He liked to bet big, wagering tens of thousands of dollars in a sitting. He owned homes in four states but preferred staying in casino hotels, sometimes for weeks at a time, as he worked the gambling machines.
He grew up the son of a convicted bank robber who was constantly running from the law. But in his own life, Stephen Paddock, 64, had kept his nose clean until Sunday night, when he suddenly unleashed a firestorm of bullets from his casino hotel room, killing at least 59 people and injuring more than 500 more on the Las Vegas Strip.
"If you told me an asteroid fell into Earth, it would mean the same to me. There's absolutely no sense, no reason he did this," his brother Eric Paddock said in an interview outside his home in Orlando, Florida. "He's just a guy who played video poker and took cruises and ate burritos at Taco Bell. There's no political affiliation that we know of. There's no religious affiliation that we know of."
After the shooting, officers found Stephen Paddock dead with 17 guns on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino, where he had arrived Thursday.
Police believe Paddock acted alone in executing the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history.
Eric Paddock said he knew of five guns his brother kept in his safe but was shocked that a rapid-fire weapon was used in Sunday's shooting.
He said Stephen Paddock didn't hunt and barely shot his guns, once taking Eric's children on a skeet-shooting trip paid for by the casinos.
In the final years of his life, Stephen Paddock was living out his retirement in quiet obscurity. He liked country music, relatives said, and went to concerts like the Route 91 Harvest festival where he killed so many Sunday night.
He was worth more than $2 million, relatives said. Before retiring, he made a small fortune from real estate deals and a business that he and Eric Paddock sold off. He traveled a lot and had millions of free airline miles.
At various points of his life, Stephen Paddock worked for defense contractor Lockheed Martin and as an accountant and property manager. As a retiree, he had no children and plenty of money to play with. So he took up gambling.
"It's like a job for him. It's a job where you make money," said Eric Paddock, adding that his brother could lose $1 million and still have enough to live on. "He was at the hotel for four months one time. It was like a second home."
He recalled one time when the entire family took over the top floor of the Atlantis at the casino's expense.
His brother was very particular about the games he played. "It had to be the right machine with double points, and there has to be a contest going on. He won a car one time," Eric Paddock said.
"He's known. He's a top player. He's the small end of the big fish."
Over the past two decades, Stephen Paddock had bought and sold properties in several states, including California, Nevada, Florida and Texas, where for a time, neighbors said, he lived with his mother. Public records show Paddock at one point owned two planes and was a licensed pilot. He also had a fishing license from Alaska.
He told neighbors he was a professional gambler and a prospector, and he appeared to favor buying homes in retirement communities. At one point, he and his longtime girlfriend, Marilou Danley, were living in at least three retirement communities, property records show. Neighbors said the couple seemed almost itinerant, leaving the properties empty for long stretches as Paddock visited his casinos.
Donald Judy, who was his next-door neighbor in Florida until two years ago, said the inside of Paddock's home "looked like a college freshman lived there." There was no art on the walls and no car in the driveway. Just a dining chair, a bed and two recliners. Paddock was constantly on the move, carrying a suitcase and driving a rental car whenever he stayed at the community near Cocoa Beach.
"It looked like he'd be ready to move at a moment's notice," Judy said.
Judy said he never flashed his wealth, often wearing khaki cotton pants, with a polo or other collared shirt, and never driving anything nicer than a standard rental car.
A little while after living there, Paddock left Judy a key and asked him to keep an eye on the rarely used house and to borrow any tools he might want. Judy said there were no drugs or parties, nothing unusual except for Paddock's gambling.
"They did seem to always stay up till midnight and sleep in till noon," Judy said. "They always seemed to stay on Vegas time."
Then, as quickly as he had appeared, Paddock put up a for-sale sign, Judy said. "He never said much about it, just said they were moving back to Vegas."
Police in Texas and towns Paddock lived in in Nevada said they could find no records of run-ins with the law involving him.
California records show that Paddock married a woman named Peggy Okamoto in 1985. They divorced in 1990 citing "irreconcilable differences." In recent years, Danley had become his girlfriend, relatives said.
Authorities said Danley was out of the country at the time of the shooting and was located in Tokyo. She is not considered a suspect.
At one point, Danley worked as a high-limit hostess for Club Paradise, a rewards program in the Atlantis Casino Resort Spa in Reno, Nevada, according to her LinkedIn profile. In a statement, Atlantis officials said she has not worked for the casino for several years.
Diane McKay lived next door to Paddock and Danley at their Reno home until July, when McKay moved away. Danley wasn't forthcoming about her life, and Paddock was unfriendly, McKay recalled. She only saw him in the mornings, when he went to the clubhouse to work out.
"He was weird. Kept to himself," said McKay, 79. "It was like living next to nothing. . . . You can at least be grumpy, something. He was just nothing, quiet."
The couple kept their blinds closed, but sometimes Paddock would open the garage door, revealing an enormous safe the size of a refrigerator.
Paddock's father, Benjamin Hoskins Paddock, was on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list, described on a 1969 wanted poster as "psychopathic'' with suicidal tendencies.
He escaped from prison that year and, according to news accounts, was not captured until 1978, when he was nabbed while running a bingo parlor in Oregon.
Stephen Paddock was the oldest of four boys. Eric, eight years his junior, was the youngest, with two in between: Bruce and Patrick.
Their father died a few years ago, but Eric Paddock grew up thinking their father was already dead. He found out otherwise when Patrick went to the Air Force Academy and was told his father was a decorated veteran and still alive.
"We didn't grow up under his influence," Eric Paddock said. "I was born on the run in Tucson. My dad was about to be arrested for robbing banks."
FBI agents interviewed relatives Monday, including Stephen Paddock's mother, who is in her 90s and spoke with him two weeks ago, Eric Paddock said. Five days after Hurricane Irma hit Orlando, Stephen Paddock texted his brother to see whether relatives had been affected.
Eric Paddock said he did not know of any mental illness, alcohol or drug problems in his brother's life. He said he had no clue whether Stephen had gambling debts or was financially troubled.
By Monday night, after an entire day dealing with FBI investigators and reporters camped outside his house, Eric Paddock said he and other relatives were still struggling to process the atrocity carried out by his brother.
"When we talked about a month ago, I can't believe he was planning this," he said, squeezing his eyes closed. "But he must have. It takes time."
What he knows about his brother doesn't fit with Sunday's massacre of innocents.
"Something broke in his head is the only thing possible. Did he have a stroke?" he said. "I'm hoping they cut open his brain and find something. There's a data point missing."
Showing posts with label Las Vegas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Las Vegas. Show all posts
October 03, 2017
October 16, 2014
Finding a Video Poker Bug Made These Guys Rich - Then Vegas Made Them Pay
John Kane was on a hell of a winning streak. On July 3, 2009, he walked alone into the high-limit room at the Silverton Casino in Las Vegas and sat down at a video poker machine called the Game King. Six minutes later the purple light on the top of the machine flashed, signaling a $4,300 jackpot. Kane waited while the slot attendant verified the win and presented the IRS paperwork—a procedure required for any win of $1,200 or greater—then, 11 minutes later, ding ding ding!, a $2,800 win. A $4,150 jackpot rolled in a few minutes after that.
All the while, the casino's director of surveillance, Charles Williams, was peering down at Kane through a camera hidden in a ceiling dome. Tall, with a high brow and an aquiline nose, the 50-year-old Kane had the patrician bearing of a man better suited to playing a Mozart piano concerto than listening to the chirping of a slot machine. Even his play was refined: the way he rested his long fingers on the buttons and swept them in a graceful legato, smoothly selecting good cards, discarding bad ones, accepting jackpot after jackpot with the vaguely put-upon air of a creditor finally collecting an overdue debt.
Williams could see that Kane was wielding none of the array of cheating devices that casinos had confiscated from grifters over the years. He wasn't jamming a light wand in the machine's hopper or zapping the Game King with an electromagnetic pulse. He was simply pressing the buttons. But he was winning far too much, too fast, to be relying on luck alone.
At 12:34 pm, the Game King lit up with its seventh jackpot in an hour and a half, a $10,400 payout. Now Williams knew something was wrong: The cards dealt on the screen were the exact same four deuces and four of clubs that yielded Kane's previous jackpot. The odds against that were astronomical. Williams called over the executive in charge of the Silverton's slots, and they reviewed the surveillance tape together.
The evidence was mounting that Kane had found something unthinkable: the kind of thing gamblers dream of, casinos dread, and Nevada regulators have an entire auditing regime to prevent. He'd found a bug in the most popular video slot in Las Vegas.
As they watched the replay for clues, Kane chalked up an eighth jackpot worth $8,200, and Williams decided not to wait any longer. He contacted the Silverton's head of security, a formidable character with slicked-back silver hair and a black suit, and positioned him outside the slot area. His orders: Make sure John Kane doesn't leave the casino.
Kane had discovered the glitch in the Game King three months earlier on the other end of town, at the unpretentious Fremont Hotel and Casino in downtown's Glitter Gulch. He was overdue for a lucky break. Since the Game King had gotten its hooks in him years earlier he'd lost between tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands annually. At his previous haunt, the locals-friendly Boulder Station, he blew half a million dollars in 2006 alone—a pace that earned him enough Player's Club points to pay for his own Game King to play at his home on the outskirts of Vegas, along with technicians to service it. (The machine was just for fun—it didn't pay jackpots.) “He's played more than anyone else in the United States,” says his lawyer, Andrew Leavitt. “I'm not exaggerating or embellishing. It's an addiction.”
To understand video poker addiction, you have to start with the deceptively simple appeal of the game. You put some money in the machine, place a bet of one to five credits, and the computer deals you a poker hand. Select the cards you want to keep, slap the Draw button, and the machine replaces the discards. Your final hand determines the payout.
When the first video poker machine hit casinos in the 1970s, it was a phenomenal success—gamblers loved that they could make decisions that affected the outcome instead of just pulling a handle and watching the reels spin. The patent holder started a company called International Game Technology that debuted on the Nasdaq in 1981.
IGT's key insight was to tap into the vast flexibility offered by computerized gambling. In 1996, the company perfected its formula with the Game King Multi-Game, which allowed players to choose from several variations on video poker. Casinos snatched up the Game King, and IGT sold them regular firmware upgrades that added still more games to the menu. On September 25, 2002, the company released its fifth major revision—Game King 5.0. Its marketing material was triumphal: “Full of new enhancements, including state-of-the-art video graphics and enhanced stereo sound, the Game King 5.0 Multi-Game suite is sure to rule over your entire casino floor with unprecedented magnificence!” But the new Game King code had one feature that wasn't in the brochure—a series of subtle errors in program number G0001640 that evaded laboratory testing and source code review.
The bug survived like a cockroach for the next seven years. It passed into new revisions, one after another, ultimately infecting 99 different programs installed in thousands of IGT machines around the world. As far as anyone knows, it went completely undetected until late April 2009, when John Kane was playing at a row of four low-limit Game Kings outside the entrance to a Chinese fast food joint at the Fremont, smoke swirling around him and '90s pop music raining down from the casino sound system.
He'd been switching between game variations and racking up a modest payout. But when he hit the Cash Out button to take his money to another machine, the candle lit at the top of the Game King and the screen locked up with a jackpot worth more than $1,000. Kane hadn't even played a new hand, so he knew there was a mistake. He told a casino attendant about the error, but the worker thought he was joking and gave him the money anyway.
At that point, Kane could have forgotten the whole thing. Instead, he called a friend and embarked on the biggest gamble of his life.
Even before the phone rang in his suburban Pittsburgh home, Andre Nestor had a gut feeling that everything was about to change for him. Superstitious and prone to hunches, he'd felt it coming for days: April 30, 2009, would be exactly 15 years since Nestor ignored an urge to play a set of numbers that came up in the Pennsylvania lottery Big 4.
That was the story of his life—always playing the right numbers at the wrong time. Games of chance had been courting and betraying Nestor since he was old enough to gamble. In 2001 he'd moved to Las Vegas to be closer to the action, answering phones for a bank during the day and wagering his meager paycheck at night. That's when he met John Kane in an AOL chatroom for Vegas locals. Though Nestor was 13 years younger than Kane and perpetually flirting with poverty, they developed an intense addicts' friendship.
Nestor's records show he lost about $20,000 a year for six years before he gave up, said good-bye to Kane, and moved back to the sleepy Pittsburgh suburb of Swissvale, Pennsylvania, in 2007. For about two years he had a stable life, living off public assistance, gambling infrequently, and playing the occasional lottery ticket. Then Kane called to tell him about a bug he'd found in video poker. Nestor drove to the airport that night and camped there until the next available flight to Las Vegas.
Kane picked him up at the curb at McCarran airport. After a quick breakfast, they drove to the Fremont, took adjacent seats at two Game Kings, and went to work. Kane had some idea of how the glitch operated but hadn't been able to reliably reproduce it. Working together, the two men began trying different combinations of play, game types, and bet levels, sounding out the bug like bats in the dark.
It turned out the Game King's endless versatility was also its fatal flaw. In addition to different game variants, the machine lets you choose the base level of your wagers: At the low-limit Fremont machines, you could select six different denomination levels, from 1 cent to 50 cents a credit.
The key to the glitch was that under just the right circumstances, you could switch denomination levels retroactively. That meant you could play at 1 cent per credit for hours, losing pocket change, until you finally got a good hand—like four aces or a royal flush. Then you could change to 50 cents a credit and fool the machine into re-awarding your payout at the new, higher denomination.
Performing that trick consistently wasn't easy—it involved a complicated misdirection that left the Game King's internal variables in a state of confusion. But after seven hours rooted to their seats, Kane and Nestor boiled it down to a step-by-step recipe that would work every time.
Nestor and Kane each rang up a few jackpots, then broke for a celebratory dinner, at which they planned their next move. They would have to expand beyond the Fremont before the casino noticed how much they were winning. Fortunately, Game Kings are ubiquitous in Vegas, installed everywhere from the corner 7-Eleven to the toniest luxury casino. They mapped out their campaign and then headed back to Kane's home for the night.
Kane lived in a spacious house at the far northeast edge of town. His Game King was in the foyer. A spare bedroom down the hall was devoted entirely to a model train set, an elaborate, detailed miniature with tracks snaking and climbing through model towns, up hills, across bridges, and through tunnels, every detail perfect. The home's centerpiece was the living room with its three Steinway grand pianos. Kane is a virtuoso pianist; in the early 1980s he was a leading dance accompanist in the Chicago area, and even today he sells recordings under the vanity label Keynote Records. He left the professional music world only after failing to advance in the prestigious Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. Now he ran a management consulting practice that claimed one-third of the Fortune 100 as clients.
Kane's business was lucrative, so he was accustomed to handling money. But now that they were on the verge of a windfall, he was worried about Nestor; he could see his younger friend returning every cent to the casinos at the roulette tables or blowing it all on frivolities. “If you had a million dollars, what 10 things would you do?” Kane asked him. He wanted Nestor to make a list and really think through his priorities.
Nestor started a list, but it would prove unnecessary. After another day at the Fremont, they branched out. To their surprise, the button sequence didn't work. Over the following days, they explored the Hilton, the Cannery, then the Stratosphere, Terrible's, the Hard Rock, the Tropicana, the Luxor, and five other casinos, drawing the same dismal results everywhere. For some reason, the Game King glitch was only present at the Fremont.
At the end of a frustrating week, Nestor headed to the airport for his return flight with just $8,000 in winnings. As a final insult, he lost $700 in a video poker machine while waiting for his plane.
Kane decided to wring what he could from the four Fremont machines. He learned to speed up the process by using the Game King's Double Up feature, which gave players a chance to double their winnings or lose everything. Respectable payouts that might once have satisfied Kane were garbage now. After five weeks using the new strategy, Kane had pocketed more than $100,000 from the Fremont.
Unsurprisingly, the Fremont noticed. In modern casinos, every slot machine in the house is wired to a central server, where statistical deviations stick out like a fifth ace. The four machines under the Chinese food sign shot to the top of the Fremont's “loser list” of underperforming games: They'd gone from providing the casino a reliable $14,500 a month to costing it $75,000 in May alone.
On May 25, a slot manager approached Kane after one of his wins and announced that he was disabling the Double Up feature on all of the Game Kings—he was aware that Kane used the option copiously, and he figured it must have something to do with his run of luck.
All the while, the casino's director of surveillance, Charles Williams, was peering down at Kane through a camera hidden in a ceiling dome. Tall, with a high brow and an aquiline nose, the 50-year-old Kane had the patrician bearing of a man better suited to playing a Mozart piano concerto than listening to the chirping of a slot machine. Even his play was refined: the way he rested his long fingers on the buttons and swept them in a graceful legato, smoothly selecting good cards, discarding bad ones, accepting jackpot after jackpot with the vaguely put-upon air of a creditor finally collecting an overdue debt.
Williams could see that Kane was wielding none of the array of cheating devices that casinos had confiscated from grifters over the years. He wasn't jamming a light wand in the machine's hopper or zapping the Game King with an electromagnetic pulse. He was simply pressing the buttons. But he was winning far too much, too fast, to be relying on luck alone.
At 12:34 pm, the Game King lit up with its seventh jackpot in an hour and a half, a $10,400 payout. Now Williams knew something was wrong: The cards dealt on the screen were the exact same four deuces and four of clubs that yielded Kane's previous jackpot. The odds against that were astronomical. Williams called over the executive in charge of the Silverton's slots, and they reviewed the surveillance tape together.
The evidence was mounting that Kane had found something unthinkable: the kind of thing gamblers dream of, casinos dread, and Nevada regulators have an entire auditing regime to prevent. He'd found a bug in the most popular video slot in Las Vegas.
As they watched the replay for clues, Kane chalked up an eighth jackpot worth $8,200, and Williams decided not to wait any longer. He contacted the Silverton's head of security, a formidable character with slicked-back silver hair and a black suit, and positioned him outside the slot area. His orders: Make sure John Kane doesn't leave the casino.
Kane had discovered the glitch in the Game King three months earlier on the other end of town, at the unpretentious Fremont Hotel and Casino in downtown's Glitter Gulch. He was overdue for a lucky break. Since the Game King had gotten its hooks in him years earlier he'd lost between tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands annually. At his previous haunt, the locals-friendly Boulder Station, he blew half a million dollars in 2006 alone—a pace that earned him enough Player's Club points to pay for his own Game King to play at his home on the outskirts of Vegas, along with technicians to service it. (The machine was just for fun—it didn't pay jackpots.) “He's played more than anyone else in the United States,” says his lawyer, Andrew Leavitt. “I'm not exaggerating or embellishing. It's an addiction.”
To understand video poker addiction, you have to start with the deceptively simple appeal of the game. You put some money in the machine, place a bet of one to five credits, and the computer deals you a poker hand. Select the cards you want to keep, slap the Draw button, and the machine replaces the discards. Your final hand determines the payout.
When the first video poker machine hit casinos in the 1970s, it was a phenomenal success—gamblers loved that they could make decisions that affected the outcome instead of just pulling a handle and watching the reels spin. The patent holder started a company called International Game Technology that debuted on the Nasdaq in 1981.
IGT's key insight was to tap into the vast flexibility offered by computerized gambling. In 1996, the company perfected its formula with the Game King Multi-Game, which allowed players to choose from several variations on video poker. Casinos snatched up the Game King, and IGT sold them regular firmware upgrades that added still more games to the menu. On September 25, 2002, the company released its fifth major revision—Game King 5.0. Its marketing material was triumphal: “Full of new enhancements, including state-of-the-art video graphics and enhanced stereo sound, the Game King 5.0 Multi-Game suite is sure to rule over your entire casino floor with unprecedented magnificence!” But the new Game King code had one feature that wasn't in the brochure—a series of subtle errors in program number G0001640 that evaded laboratory testing and source code review.
The bug survived like a cockroach for the next seven years. It passed into new revisions, one after another, ultimately infecting 99 different programs installed in thousands of IGT machines around the world. As far as anyone knows, it went completely undetected until late April 2009, when John Kane was playing at a row of four low-limit Game Kings outside the entrance to a Chinese fast food joint at the Fremont, smoke swirling around him and '90s pop music raining down from the casino sound system.
He'd been switching between game variations and racking up a modest payout. But when he hit the Cash Out button to take his money to another machine, the candle lit at the top of the Game King and the screen locked up with a jackpot worth more than $1,000. Kane hadn't even played a new hand, so he knew there was a mistake. He told a casino attendant about the error, but the worker thought he was joking and gave him the money anyway.
At that point, Kane could have forgotten the whole thing. Instead, he called a friend and embarked on the biggest gamble of his life.
Even before the phone rang in his suburban Pittsburgh home, Andre Nestor had a gut feeling that everything was about to change for him. Superstitious and prone to hunches, he'd felt it coming for days: April 30, 2009, would be exactly 15 years since Nestor ignored an urge to play a set of numbers that came up in the Pennsylvania lottery Big 4.
That was the story of his life—always playing the right numbers at the wrong time. Games of chance had been courting and betraying Nestor since he was old enough to gamble. In 2001 he'd moved to Las Vegas to be closer to the action, answering phones for a bank during the day and wagering his meager paycheck at night. That's when he met John Kane in an AOL chatroom for Vegas locals. Though Nestor was 13 years younger than Kane and perpetually flirting with poverty, they developed an intense addicts' friendship.
Nestor's records show he lost about $20,000 a year for six years before he gave up, said good-bye to Kane, and moved back to the sleepy Pittsburgh suburb of Swissvale, Pennsylvania, in 2007. For about two years he had a stable life, living off public assistance, gambling infrequently, and playing the occasional lottery ticket. Then Kane called to tell him about a bug he'd found in video poker. Nestor drove to the airport that night and camped there until the next available flight to Las Vegas.
Kane picked him up at the curb at McCarran airport. After a quick breakfast, they drove to the Fremont, took adjacent seats at two Game Kings, and went to work. Kane had some idea of how the glitch operated but hadn't been able to reliably reproduce it. Working together, the two men began trying different combinations of play, game types, and bet levels, sounding out the bug like bats in the dark.
It turned out the Game King's endless versatility was also its fatal flaw. In addition to different game variants, the machine lets you choose the base level of your wagers: At the low-limit Fremont machines, you could select six different denomination levels, from 1 cent to 50 cents a credit.
The key to the glitch was that under just the right circumstances, you could switch denomination levels retroactively. That meant you could play at 1 cent per credit for hours, losing pocket change, until you finally got a good hand—like four aces or a royal flush. Then you could change to 50 cents a credit and fool the machine into re-awarding your payout at the new, higher denomination.
Performing that trick consistently wasn't easy—it involved a complicated misdirection that left the Game King's internal variables in a state of confusion. But after seven hours rooted to their seats, Kane and Nestor boiled it down to a step-by-step recipe that would work every time.
Nestor and Kane each rang up a few jackpots, then broke for a celebratory dinner, at which they planned their next move. They would have to expand beyond the Fremont before the casino noticed how much they were winning. Fortunately, Game Kings are ubiquitous in Vegas, installed everywhere from the corner 7-Eleven to the toniest luxury casino. They mapped out their campaign and then headed back to Kane's home for the night.
Kane lived in a spacious house at the far northeast edge of town. His Game King was in the foyer. A spare bedroom down the hall was devoted entirely to a model train set, an elaborate, detailed miniature with tracks snaking and climbing through model towns, up hills, across bridges, and through tunnels, every detail perfect. The home's centerpiece was the living room with its three Steinway grand pianos. Kane is a virtuoso pianist; in the early 1980s he was a leading dance accompanist in the Chicago area, and even today he sells recordings under the vanity label Keynote Records. He left the professional music world only after failing to advance in the prestigious Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. Now he ran a management consulting practice that claimed one-third of the Fortune 100 as clients.
Kane's business was lucrative, so he was accustomed to handling money. But now that they were on the verge of a windfall, he was worried about Nestor; he could see his younger friend returning every cent to the casinos at the roulette tables or blowing it all on frivolities. “If you had a million dollars, what 10 things would you do?” Kane asked him. He wanted Nestor to make a list and really think through his priorities.
Nestor started a list, but it would prove unnecessary. After another day at the Fremont, they branched out. To their surprise, the button sequence didn't work. Over the following days, they explored the Hilton, the Cannery, then the Stratosphere, Terrible's, the Hard Rock, the Tropicana, the Luxor, and five other casinos, drawing the same dismal results everywhere. For some reason, the Game King glitch was only present at the Fremont.
At the end of a frustrating week, Nestor headed to the airport for his return flight with just $8,000 in winnings. As a final insult, he lost $700 in a video poker machine while waiting for his plane.
Kane decided to wring what he could from the four Fremont machines. He learned to speed up the process by using the Game King's Double Up feature, which gave players a chance to double their winnings or lose everything. Respectable payouts that might once have satisfied Kane were garbage now. After five weeks using the new strategy, Kane had pocketed more than $100,000 from the Fremont.
Unsurprisingly, the Fremont noticed. In modern casinos, every slot machine in the house is wired to a central server, where statistical deviations stick out like a fifth ace. The four machines under the Chinese food sign shot to the top of the Fremont's “loser list” of underperforming games: They'd gone from providing the casino a reliable $14,500 a month to costing it $75,000 in May alone.
On May 25, a slot manager approached Kane after one of his wins and announced that he was disabling the Double Up feature on all of the Game Kings—he was aware that Kane used the option copiously, and he figured it must have something to do with his run of luck.
February 22, 2013
Shootout on Las Vegas Strip leaves three dead and six injured
A taxi exploded, killing its driver, when it was caught in gunfire between a Maserati and an SUV on the Vegas tourist corridor
The Las Vegas Strip became a scene of deadly violence early Thursday when an unidentified individual in a black Range Rover opened fire on a Maserati at a stoplight, sending it crashing into a taxi that burst into flames. The incident left three people dead and at least six injured.
Police believe an altercation earlier at a hotel prompted the attack in the heart of the Strip, at Las Vegas Boulevard and Flamingo Road, the site of several major hotel-casinos, including Bellagio, Caesars Palace and Bally's.
"This doesn't happen where we come from, not on this scale," said a British onlooker, Mark Thompson. "We get stabbings, and gang violence, but this is like something out of a movie. Like Die Hard or something."
Police said they were contacting authorities in three neighboring states about the Range Rover Sport with tinted windows and paper dealer ads in place of license plates that fled the scene about 4.30am. In Southern California, the California Highway Patrol alerted officers in at least three counties to be on the lookout for the Range Rover with custom wheels, authorities said.
Police said the Maserati hit the taxi cab, which went up in flames, and the driver and passenger were killed. The male driver of the Maserati died, and his passenger was shot.
Tourists staying in high-rise hotels around the scene found police tape blocking access to the area around the intersection. Closures were expected to last most of the day, snarling traffic in the tourist corridor. Jeff Martin, 33, of Columbus, Ohio, said he was unable to cross the Strip several hours after the incident. "When you're out at 4am nothing good's going to happen," he said.
Las Vegas police sergeant John Sheahan said the attack was not a rolling gun battle, as previously described. The cars were stopped at a light when at least one person in the Range Rover opened fire. Several people were inside the vehicle. Six other vehicles were involved in the crash that followed, including the taxi and Maserati. The taxi was affiliated with the Desert Cab company, according to general manager Sandy Shaver. He declined to comment further. The taxi might have been propane-powered.
The incident marked the latest violence on the Strip since the beginning of the year. Two people were critically wounded in a shooting at a parking garage on 6 February and a tourist was stabbed on Saturday in an elevator at The Hotel at Mandalay Bay. A spokesman for the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, Jeremy Handel, issued a statement reassuring people that much is being done to keep them safe.
"Recent incidents, while unfortunate, were isolated events," he said. "Las Vegas is among the safest travel destinations in the world and utilizes the most advanced technology and training to maintain a secure environment."
Las Vegas police officer Jose Hernandez said police had made arrests or identified suspects in each case. "People don't have to worry," he said. "This is an unusual occurrence, as tragic as it may be."
Sheahan said police had video from traffic cameras at the intersection where the shooting occurred on Thursday. "We have a lot of pieces to put together to establish a timeline as to why this confrontation occurred", he said.
The Las Vegas Strip became a scene of deadly violence early Thursday when an unidentified individual in a black Range Rover opened fire on a Maserati at a stoplight, sending it crashing into a taxi that burst into flames. The incident left three people dead and at least six injured.
Police believe an altercation earlier at a hotel prompted the attack in the heart of the Strip, at Las Vegas Boulevard and Flamingo Road, the site of several major hotel-casinos, including Bellagio, Caesars Palace and Bally's.
"This doesn't happen where we come from, not on this scale," said a British onlooker, Mark Thompson. "We get stabbings, and gang violence, but this is like something out of a movie. Like Die Hard or something."
Police said they were contacting authorities in three neighboring states about the Range Rover Sport with tinted windows and paper dealer ads in place of license plates that fled the scene about 4.30am. In Southern California, the California Highway Patrol alerted officers in at least three counties to be on the lookout for the Range Rover with custom wheels, authorities said.
Police said the Maserati hit the taxi cab, which went up in flames, and the driver and passenger were killed. The male driver of the Maserati died, and his passenger was shot.
Tourists staying in high-rise hotels around the scene found police tape blocking access to the area around the intersection. Closures were expected to last most of the day, snarling traffic in the tourist corridor. Jeff Martin, 33, of Columbus, Ohio, said he was unable to cross the Strip several hours after the incident. "When you're out at 4am nothing good's going to happen," he said.
Las Vegas police sergeant John Sheahan said the attack was not a rolling gun battle, as previously described. The cars were stopped at a light when at least one person in the Range Rover opened fire. Several people were inside the vehicle. Six other vehicles were involved in the crash that followed, including the taxi and Maserati. The taxi was affiliated with the Desert Cab company, according to general manager Sandy Shaver. He declined to comment further. The taxi might have been propane-powered.
The incident marked the latest violence on the Strip since the beginning of the year. Two people were critically wounded in a shooting at a parking garage on 6 February and a tourist was stabbed on Saturday in an elevator at The Hotel at Mandalay Bay. A spokesman for the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, Jeremy Handel, issued a statement reassuring people that much is being done to keep them safe.
"Recent incidents, while unfortunate, were isolated events," he said. "Las Vegas is among the safest travel destinations in the world and utilizes the most advanced technology and training to maintain a secure environment."
Las Vegas police officer Jose Hernandez said police had made arrests or identified suspects in each case. "People don't have to worry," he said. "This is an unusual occurrence, as tragic as it may be."
Sheahan said police had video from traffic cameras at the intersection where the shooting occurred on Thursday. "We have a lot of pieces to put together to establish a timeline as to why this confrontation occurred", he said.
February 12, 2013
Britney does Las Vegas with Caesars
There has been weeks of speculation, but now Entertainment has confirmed that it’s trying to bring Britney Spears to Las Vegas for a recurring gig at the Planet Hollywood Resort and Casino.
Spokeswoman Emily Wofford said Friday the company is in negotiations to install the pop princess on the Las Vegas Strip.
“We can now confirm the company is actively engaged in discussions with Britney Spears’ representatives regarding a potential headlining residency at Planet Hollywood Resort and Casino,” the company said in a statement.
The 31-year-old “Scream & Shout” singer stoked rumors last week by responding with a “Viva Las Vegas” hashtag to a post from her dog’s Twitter account asking if puppies can gamble in Sin City.
Earlier this week, Spears’ manager Larry Rudolph revealed negotiations were down to two casinos, one of which is part of the Caesars Entertainment Group. The deal will reportedly be finalized once the pop star’s team decides on a casino.
“We are in deep negotiations and I’d be shocked if it didn’t happen. Hoping to have a deal done very soon,” Rudolph said.
Spears left her position on the television singing contest “The X Factor” in January, telling fans she wanted to refocus on her music.
Caesars Entertainment currently is promoting residencies by singers Cee Lo Green at Planet Hollywood and Shania Twain at Caesars Palace.
Spokeswoman Emily Wofford said Friday the company is in negotiations to install the pop princess on the Las Vegas Strip.
“We can now confirm the company is actively engaged in discussions with Britney Spears’ representatives regarding a potential headlining residency at Planet Hollywood Resort and Casino,” the company said in a statement.
The 31-year-old “Scream & Shout” singer stoked rumors last week by responding with a “Viva Las Vegas” hashtag to a post from her dog’s Twitter account asking if puppies can gamble in Sin City.
Earlier this week, Spears’ manager Larry Rudolph revealed negotiations were down to two casinos, one of which is part of the Caesars Entertainment Group. The deal will reportedly be finalized once the pop star’s team decides on a casino.
“We are in deep negotiations and I’d be shocked if it didn’t happen. Hoping to have a deal done very soon,” Rudolph said.
Spears left her position on the television singing contest “The X Factor” in January, telling fans she wanted to refocus on her music.
Caesars Entertainment currently is promoting residencies by singers Cee Lo Green at Planet Hollywood and Shania Twain at Caesars Palace.
June 25, 2012
Mystery casino owner gives $1 million to families
Normally news from Las Vegas is about licenses, new games, new developments and most recently law suits, so it is great to report on some news that means a great deal to the families in Las Vegas who are having a real difficult time at present.
One case in particular is Laureene Furnari, who lives in LV, she had to move out of her home and put her stuff in storage.
She had to split her family apart. The 50-year-old mother of two is now staying with a friend. Her 11-year-old daughter is living with a family member, and her 20-year-old son is sleeping at a buddy’s house while trying to find a job.
Money is really tight for families like Laureene and many others, so Saturday the 23rd June was truly amazing.
She was among 2,000 Las Vegas families given $500 U.S. Bank gift cards in a gymnasium at the Boys & Girls Clubs of Las Vegas.
The cards, a result of a $1 million donation to United Way of Southern Nevada from an anonymous Las Vegas casino owner, were delivered to people the United Way and its partner programs determined needed it most.
The cards can be used for anything. As soon as the backs are signed, the plastic becomes as good as cash.
It is the second time the same anonymous person has made a million-dollar United Way donation. The first came in December.
The only thing that changed this time was the donor’s nickname, Summer Santa instead of Secret Santa.
The donor and United Way wanted the gift cards to be a surprise. Workers sent letters and made phone calls, inviting families to come to the gym. The families were told they would receive something, but they never knew exactly what.
Some found out early.
Tyler Griffin, 10, said a worker from his school told him he would get a gift card when they got to the gym. That gave him some time to think about what he wanted to buy.
“Video games!” he said after jumping up and throwing his hands above his head.
“Shoes,” his dad corrected him.
For others, like Furnari, the card remained a surprise until she tore back the flap of a white envelope.
In a parking lot outside the gym, she expressed gratitude for a stranger’s generosity.
“God bless him,” she said. “Whoever he is.”
Then tears started building behind her glasses as she explained how the gift card will help her find another place – the first step in putting her family back together.
“We can feel like a normal family again,” Furnari said.
It does show that Las Vegas casino owners do have hearts and atleast one owner wants to help the people of LV, without all the glory and publicity for doing so.
One case in particular is Laureene Furnari, who lives in LV, she had to move out of her home and put her stuff in storage.
She had to split her family apart. The 50-year-old mother of two is now staying with a friend. Her 11-year-old daughter is living with a family member, and her 20-year-old son is sleeping at a buddy’s house while trying to find a job.
Money is really tight for families like Laureene and many others, so Saturday the 23rd June was truly amazing.
She was among 2,000 Las Vegas families given $500 U.S. Bank gift cards in a gymnasium at the Boys & Girls Clubs of Las Vegas.
The cards, a result of a $1 million donation to United Way of Southern Nevada from an anonymous Las Vegas casino owner, were delivered to people the United Way and its partner programs determined needed it most.
The cards can be used for anything. As soon as the backs are signed, the plastic becomes as good as cash.
It is the second time the same anonymous person has made a million-dollar United Way donation. The first came in December.
The only thing that changed this time was the donor’s nickname, Summer Santa instead of Secret Santa.
The donor and United Way wanted the gift cards to be a surprise. Workers sent letters and made phone calls, inviting families to come to the gym. The families were told they would receive something, but they never knew exactly what.
Some found out early.
Tyler Griffin, 10, said a worker from his school told him he would get a gift card when they got to the gym. That gave him some time to think about what he wanted to buy.
“Video games!” he said after jumping up and throwing his hands above his head.
“Shoes,” his dad corrected him.
For others, like Furnari, the card remained a surprise until she tore back the flap of a white envelope.
In a parking lot outside the gym, she expressed gratitude for a stranger’s generosity.
“God bless him,” she said. “Whoever he is.”
Then tears started building behind her glasses as she explained how the gift card will help her find another place – the first step in putting her family back together.
“We can feel like a normal family again,” Furnari said.
It does show that Las Vegas casino owners do have hearts and atleast one owner wants to help the people of LV, without all the glory and publicity for doing so.
June 11, 2012
William Hill clear hurdle to get 3 sportsbooks in Nevada
William Hill on Thursday received preliminary approval from the state Gaming Control Board to buy three Nevada race and sports book operations in a $55 million deal.
William Hill will acquire American Wagering, the parent for Leroy’s Horse and Sports Place, Brandywine Bookmaking and the race and sports book at the Cal Neva Lodge in Reno.
The new owners said they do not intend to close any of the locations and plan to spend $3 million in improvements before the pro football season starts.
Norman Topping, chief executive officer, said the company accepts 1 million wagers a day. The median wager is $5, he said. It has online betting operations in a number of countries outside the United Kingdom.
However, Board members questioned Topping and others about online betting in Australia, where it is illegal for residents to place wagers. But company officials said operations there were halted.
Board Chairman Mark Lipparelli and member A.G. Burnett were unhappy that William Hill did not check out the local law before entering the market.
Lipparelli said William Hill was a “sophisticated and well-run” company. But he said the company has a policy of “open market to the world” without due diligence in checking the local laws.
Burnett said there are “several unknowns” about Playtech, whom have a 29% stake in William Hill and if that firm is found unsuitable by Nevada, William Hill “will have to take care of that,” apparently meaning a buyout.
William Hill executives said they have an option to buy out Playtech this year and next.
The application goes before the Nevada Gaming Commission for final action June 21 in Las Vegas.
William Hill will acquire American Wagering, the parent for Leroy’s Horse and Sports Place, Brandywine Bookmaking and the race and sports book at the Cal Neva Lodge in Reno.
The new owners said they do not intend to close any of the locations and plan to spend $3 million in improvements before the pro football season starts.
Norman Topping, chief executive officer, said the company accepts 1 million wagers a day. The median wager is $5, he said. It has online betting operations in a number of countries outside the United Kingdom.
However, Board members questioned Topping and others about online betting in Australia, where it is illegal for residents to place wagers. But company officials said operations there were halted.
Board Chairman Mark Lipparelli and member A.G. Burnett were unhappy that William Hill did not check out the local law before entering the market.
Lipparelli said William Hill was a “sophisticated and well-run” company. But he said the company has a policy of “open market to the world” without due diligence in checking the local laws.
Burnett said there are “several unknowns” about Playtech, whom have a 29% stake in William Hill and if that firm is found unsuitable by Nevada, William Hill “will have to take care of that,” apparently meaning a buyout.
William Hill executives said they have an option to buy out Playtech this year and next.
The application goes before the Nevada Gaming Commission for final action June 21 in Las Vegas.
June 06, 2012
Playboy Casino closes down in Las Vegas
Las Vegas high rollers and tourists came to the Palms Casino Resort to get past a red velvet rope and ride up the elevator to enjoy the view of the Playboy Club’s Bunny dealers, who served drinks with the signature hip-swiveling “Bunny dip.”
However, the club closed with a big part Saturday night.
The Las Vegas Playboy opened near the top of the Palms’ Fantasy Tower on Oct. 6, 2006. It was the first Playboy Club opening in two decades.
Nightclub management firm N9NE (NINE) Group, which ran the Playbloy Club and operates other venues at the Palms, issued a statement Monday confirming the closure. There is no word yet about plans for the space. N9NE and Playboy had said in March they each were pursuing other options.
Joe Magliarditi, who now runs the Palms, said Monday that the idea was to “re-concept” the Playboy space. The Palms has been making some changes, including unveiling a new sports book that incorporates poker tables, so players can hold and fold ‘em while watching games and races on giant video screens.
Playboy clubs still exist in Macau, Cancun and London.
However, the club closed with a big part Saturday night.
The Las Vegas Playboy opened near the top of the Palms’ Fantasy Tower on Oct. 6, 2006. It was the first Playboy Club opening in two decades.
Nightclub management firm N9NE (NINE) Group, which ran the Playbloy Club and operates other venues at the Palms, issued a statement Monday confirming the closure. There is no word yet about plans for the space. N9NE and Playboy had said in March they each were pursuing other options.
Joe Magliarditi, who now runs the Palms, said Monday that the idea was to “re-concept” the Playboy space. The Palms has been making some changes, including unveiling a new sports book that incorporates poker tables, so players can hold and fold ‘em while watching games and races on giant video screens.
Playboy clubs still exist in Macau, Cancun and London.
May 02, 2012
Last hands dealt at O’Sheas 1989-2012
O’Sheas, on the Las Vegas strip, is to be demolished to make way for a $500 million Linq Project, an outdoor food and shopping resort. The last drinks were bought and punters placed their bets for the last time at the Irish themed casino. Massive, glitzy resorts have popped up all around it, but O’Sheas has remained largely the same for the past 23 years. O’Shea’s Casino closed at noon Monday after urging patrons to “drink us dry” over the weekend. In preparation for its big plan, Caesars have already placed 90% of their 300-strong staff at its other venues.
“We think now is a great time for this project,” says Rick Mazer, with Caesar Entertainment. “We are starting to see the economy rebound, and visitors return. It’s time to give people another reason to come to Las Vegas”.
Building the new Project Linq, is generating 3,000 construction jobs. It will also offer 1,800 permanent jobs once it opens. The new complex will feature a scaled-down version of O’Sheas.
“We think now is a great time for this project,” says Rick Mazer, with Caesar Entertainment. “We are starting to see the economy rebound, and visitors return. It’s time to give people another reason to come to Las Vegas”.
Building the new Project Linq, is generating 3,000 construction jobs. It will also offer 1,800 permanent jobs once it opens. The new complex will feature a scaled-down version of O’Sheas.
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