
Things I Never Knew About Las Vegas Until I Ran a High-Roller Suite - lnguyen
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-09-04/secrets-of-las-vegas-s-exclusive-high-roller-cosmopolitan-sweet
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pandapower2
>Those are stakes of roughly $600,000 per minute, or $36 million per hour.

This is an odd thing about gambling when compared to drugs, prostitution or
other vices. Gambling can scale up to consume whatever amount of money you
happen to have.

It is no doubt a lot but there is some upper bound on how much
heroin/cocaine/whatever you can consume without outright killing yourself.

Similarly, there is some upper bound on how much any single human can spend on
prostitutes.

Gambling has no upper bound. It can scale up infinitely in line with the
gamblers financial means.

I don't know what that theoretical cost ceiling is for drugs and prostitution
but I'd hazard a guess and say its way lower than $36 million per hour.

~~~
threatofrain
And gambling addicts are scary because they can ruin their lives in less than
a year, digging a hole worth more than a decade.

~~~
Theodores
These must be the 'guests' that 'go dark after 2-3 years', according to the
article.

Churn must be interesting for casinos, there has to be a continual search for
new 'guests' that haven't already been fully fleeced. The out of this world
hospitality is probably the best advertising they have.

Although gambling is as old as money and can be found all over the world, the
phenomenon of Las Vegas is extremely American. In the rest of the world there
is 'pecking order' with a hierarchy where everyone knows their place, whether
they like it or not. This is useful as there is no pressure to 'become king'
as that position is not open to you. You can be relatively happy with your
status even if you are 'just' a school dinner lady. Furthermore you can gamble
on a regular basis to improve your situation (in your dreams). There are the
'turf accountants' on the High Street or at the actual races. Sports betting
also allows for the gambling interest to be masked, you can pretend that you
'love' horses, football or dogs.

Meanwhile, in the land of the free, where the dollar is king, there is some
pressure to show you have made it, that you are eligible for the top table.
With this pressure comes status anxiety, so you 'have' to make it or die
trying. Since you can't just pop in to the 'turf accountant' to waste some
money on horses (America lacks bookies), you have to save up and go to Vegas,
to live it up whilst you are there. Interesting 'monopoly' Vegas has going on
there.

~~~
goalieca
I have a different view of the United States as a foreigner. It seems that
people have accepted the lack of upward mobility quite well.

~~~
sh87
As a foreigner in US, I have observed some interesting lifestyle choices at
play.

Most popular media propagates "impulsive", "care-free" choices as the way to
"live your life". Add an abundance of options to spend money you don't have
(credit cards, personal loans, financing options, Lease Vs. Buy, subscription
models, etc.) and you have yourself an ecosystem that is highly likely to
overspend, run out of money and fall straight into debt.

Throw in social media into the mix and you have cheap, scalable, autonomous
marketing campaign that pulls in the masses.

------
coldtea
> _There is one habit that even the brattiest clients tend to avoid: getting
> blindingly drunk. When you’re gaming at such astronomical dollar values,
> after all, it’s critical to keep your wits._

The author would be surprised. Besides, those are only "astronomical" for them
and their salary, not for e.g. oil heirs. It's not like those people came
there to strategically win...

> _Also in the category of demands that can’t be fulfilled: hookers._

Yeah, right.

> _Requests for drugs—usually cocaine—are also once-a-week occurrences that
> come with a hard “no.” (Unless, of course, butlers see a valid
> prescription.)_

Or, you know, if a employee working at the casino will make a thousand $ for
their middleman role, for little risk.

~~~
Gustomaximus
The cocaine one is not true at all hotels. A friend of mine spent an evening
with a high roller. This guy literally ordered cocaine via room service phone
and it came up on a tray in lines. To be fair it was around 20 years ago so
maybe times have changed...

~~~
Cthulhu_
It really depends on whether law enforcement is able to barge in there and do
a bust. I wouldn't be surprised if the local government keeps an eye closed,
given how much the high rollers contribute to local businesses. Don't know if
the local government makes much money off of the casinos though (e.g. taxes).

------
aresant
"Almost all of the clients are men, ranging in age from millennials to
70-year-olds, and they stick around for three to five years before going
dark—usually due to bad investments, dips in the economy, or divorce."

This entire article made me sick to my stomach, money can be so terribly
corrupting and empty.

~~~
mjfl
I think you're looking at it the wrong way. I think it's an extremely positive
thing for society that people who are dumb enough to squander their fortunes
are given an opportunity to squander it, especially if those fortunes are
unearned. It's very meritocratic. I hope Las Vegas is filled with the children
of billionaires.

~~~
yetihehe
I think that if they gave those fortunes for something more worthy like
progress of science or charities, it would be much more positive for society.
Squandering is just spending money on unimportant things, which DO NOT give
benefit to society. Yeah, some of this money will make it into hands of other
people, but most of this is just removing value from society.

~~~
zazen
> some of this money will make it into hands of other people, but most of this
> is just removing value from society.

I'm not an economist, but... surely near-as-anything 100% of this money is
going to other people? Some tiny fraction is paid to the electricity company
to keep the lights on at the casino, and some tiny faction of _that_ is the
cost of the fuel that is literally burned for that purpose. I think basically
the same goes for the various luxury consumables the casinos are comping to
these guests. The actual cost of the base raw materials that are consumed is
going to be tiny (relative to the huge sums being gambled, anyway).

Sure it would be _better_ if these gamblers gave their money to
science/charities instead. If you think you know how to convince them to do
so, then go for it.

~~~
idrios
A number of people made a similar comment to yours and that the money isn't
lost, it just changes hands. The response that most people are giving is that
it's an example of the broken window fallacy.

With gambling, though, there's nothing being broken but the money is still
stagnant and it's frustrating for poor folk to watch. If you treat the 0.1% as
a single entity, then the transfer of money between those who are extremely
wealthy--while nothing is being produced for it--is equivalent to no economic
activity happening (effectively the same as a father and daughter handing a
million-dollar bill back and forth). The electricity and consumables you
mention -- you're right that those are the most broken-windowy of all the
expenses, but I'd say the real loss is that the money effectively doesn't move
at all. There are billions of dollars changing hands, but the money gets stuck
in a small, closed system that it doesn't seem to come out of.

If the rich people who make money from casinos were the type of people to
donate to science/charity, then gambling would be an unusual and convoluted
way of paying for that science or public well-being. Since they're actually
more likely the type of people to hold on to their money or invest in things
that only benefit themselves, then giving them more money absolutely is just
removing value from society.

------
jacobkg
“Guest confuses American and cheddar cheese, so when she orders American
please bring her cheddar, but tell her it’s American.”

~~~
raverbashing
To be honest, actual cheddar from GB/Ireland is very different from the yellow
goop served at most fast food chains. Not surprising that got associated with
cheddar instead of the real thing.

"American cheese-like product" is a more adequate description.

~~~
nkrisc
Could also be because American "cheese" is very close in color to cheddar
colored with annatto. They taste nothing alike, of course.

------
cyberferret
This line does more than almost anything else I've read to explain the wealth
disparity between the 1%ers and the rest of the world:

> "Those are stakes of roughly $600,000 per minute, or $36 million per hour.
> (That nearly matches the 2017 gross domestic product of Tuvalu: $40
> million.)"

~~~
forrestthewoods
> wealth disparity between the 1%ers and the rest of the world

To make the Global Top 1% you have to earn $32,400. [1]

Being a billionaire puts you in the top .00003% of human. There are ~2200
billionaires out of 7.55 billion people.

~~~
toofy
> To make the Global Top 1% you have to earn $32,400

It always troubles me when people throw this global piece into it. This global
number is absolutely meaningless outside of a regional and often even city
based economy.

The quality of life someone can purchase for their family with a $34,000
salary if we live in SF is a terrible and incredibly rough quality of life.

When people speak about the 1%, they are typically speaking colloquially about
the 1% from any given region.

The quality of life one can purchase for their family with a $34,000 salary in
NYC is still just awful when compared to quality of life of the richest people
in China or the richest people in India.

~~~
nostrademons
Anyone living on $34K in NYC has the option of living like a peasant in China,
India, or even poorer countries. If you don't want to emigrate, you can do
Peace Corps or other volunteer work and have all your expenses paid for, as
well as still knowing that your American citizenship and all your assets will
still be here when you get back. Relatively few people take advantage of this
option. A very, very large number of people living in those countries are
willing to risk everything for a shot at immigrating to the U.S. and living on
a lot less than $34K in NYC.

That should tell you something about the relative desirability of these lives
for most people, even if the dollar amounts are unreliable.

(BTW, the richest people in China and India are _very_ rich, oftentimes richer
than their counterparts in the U.S. - the article said that 50% of the
occupants of the Boulevard Penthouses were from China. So that's not really a
fair comparison. Take a population of 2.5B and compare it with a population of
300M and even if the means of the former are much lower, the outliers are
likely to be higher.)

~~~
toofy
> Anyone living on $34K in NYC has the option of living like a peasant in
> China, India, or even poorer countries. If you don't want to emigrate, you
> can do Peace Corps or other volunteer work and have all your expenses paid
> for, as well as still knowing that your American citizenship and all your
> assets will still be here when you get back. Relatively few people take
> advantage of this option. A very, very large number of people living in
> those countries are willing to risk everything for a shot at immigrating to
> the U.S. and living on a lot less than $34K in NYC.

Using an entire paragraph to simply restate the old saying "If you don't like
the _US of A_ , you can just get the hell out" doesn't make the argument any
more compelling than it is as a simple sentence.

Some of us would prefer to rather than point at the worst nations and say
"Welp, guess we should stop asking questions because at least we don't have it
that bad." that we should look at places who appear as if they _may_ be doing
better and ask "What are they doing differently from us? And can we emulate
any of their policies to improve our own society?"

Looking for new information in order to possibly optimize systems is logical
from my perspective.

But if you believe people should not be allowed to ask these questions unless
they're first willing to "get the hell out" I suppose that is your
prerogative.

------
newsbinator
> Some guests are completely phobic about having anything thrown away, lest
> the discarded object be something lucky. Hot winning streaks may be
> accompanied by mounds of cigarette ashes, crumpled paper, or random
> assortments of trash. It’s so common, most butlers know never to remove
> anything from a gaming table without triple-checking.

... what is the worldview of these people?

~~~
patrickk
It's probably extremely wealthy, highly superstitious Asian guests. The
article mentions that more than 50% of the guests come from Asia.

------
cgoecknerwald
If you're interested in reading about the darker side of gambling, I recommend
this long-form from The Atlantic: "How Casinos Enable Gambling Addicts."

"Did Scott Stevens die because he was unable to rein in his own addictive need
to gamble? Or was he the victim of a system carefully calibrated to prey on
his weakness?"

[https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/12/losing-...](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/12/losing-
it-all/505814/)

------
jccalhoun
I worked as a cashier at a riverboat casino in the midwest. Some nights I
would be in the little cage in the high limit slot area. About once a month a
specific woman would come in and take a whole row of the $10 and $25 slots
(around 10 machines) and just walk up and down the row putting coins in the
machine, hitting the button, and moving on to the next machine without even
waiting to see if she won.

------
mvpu
Oh well. I don't think any of these "high net worth" clients are actually
there to make money.. they're probably there to blow away a few million that
they can recover easily from other investments or revenue sources. Re: cheese
and sweeping things from hotels.. lol, they're human afterall :)

------
jaclaz
>... not even James Bond could charm his way through the door.

Oww, come on ... James Bond of course could if he wanted to, the issue is that
they insist on stirring Martini's:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaken,_not_stirred](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaken,_not_stirred)

------
sneak
The part where they talk about denying people spending >$1mm the fulfillment
of orders for drugs or sex that amount to $500-1000 is ridiculous farce.

They don’t operate in a vacuum, and a casino that won’t cater to legitimate
and reasonable demands of a high roller will lose them to one who does, duh.

~~~
onion2k
If _other clients_ start thinking the casino has a reputation for sex and
drugs they'll go elsewhere. You have to balance which guests you want to keep.

~~~
mijamo
Oh no, a casino that allows drugs for wealthy people, how dare them, I will
stay elsewhere! Said no one ever.

I know several people who worked in palaces in several places and drug is NOT
a problem to get. Either it is supplied directly by employees with a
reasonably high commission, or the employees just answers something like "oh
no we can't do that here. I heard however that there is a guy outside that can
fix that for you".

Prostitutes are not a big deal either but you have to keep it classy and do
not make scandal (so no screaming or too weird stuff and no cheap prostitute
or underage girl, and they should look like fancy ladies most of the time).

Overall it's not really a big deal as long as it's not a client openly asking
for drugs in the lobby.

