Vegas revealed

forty million visitors come to Las Vegas every year their gambling losses result in winnings of billions of dollars for the casinos what is it about Las Vegas that makes us lose our money along with our inhibitions how the casinos convinced us to just be happy losers we're about to find out what the casinos don't want us to know it's time Vegas revealed the hidden persuaders in the casinos hide in plain sight they're like chameleons when you walk off the elevator banks and you walk into the casino what do you see you see money you see big signs okay you can win a million ten thousand here jackpot there everywhere you look there's money money money Las Vegas casinos their combination of sights and sounds that transmit excitement and fun the moment you enter and why not everything in the casino is designed to lure you in if you walk into a casino in Las Vegas I can assure you it will be attractive there will be all kinds of things to draw your attention to create an environment that's comfortable that's fun in some cases it's almost it's almost home that homey casino atmosphere also helps convey the message that we can all be winners and normal people go to Las Vegas and they become transformed into something they're really not because they see all the glitter and all the noise they're in an environment that's closed there are no windows there are no clocks there's no time sequence there and all around them is clanging of coins and money and money being made and people yelling and screaming and it's very easy to get caught up in that environment and lose track of yourself the environment is pretty typical of any area where you're looking to entertain adults it's been called adult Disneyland and sort of everyone wearing Mouse ears I'm not sure that that isn't exactly what we've created here you've got to remember Las Vegas is not a place Las Vegas is a state of mind and everyone in the world wants to say that State of Mind they have beautiful women when you go in you have the sounds of machines paint out sounds like thousands of dollars you have the excitement in there you have the the thrill and the shouted people winning the color combinations are all geared to make a person want to gamble more it's an incredible experience and of course the greatest adhesive of all is the desire to gamble the desire to get rich quick seems to be a universal trait that knows no boundaries regardless of your sex ethnicity or socioeconomic status when you walk into a Vegas casino there's a message being delivered all this money can be yours so in the background and throughout your experience you're seeing money and the obviously it's not all that hidden it's just that we don't recognize that it's there one of the methods the Vegas casinos use to make our losing seem a little less painful is to let us bet with brightly colored chips rather than our hard-earned cash if you bet with chips or checks as the casino calls them you bet five before $25.00 check so that's $100 it's just for checks but if you gave a person $100 and said you know you have two kids outside and maybe they could use some toys or you know some food for the week or this or that they would think about it the lure of a big win at the tables or a chance for a million dollar progressive slot jackpot is a powerful attraction to Las Vegas but there are other reasons we keep returning in record numbers I think it is this escape from boredom escape from reality I think it's a sense of self-identity they're reaffirming how special they are as an individual at the table and the casinos have learned how to manipulate that particular need and within humans and that people would analyze how they're gambling as far as what makes them comfortable give me a drink give me something to eat make me feel special I'm there I'm in another world I don't even see that clocks I don't see the lights I'm here that carpeting is wonderful I'm in fact in the womb you know that environment is a marketing tool and I think anybody who's trying to sell a product is certainly going to package it the best they can it's designed to make people feel good making us feel good has become Las Vegas is number one goal the casinos must make us comfortable from the time we walk in the door if they don't they're not gonna come back a lot of it is your amenities a lot of it is just can be some something like the carpet or a nice chair it's comfortable form or the fact that it's not smoky or lighting all these things make it comfortable and they're all very important no matter how they make you feel comfortable the casinos always manage to keep your focus on the games it was a casino executive who the two things one he made the carpeting very busy and he made the ceiling atmosphere very blank so you didn't look at the carpeting and you didn't look at the ceiling you have to look straight ahead at the games and although the ceiling and carpet are designed to feature the games there's one idea that's floated around Vegas for many years that's just not true many casinos have been accused of pumping oxygen in to stimulate activity they don't pump oxygen like casinos they keep the temperature down and they do swirl a lot of air around for the air exchangers steve wynn again was the first to really do a great job with that and some of these casinos are said to exchange their air between every three and five minutes next up the world of Vegas cops they've become the perfect bait to lure us into the casinos limos great meals and big shows are just some of the things we can get for free but is free costing us too great a price we'll find out plus more secrets when Vegas revealed continues just about anyone who's been to Las Vegas or who knows someone who's been to Las Vegas has heard about all the great cuffs or freebies that the casinos offer the usual list of goodies includes free rooms meals tickets to shows and if you're really lucky you'll even get cash back for your losses I think the rule of thumb is like 40 cents for every dollar lost you know if you play long enough you'll get 40 cents back if you ask for it you know what they might encourage you to have a meal here maybe a room whatever it is a few decades ago legendary casino owner Benny Binion realized the importance of giving players something for nothing he's credited with being the first to offer his guests limo service from the airport and free drinks to slot players these complimentary Zork comps started a trend that has continued to grow Las Vegas casino spent millions of dollars installing player tracking equipment the slot club card is a must for serious slot players it keeps track of your wins and losses and makes you eligible for the comps the casinos want every player to have one but what they don't want is for you to consider the downside of cops one of the problems is that many players particularly slot club players may change the way they play knowing there's a compa waiting even if they lose the comp may cause them to throw common-sense to the wind they may want to play in other casinos in town but they decide to stay there and play at that particular casino they may decide to play a higher denomination machine than they intended to play to build up points they may play longer than they intended to play there are so many ways that the card can influence the way they play in a negative sort of way once you start to suspect that that cop you're looking for is changing the way you're play the casinos ploy is working don't let the casino mess with your mind and for the Nevada Gaming Control Board cashback incentives pose another potential problem anytime that we have cash involved we sometimes find people manually enter points you have casino personnel beefing up the points so then we have a problem there You've obtaining money under false pretenses advertising inside a Vegas casino is common signs such as 99% payoffs can't be missed on many slot machine carousels but don't be fooled if you look at the fine print you'll see that it's up to 99 percent and something else you should know it doesn't necessarily refer to all the machines on that carousel what that means is at least one of those machines will have that payback and that's based again on a computerized program and it's infinity so it's not like you can put $100 in a machine and get 99 dollars back but one of the machines would be meet that criteria the Gaming Control Board also ensures that Las Vegas casinos use truth in advertising for example a casino may not advertise the loosest or best paying slots as a method of persuading you to play there we we don't allow the word Lucis to be used because there's no way the casino can prove that they are the their slots are the looses so that's kind of a bad word for advertising over the years several casinos have tried to use that and in each case we get right on it and you require them to remove that from their advertisements advertising is only one of the psychological methods that Vegas casinos use to get you to believe that if you play you'll have a good chance of winning there's something called the law of independent trials and what that means is if red has come up on the roulette wheel 13 times in a row the odds of black coming up are the same as they were at any other time the roulette wheel does not remember that 13 Reds came up in a row so you'll see the casinos now have put up these tote boards on the both roulette and on baccarat to show you you know the numbers that have come up and the the amount of money they won on roulette went up 30% when they started putting up those tote boards because people would go by and see oh four ribs have hit in a row I should start betting on black some casinos have even disguised many of the bets to appear more favorable to you than they actually are there are many good bets and there are many sucker bets and the casino is very clever in the way they hide the high percentages in the high odds payoffs obviously the bets that pay off the most or the bets that people like to make but that's also the bet where the casino makes the most money theory I guess is if you just want a hundred dollars on a nickel bet you don't care that the casino may have taken out ten or twelve dollars experts say that regardless of the casino games played or even the strategy used nearly 95% of all the millions of visitors coming to Las Vegas expect to lose the way that a casino operates the way when they profit is that every game that you you play on average every hand that you play on average you have to expect to lose something a negative expectation somehow you lose but there's such enjoyment here as such excitement such as the people can lose their money and they go home of course they figure I'm not gonna do this again and sure enough three or four months later they've saved up their nest egg they're back out there gambling again and I think it's a real credit to the casinos into the city that they're able to present such a positive experience when you know you're going to have a negative expectation which means most people are gonna lose when they come here so if Las Vegas is mastered providing us with such positive experiences even though we lose our the casinos at risk of turning us into compulsive gamblers I do believe there are probably some people with a predisposition to gamble recklessly but I think Americans in general I've always had a risk-taking spirit I think where this kind of entrepreneurial frontier type attitude that Americans have which by the way is very positive I think it takes a risk-taker to make great successes in life but of course like everything else if you if you do it to excess in places where you don't have a real good chance of winning of course you're gonna lose and I think it's very important for us to all understand that there's this beautiful set of casinos that are you know putting 5,000 people into into their hotel every night these casinos were not built on the basis of winners few visitors would argue that one of the reasons they keep coming back to Las Vegas is not only the thrill of gambling but because there's a whole mystique surrounding the city an illusion of a world that it's so unique and different from any place else where else can you go where you immediately have people waiting on you and giving you everything you can think of to have fun not only can you gamble but see a show have a drink or even ride a roller coaster I think the industry is well aware that the things they do draw people in that's their goal they're selling a product when you go to a casino you are buying something you're buying a thrill so the casino then has to mock at that thrill to you there's a huge hidden persuader I'm a part of it everybody's a part of it we're a fetish culture the big fad now is casino gambling it's a business they're after your money you're after their money the idea is to keep their money and go home with something more than what you arrived with some players have devised surefire methods to leave Vegas with more than they arrived with they cheat did you realize that the surveillance Department is watching you from the time you walk in the front door before you decide to try to cheat in Las Vegas should probably find out just how much the eye in the sky sees and will show you when Vegas reveal continues a lot of times you can tell just by looking at someone that what they're doing is not they're not your typical tourist and they're not there to gamble and to have a good time they're looking for a victim for most Vegas visitors there are two areas in the casino that they'll never see one is the room where all of the money is counted and the other is the surveillance room millions of dollars are in circulation in the Las Vegas Strip casinos every day this makes the hidden I in the sky of casino surveillance a top priority we watch the money wherever the money goes we have cameras now we can't watch everything all at the same time but what we can do is record and videotape every single camera that's down there and that's what does occur so if we have a shortage and a cage a problem in there we can just pull the tapes and find out what has occurred what problem where the money went surveillance equipment isn't a luxury for the casinos it's a must and has to be operational 24 hours a day seven days a week surveillance is required by state by regulation throughout the industry and it will depend on the size of the casino as to how much surveillance is there the Gaming Control Board has to approve all surveillance systems during the last decade the advances in technology have made casino surveillance much more efficient ten years ago I was working with a camera in a dome 18 inches in diameter it was extremely large extremely slow and if you could be moving the camera and watching an individual that individual could walk faster than the camera and you'd lose them today's cameras are small and maneuverable Nevada gaming regulations require that they be hidden from the public behind the smoky glass domes I mean let's face it if you away if you were stealing and you looked up and saw the camera looking at you would you steal I mean it's just common sense at least if they're in a smoke dome and you can't see them you don't know if the camera is watching you or not the Gaming Control Board also sets the minimum requirements for what the cameras must be able to observe during the games you have to be able to see the layout you have to be able to see the rack and be able to distinguish the chips and the cards when they're on the layout you have to be able to look at players faces you have to be able to identify who's in the casino and who's around the games that means everybody is being scrutinized on the casino floor not just the players one of the departments that we work very closely with is the security department and say when there's something going on on the casino floor there one of our first calls although we do work that closely with them we're watching security also and there have been times that we've had to arrest security officers for cheating and stealing on the floor the surveillance staff is trained to consider everyone a suspect no matter how they look and in describing what a typical cheat or thief looks like you can't do it because they come in all shapes and sizes and an age you can have you know eighty year old people can steal as well as sixteen year old kids so there's never a surprise you can't be surprised because if you allow yourself to specify what you're looking for is a cheat then you're limiting yourself to what's out there the irony of casino surveillance it's the last line of defense against cheaters and yet it's one of the smallest departments if you go in a casino they ask how many people are working all the different departments whether it's the pit-boss the D lose the maids or anything you'll find that the smallest amount of people working are the people working in surveillance so how does the smallest department in the casino manage to watch over such a wide area we're able to cover the casino with all the cameras we have we have over 500 cameras 60 monitors and it's just a matter of splitting the monitors in half so to speak and one fellow will take one half and one will take the other half and it's just a constant movement of the eyes and heads to just monitor everything that's going on and it's just training and that's why procedures are so important procedures for Vegas dealers and pit personnel are critical to the surveillance department success they are all trained to look for anything that's out of the ordinary say your only button five dollars five dollars five dollars all of a sudden you put a hundred dollars up there my job is to call out checks play that way they know behind me something's different here when it comes to identifying a potential problem on a game it's sort of a two-way street we receive calls that Foreman may have seen something peculiar and he asks us to follow up on it or in a lot of times we just see something that jdl are just doesn't look right and then we'll start the investigation at that point and then we'll get a series of cameras involved on a particular problem to identify it as quickly as possible and to either move on it for gaming control or to pass it off as just an error so when you're playing the table etiquette that's being used is part of the procedures that let the eye in the sky monitor the game while dealers they have to shuffle the cards the same way they have to pitch the cards the same way the peak of the the whole cards got to be done the same way all procedures that relate to the disbursement of the cards on the table the way the checks are paid out the way money's taken in and the checks are given to the to the player all has to be done a certain way when a player would walk up to the table and they would go to put their money out or even their chips a lot of times they hold it in the air would you please place out on the table for me thank you and before I could take their money it has to be on the table because I cannot take anything from their hand if there was hand to hand we would not be able to see any chips exchanging hands or any currency exchanging hands what we look for is if a dealer spreads 5 20s that's a hundred does she give them one stack of red or does she give them two stack of red each stack of red is $100 see see these are improper pays I don't know he just paid in $200 I don't know if that's $200 I'm just you got to assume that that's two stacks of four do you pay him 200 that's what's wrong that's once again getting back to procedure he just threw the two out there every procedure is important when we don't write the procedures we just enforced the procedures the procedures are written by the casino manager and his assistants with responsibility of being the watchdog for the entire casino Las Vegas surveillance personnel are required to be segregated from the other employees they use separate entrances and do not socialize with other casino staff members they are kept at arm's length my job is protect the assets of the company and also not be influenced by any other department I don't answer to the casino I don't answer to to anybody who could influence me in there it's better area we're here to make sure that all policies and procedures are followed and that the money is protected that's what we do and that's why we're independent we can't affiliate ourselves with anybody basically there are two types of crimes that the surveillance team is looking for the first are crimes against the casino cheating at gaming is a felony using cheating devices stealing checks internal theft of gaming as long as it's it's a theft of gaming revenues it's generally handled by gaming enforcement this second type of crimes are those against casino patrons now if a person is sitting at a slot machine and playing along and they get distracted there's a lot of distracting and grab teams this is what we call them to go around town and they work in a pair and one person will throw Konya on the floor and that'll distract that person who's playing and the other person will come in and take the bucket a coin that is their money so therefore Metropolitan Police Department is the arresting body it's not gaming money because it's not in the machine now if you were thinking that it takes a cheat to catch a cheat you're wrong that's not the way it works in Las Vegas these days we do not hire anyone in the in the surveillance room that happened sheets or to have a criminal background we need these people to have the highest of integrity they have to go to court they have to testify we can't have their backgrounds being questioned when it comes to testifying against you know a criminal activity on a casino floor of the many types of cheating and criminal activity that occur in Vegas much of it is conducted by teams there's a lot of teams working out there to cheat even Eve the table games the the slot machines they will use blockers distractors any method they can to to assist their cheating methods by even though we have a lot of floor supervisor we have a lot of employees on the floor whose job it is to protect these tables and to protect the games and their integrity it's fairly easy for them to be distracted by someone coming in asking them questions or someone that's going to come up to a craft table and throw cash at a box one it's going to distract them and take their attention away from the game but you you can't distract a camera because the camera is always going to be looking at the table and it's going to see everything that's going on with all of that sophisticated equipment no one would be foolish enough to try to cheat a Vegas casino right next up we'll reveal the clever and clumsy methods that some foolish cheaters have used to rip off the casinos find out just how risky can be to take the advantage away from the house in Vegas when Vegas revealed continues this is an investigation where the guy that's being tackled by the gaming agents and the security personnel they had what's called a shiner or a mirror that enables them to see the dealer's whole card as he's burying Vegas there are many ways to win and many ways to cheat the casinos know that if they place game pieces like dice or cards into our hands they increase the odds of cheating we're about to reveal to you how it's done there are several ways you can mark cards but they can use the sand paper under their fingernails they use what they call a Dobb which is an ink which they'll have maybe they'll plant it underneath the rim of the table and they'll touch it and then when the card comes to whatever card they want to mark they'll mark the corner of it so when it gets into the deck and the dealer starts to deal it out they'll see that card and they'll know which which card is coming out of the deck and it it helps them with their wagering or the increase or decrease their wagers marked cards and loaded dice in Vegas are two of the reasons the average lifespan of those game pieces is rather short but depending on the type of game you're playing a deck of cards may be used anywhere from 2 hours to 24 hours depending on whether or not players are handling them and whether or not the dealer's are physically shuffling them or they're installed in an auto shuffling machine where the dealer's don't physically shuffle them I dice again depending on whether or not they stayed on the game or they've lost one of them may stay on a game for you know where from a couple of hours to 24 as a regular procedure at least once a day in Las Vegas the casinos remove decks of cards from various tables so that they may be brought to the surveillance room where they can be routinely checked out we check each deck we count each deck to make sure all the cards are in place we check to make sure that it's the correct logo on the back of the cards and it's it's a tedious process but it's what we're trained to do cheating is a huge concern in Las Vegas between the casino management team and the surveillance department there's a united effort to combat the cheaters and scam artists in addition the Nevada Gaming Control Board sends its agents into the field part of our job we will go to the casinos and conduct observations will monitor the games we'll walk through and watch players play the slot machines play the table games we'll go up to surveillance and also observe the activities on the floor just to verify there's nothing no criminal element nothing illegal no cheating being conducted Vegas casinos have learned that wherever there are games of chance offering lots of money there are lots of people trying to figure out ways to win but they don't always play by the rules there are many different ways to cheat on every single game so if we see a group of individuals that we suspect of doing something wrong on the floor but you know now we have to figure out what they're up to so if something just doesn't look right the odds are there's probably something wrong take a look at these actual surveillance tapes which caught cheating players in the act this is what we have what we are calling a a card switch between two players you'll notice on this video that the two players sitting next to each other are going to change one card the one card is going to be a for the player has on the right has two fours the player on the left has a no value hand and you will see that when the dealer turns over his cards the player's cards he has three fours and these people were subsequently arrested on this property this is a what we call a player that's that's pinching a bet on the roulette he's already made the bet the outcome of the of the spin does not favor his bet so what he does is when the dealer's not looking he pulls his bet back you see that cheater has the cunning and speed of a striking Cobra this next scam requires more patience than speed but it's no less dangerous for the thieves as you're about to see they're using a mechanical device called a monkey paw which pulls the slot machine into offering its jackpot here you see the cheat putting the monkey paw inside the machine and he's what he's doing is rigging the machine to to drop the coin from the hopper with the with the eye we have spotted this and we have called security to respond to a rat to detain and arrest these people you will see now that here comes the investigator these two are trying to leave the investigator tackles the two suspects as they're trying to leave and now you gets help from the other from the other investigator they subsequently were arrested also without the eye in the sky this blackjack cheat might never have been caught watch as he switches his two bad hands to make one good hand switching cards between your two hands is easy but watch the coordination necessary to make a three-way switch did you miss it let's take a second look one two three there's no doubt they've practiced that move many times before was ready to try for real now here's a guy who should have practiced a little longer he gets his cards and decides he's got a pretty good hand why not bet a little more whoops a little sloppy so he just tie these things up a bit and if it worked once why not try it again this hand looks good he simply adds another chip to his bed many thieves spent countless hours rehearsing to ensure a flawless performance we have the advantage of a lot of times when the people are suspected of cheating that the casinos and their security force will take him into custody prior to us getting there those those situations are not very dangerous not dangerous tell that to the security guard in this surveillance video this is an interesting of incident where this guy in the Hat will actually steal chips from a player that's playing craps or actually stakes like a little satchel or purse the victim is now shooting the dice and when he when he rolls his number nationally you know people start to get paid off and everybody gets excited for a split second and that's when the perpetrator doesn't stain just grab his bag and walked away with it this is another angle now he's kind of gotten away from the craps table cuz I here's our suspect individual right here in here security apparently the security saw him when he did it then as his guy runs out they kind of get into a little fisticuffs it's one of the best tackles I've seen in a long time he was eventually caught and prosecuted all of the people you've seen in the surveillance videos were caught because of the ever an eye in the sky and one simple human flaw greed is probably the main reason people get caught is they just they get a small amount then they want more and they go back to the same place and it's just sooner or later they're gonna get caught because they become recognizable to us the eye in the sky is not only used to catch crooks it's also used in those cases where a player believes that the dealer has made a mistake one of the things that we do even most often with our videotape is to solve customer disputes if you're sitting on a 21 game and let's say you give the dealer $500 and the dealer gets busy doing other things takes your money and forgets to give you checks you'll mention to the dealer to the floor supervisor that the dealer didn't pay you floor supervisor will call us and we'll review the tape and settle the dispute now the idea that any Las Vegas casino is intentionally cheating its players has very little validity these days a licensee risked quite a bit to do anything illegal if the Gaming Control Board finds something out about a licensee that's that they're unethical illegal they could lose their gaming license it's you know it's something that would think a lot of would want a risk for a few dollars you know casinos aren't cheating but there may be person else who would take advantage of either the casino the money from the casino or work in collusion with friends and Cheeta game there have been times when crooked dealers have worked with accomplices to cheat the casino one of the tricks used by the crooked dealer is called second dealing magician Gino Minari reveals how it's done you know second dealing is very interesting but what is it really used for well the second deal allows the dealer to deal the second card off the top of the deck for instance I have a five right here if I wanted to keep that card for myself for whatever reason I would simply second deal like this of course the five stays on top to deck playing a game of blackjack or poker over hands seconds like that five still stays on top it's the simplest pie it stays right on the top second dealing is an example of how you might be cheated in Vegas but there's really no concern about casinos cheating you for one simple reason they don't have to they have the edge in nearly every game you play oh they'll take your money all right but they'll do it fair and square there are many misconceptions within the gambling world one popular with many Vegas visitors is that the casino can actually control which slot machine will pay off and when that is electronically impossible there are no magic buttons or no certain machines that you can say this is a time we want to jackpot to hit once again as regulators that's why we go out so often unannounced and check these machines out just to make sure that not only are we protecting the licensees from illegal activity we also protect a public on the licensees setting up anything now there's one misconception that Vegas isn't so quick to dismiss and it concerns the game of blackjack and card counting if you're caught counting cards in most Las Vegas casinos you'll be asked to leave but is it illegal it's it's amazing to me that the casinos have been able to get there their spin on card counting out there in the public like most people that don't know much about gambling or card counting if somebody asked me what I do for a living I say well I kind of have an unusual occupation I'm a card counter they say oh isn't that illegal casinos are a business just like any business or restaurant they have a right to refuse service to anyone and for in for any reason if they're disruptive that they are causing the problems casinos consider card counting to be an unfair practice and will refuse to allow them to carry a card counter to play card counting is not against the law but casinos do have a right to root to refuse to allow them to play for the several decades that Las Vegas has been in business the designs and themes of the casinos have been as varied as the games they offer until recently no one has ever challenged the design of a casino they all make millions of dollars right wrong we're about to find out that Vegas is newest multi-million dollar casinos may not be realizing their potential because of bad designs you'll be surprised to learn what one man is uncovered when Vegas revealed continues legalized gambling began in Las Vegas in 1931 and since that time a number of casinos have been opened some have been successful and some of not until now no one's ventured anything more than a guess as to why we gamble errs choose to patronize one casino over another maybe it's the buffet or the loose slots or the pretty cocktail waitresses no one knows for sure or duty a 20 year study has just been released that says there are very specific reasons why some Vegas casinos can dominate their competition it's a given that location is the most critical element but the real shocker is that the next most important factor is the casinos design more important than management marketing and operations combined to say that the physical plants more important than the people running it is is just a totally new business concept and yet everyone that's responded back to me says the evidence is there if you've got a good facility it doesn't matter who manages it coming from a former Las Vegas casino manager that's quite a revelation but bill Friedman has taken 20 years to arrive at his conclusion his exploration began when he became aware that there was something that was affecting his choice to play at one casino over another there were certain places I was comfortable and gambling in and certain ones I wasn't that said Friedman off on a quest to determine why gamblers prefer one casino over another to do it he went to every casino in the state and picked every busy area and wrote down the interior design features he found there then he went to every slow area and again wrote down the design features and compared the two groups anything that occurred in both of them I threw out obviously it doesn't affect players then I took the ones that occurred only in the busy areas the ones only in the slow areas and then I went back to 1931 took every casino competitive position and found that this has been going on in every situation the history of the state what he decided was that when players say they're comfortable they're really expressing a feeling of security and well-being that is more the result of the intimacy and privacy of their surroundings than anything else when we sit down and turn our heads down and we're not aware of the rest of the world I think we like a little bit of a confined area Friedman approached the concept of player intimacy in relationship to casino space and this soon led him to what he calls his thirteen basic principles of casino design the first day deal with excess empty space whether its height width depth or empty floor space what he found was that whenever excess space occurred in a casino the players felt uncomfortable that caused the player counts meaning the gamblers at the tables or the slot machines to drop significantly when you get long views when you get complete openness of it just literally sucks all of the energy up to the ceiling and the people walk in and they have been planning to gamble and they just don't feel right there and they move on to the next place the last five principles have to do with distractions in the casino such as decor his findings the more decor in a casino usually the worse the player counts a casino must be designed for the players when a gambler walks in they want to have equipment action excitement noise right in front of them and they want to stay in that the whole way now this is the part that the people in Las Vegas who spent millions of dollars building their mega resorts may not want to hear or acknowledge and that's Friedman's idea that the size and shape of their casinos along with the decor is actually determining whether visitors are going to stay in gamble could the mega resort's be in trouble let's look at the facts since the era of the mega Resorts dawned in Las Vegas in the late 1980s their impressive facades and elaborate themes have made them top visitor attractions what we found was the mega resorts have done a tremendously wonderful job of drawing in large numbers they are doing a very weak job of getting them to gamble and through his research he uncovered an absolutely astounding statistic the mega resorts are being visited by millions of people but no single resort can get even ten percent of its total visitors to gamble some are even below two percent and to the critics that say that people don't gamble anymore Friedman points to the Clark County Convention Center that samples gamblers every quarter and every quarter they get the same result 87% of the people visiting Las Vegas gamble an average of four hours a day so according to Friedman there's an enormous market gambling but not at the mega resorts they're moving into the smaller casinos to the places that are less decorated and more calm just the opposite of what modern design would tell you they should be yet that's where the player counts are and now after 20 years of searching for the holy grail of casino design Friedman thinks he's found it and he's published it in a 15-pound 629 page book for all the world to see so the next time you visit Las Vegas consider what's motivating you to spend your money is it the decor the friendly staff maybe it is the buffet or maybe it's simply the chance to try your luck in the gambling mecca of the world Las Vegas

Channel: TheJameezy

Views: 131,006

Rating: 4.647059 out of 5

Keywords: Las, Vegas, Nevada, strip, Fremont, street, show

Id: ChvfJvf1Vh4

Length: 43min 31sec (2611 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 13 2014