I’ve been a gambler my whole life, ever since I started pitching pennies and shooting marbles. I hate to lose, so most of my education came on the cheap, and I’ve stayed with games I could beat, and steered away from people and games I couldn’t. Near the beginning, I was a nine-year-old kid playing…
Kirk Kerkorian, a significant figure in Las Vegas, shifted its landscape through innovative mega-resort development, transforming the city from a simplistic gambling hub into a mass-tourism destination. Born in 1917, he leveraged his aviation success to invest in unexploited hospitality opportunities, culminating in the creation of iconic establishments like the International Hotel and MGM Grand. Kerkorian’s strategic focus on scale, branding, and corporate legitimacy redefined the casino industry, paving the way for large-scale operations and solidifying Las Vegas’s global hospitality reputation.
Moe Sedway was the quiet syndicate operator who stabilized the Flamingo after Bugsy Siegel and helped shape early Las Vegas casino management and skimming operations.
Few figures have shaped modern Las Vegas as profoundly as Steve Wynn. A developer with a showman’s instinct and an eye for luxury, Wynn transformed the casino from a gambling hall into a fully immersive resort experience. His properties redefined the Strip, set new standards for design and service, and ushered in an era of…
1) Flamingo Hotel & Casino The Mob first controlled casinos in the Downtown area along Fremont Street. Bugsy Siegel and Moe Sedway set up shop at the Las Vegas Club. They managed the race wire and operations at the Golden Nugget. Then they purchased the El Cortez with partners Gus Greenbaum, Davie Berman, and “Icepick”…
How Howard Hughes quietly bought the Desert Inn, Sands, Frontier, and more—launching a corporate takeover that ended the mob era and transformed modern Las Vegas. The Billionaire Who Bought the Strip When Howard Hughes arrived in Las Vegas in 1966, he didn’t come to headline a showroom or host a grand opening. He came to…
Original photo of dealers and bosses at Cal-Neva casino in Lake Tahoe, 1942.
I learned to play poker in West Springfield, Virginia, after my friend Barry Wilson invited me to play. We were high school freshmen, and the guys we ended up playing against were juniors and seniors. We both lost. In the coming weeks, we improved, but we were still dorks. To finance poker, Barry got a…
I wrote my first little story about the Primadonna Casino in Reno for my chip collecting friends in 1984. We weren’t a big group, so the front side of the first of four pages had an actual post card stuck to it. Below the scalloped edges of the Reno-Tahoe Advertising post card were a few…
L. M. Strauss, a native of the San Francisco Bay area, was born in October [1904]. Growing up, he was like any other youth in the area, driven by the desire to earn some extra cash to support his interests and socialize with his peers. His early exposure to poker, particularly five-card stud, and his…
If anything is certain in life besides Death and Taxes, it’s that the Mob kept plenty of muscle in Las Vegas to protect its interests. In this case, the New York Mob started first, with a friendly visit from Meyer Lansky to the first club along what became the Las Vegas strip a dozen years…
