge.

They have to file the outcome with the court, so we will at least get to know that.

Russ will eventually tell on himself. If he gets anything, he'll flaunt it. If he loses, he'll complain about how unfair it was and that's why he can't afford to Venmo some Instagram thot a single dollar.