California’s Sycuan Casino celebrates major expansion milestone

May 27, 2018

In southern California, Tuesday saw the federally-recognized Sycuan Band of the Kumeyaay Nation hold a ‘topping-off ceremony’ as the final beam was lifted into position as part of the $226 million expansion of its Sycuan Casino. Began in March 2017, the redevelopment is set to see the San Diego County facility add a twelve-story hotel complete with 300 rooms, seven restaurants and a 12,000 sq ft ballroom. The scheme is part of the Sycuan Band of the Kumeyaay Nation’s attempt to transform the 34-year-old venue into a Las Vegas-style casino resort and will also include the addition of a spa and fitness center, more gaming space, an adjacent 1.5-acre garden and a pair of pools. The Sycuan Band of the Kumeyaay Nation explained that the new hotel and resort is due to open from March 2019, while it intends to host several job fairs later in the year in order to fill the estimated 700 new positions the expansion will create. The May 22 ceremony saw Cody Martinez, Chairman for the Sycuan Tribal Council, join with the venue’s General Manager, John Dinius, in thanking all those that had helped bring the expansion project this far including the Swinerton Project Management Team and the tribe’s own Sycuan Casino Executive Team. “Without the support of our people, we would have never been able to get this project off the ground,” read a statement from Martinez. “I want to thank the members of our tribal council, the Sycuan Casino Executive Team, the Swinerton Project Management Team and everyone that is here bringing together the vision that is going to take Sycuan Casino to the next level.” Located approximately 24 miles east of downtown San Diego, Sycuan Casino began life as a modest bingo hall in 1983 but has since grown to encompass a large casino offering some 2,000 slots and over 40 gaming tables. The enterprise moreover already hosts the GameDay Sports Bar and Grill as well as its 452-seat Sycuan Live and Up Close entertainments venue. “Seeing this project go from two-dimensional paper drawings to what we have now is truly inspiring,” read a statement from Dinius. “It’s been a monumental task but with the collaboration of every aspect of our organization it’s a very rewarding process.” Retrieved from https://news.worldcasinodirectory.com/californias-sycuan-casino-celebrates-major-expansion-milestone-55689

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Mohegan Gaming and Entertainment going it alone in South Korea

May 10, 2018

The federally-recognized Mohegan Tribe has reportedly announced that its casino-operating Mohegan Gaming and Entertainment vehicle has inked a deal that will see it become the sole owner of an integrated casino resort it is hopeful of building in South Korea. According to a Monday report from The Day newspaper, Mohegan Gaming and Entertainment, which was known as the Mohegan Tribal Gaming Authority until a 2017 name-change, signed an ‘amicable’ agreement last quarter to acquire the 24.5% stake in the coming $1.6 billion project that had been held by local chemicals firm KCC Corporation. Reportedly christened Project Inspire, the giant development is due to be located near Incheon International Airport and will feature multiple hotel towers alongside an amusement park and 15,000-seat arena. The newspaper detailed that the project will moreover come complete with a 20,000 sq ft foreigner-only casino offering approximately 1,500 slots as well as some 250 gaming tables. The Day cited Mario Kontomerkos, the recently-appointed Chief Executive Officer for Mohegan Gaming and Entertainment, as revealing that his firm hopes to break ground on Project Inspire during the second half of this year before opening the venue in 2021. He additionally purportedly detailed that the operator is planning to invest no more than $300 million of its own money in the project with the remainder coming from private finance initiatives. Kontomerkos reportedly declared that Project Inspire is due to be ‘highly advantageous’ to his company as it will be ‘the only true integrated entertainment resort in northern Asia’ and sit in close proximity to the giant cities of Tokyo, Seoul, Beijing and Shanghai. “In aggregate they carry some of the most affluent, mobile and fastest-growing populations on the planet,” reportedly read a statement from Kontomerkos. The Day furthermore reported that Mohegan Gaming and Entertainment, which is already responsible for Connecticut’s Mohegan Sun venue as well as the Mohegan Sun Pocono property near Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, stated that its net revenues for the first three months of 2018 had decreased by 1.8% year-on-year to $260.4 million thanks to a 1.6% dip in takings from gaming alongside a 1.4% decline in non-gaming revenues. Retrieved from https://news.worldcasinodirectory.com/mohegan-gaming-and-entertainment-going-it-alone-in-south-korea-55199

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How A Team Of Students Beat The Casinos

April 22, 2018

When it comes to gambling, everyone knows the casino always comes out on top – right? But in the 1990s a group of students proved the punter didn’t have to be the loser. This is the story of the MIT Blackjack Team. Bill Kaplan laughs, remembering his mother’s reaction when he told her he was postponing his entrance to Harvard to make his fortune at gambling. “Oh my God, this is ridiculous! What am I going to tell my friends?” she said. Kaplan had read a book about card counting and believed he could use a mathematical model to make good money from blackjack. It was certainly not his mother’s dream for her straight-A student son. But Kaplan’s stepfather was more open to the idea and threw down a challenge. “Play me every night and prove you can win,” he said. “I crushed him for 2 weeks straight,” recalls Kaplan. “He told my mother ‘I can’t believe this but he can really win at this game – just let him go.’ So my mother wasn’t wild about it but I went to Vegas and I spent a year there.” That was in 1977 – Kaplan took $1,000 (£600) and within nine months had turned it into about $35,000 (£20,000). He went on to graduate from Harvard and over the years kept playing blackjack around the world. Image copyrightBILL KAPLAN His life took a dramatic turn when the leader of a small group of students from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) who had dabbled with card counting overheard him discussing his Vegas exploits. They asked him to train and manage what would later become known as the infamous MIT Blackjack Team. In 1992, with the gambling industry booming and new mega-casinos springing up, Kaplan and his partners saw an opportunity for them to go mega as well. Friends and partners who had previously seen 100% returns on smaller investments, stumped up a startling $1 million to fund a new company, Strategic Investments, which would train bright students to card count and gamble – and then unleash them on the unsuspecting casinos. One of these students was Mike Aponte, then a 22-year-old who was unsure what he wanted to do with his life. After perfecting the technique in empty classrooms, he was shocked to be handed $40,000 (£24,000) in cash to gamble on behalf of the team. He was even more shocked to lose $10,000 (£6,000) of it in his very first ten minutes at a blackjack table in Atlantic City. “An executive casino host came over right away and greeted me and took me up to a penthouse suite. It had a jacuzzi, pool table – it was amazing. I was in awe of the room but I didn’t enjoy it as much as I would normally have, because I was still upset about losing all that money.” It was a lesson in just how volatile blackjack could be – even with a scientifically proven system. But he continued to rely on the team’s method that weekend and was, in the end, able to return to college with a net […]

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How to beat the casino – legally

April 11, 2018

If there’s one thing everybody knows about gambling it’s that the house always wins. And while it is true that casinos always make a profit, there are a number of ways to cheat the system – some of which are actually perfectly legal. Half a century ago, mathematician Edward Thorp published a groundbreaking book outlining how a player could use “card counting” to get an advantage in the game Blackjack by keeping track of the cards left in a deck. Ever since, casinos have been trying to eradicate card counting while card counters are getting increasingly skilled at not getting caught. So is it possible to outplay casinos today? And what will it be like in the future? Winning Blackjack Hand. Wikipedia Commons Casinos are businesses and operate by building in a margin – often referred to as the house edge. If you play roulette and bet on a single number you will be paid at odds of 35-1 when the true odds are 36-1 in Europe and 37-1 in the US. The fact that you are receiving less than the true odds is the house edge and explains why casinos make money in the long term. Of course, some people have to win, otherwise casinos would cease to exist. Advantage players What casinos don’t like are “advantage players” – people seeking to have an edge over the house. Sometimes this involves cheating and/or illegal activities ranging from past posting (making a bet after the time when no more bets are to be taken) to collaborating at the poker table and using a computer to help make decisions. Card counting, however, is legal. In Blackjack, the aim of the player is to achieve a hand of cards whose points add up nearer to 21 than the dealer’s hand, but without exceeding 21. Many hands are played from the same deck of cards, so what happens in one hand will influence what happens in future hands. As an example, if a ten has been played from the pack then it cannot appear in the next hand. This is different from other games, such as roulette, where the outcome of one spin has no effect on the next spin. Professor Thorp and his contribution to card counting. Card counting is based on the fact that a large proportion of high cards (such as tens, jacks, queens and kings, which are all worth ten points) left in the unplayed deck statistically improves the player’s chances. This is because a player can decide not to draw a new card to a hand such as 16, but the casino is forced to, as it follows strict rules. If there are a high proportion of high cards left in the unplayed deck of cards, the dealer has more chance of busting (going over 21). This can be combined with “basic strategy” – developed from computer simulations of millions of blackjack hands – which tells the player the best action to take for each possible card combination. Combining card counting and basic strategy can help a player convert the (long term) house edge from 2.7%, in favour […]

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The Man Who Broke Atlantic City

January 27, 2018

Don Johnson won nearly $6 million playing blackjack in one night, single-handedly decimating the monthly revenue of Atlantic City’s Tropicana casino. Not long before that, he’d taken the Borgata for $5 million and Caesars for $4 million. Here’s how he did it. DON JOHNSON finds it hard to remember the exact cards. Who could? At the height of his 12-hour blitz of the Tropicana casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey, last April, he was playing a hand of blackjack nearly every minute. Dozens of spectators pressed against the glass of the high-roller pit. Inside, playing at a green-felt table opposite a black-vested dealer, a burly middle-aged man in a red cap and black Oregon State hoodie was wagering $100,000 a hand. Word spreads when the betting is that big. Johnson was on an amazing streak. The towers of chips stacked in front of him formed a colorful miniature skyline. His winning run had been picked up by the casino’s watchful overhead cameras and drawn the close scrutiny of the pit bosses. In just one hand, he remembers, he won $800,000. In a three-hand sequence, he took $1.2 million. The basics of blackjack are simple. Almost everyone knows them. You play against the house. Two cards are placed faceup before the player, and two more cards, one down, one up, before the dealer. A card’s suit doesn’t matter, only its numerical value—each face card is worth 10, and an ace can be either a one or an 11. The goal is to get to 21, or as close to it as possible without going over. Scanning the cards on the table before him, the player can either stand or keep taking cards in an effort to approach 21. Since the house’s hand has one card facedown, the player can’t know exactly what the hand is, which is what makes this a game. As Johnson remembers it, the $800,000 hand started with him betting $100,000 and being dealt two eights. If a player is dealt two of a kind, he can choose to “split” the hand, which means he can play each of the cards as a separate hand and ask for two more cards, in effect doubling his bet. That’s what Johnson did. His next two cards, surprisingly, were also both eights, so he split each again. Getting four cards of the same number in a row doesn’t happen often, but it does happen. Johnson says he was once dealt six consecutive aces at the Mohegan Sun casino in Connecticut. He was now playing four hands, each consisting of a single eight-card, with $400,000 in the balance. He was neither nervous nor excited. Johnson plays a long game, so the ups and downs of individual hands, even big swings like this one, don’t matter that much to him. He is a veteran player. Little interferes with his concentration. He doesn’t get rattled. With him, it’s all about the math, and he knows it cold. Whenever the racily clad cocktail waitress wandered in with a fresh whiskey and Diet Coke, he took it from the tray. The house’s hand showed an upturned […]

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