A Man Who Preferred Working to Watching Nevada gaming history is full of loud personalities — moguls, mobsters, and showmen who loved seeing their names in neon. Karl E. Berge wasn’t one of them. If anything, he seemed happiest when nobody was looking. He didn’t chase headlines or cultivate a public persona. He just quietly … Read more
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 … Read more
Nothing was more shocking in my gaming career than the bombing of Harvey’s Wagon Wheel Casino at South Shore Lake Tahoe in 1980, an incident that highlighted the volatility and risks of the gaming world. To be accurate, I wasn’t working there. I was spending the end of summer playing blackjack for a living. As … Read more
The first casino chip I ever saved was from the Pacheco Inn after I lost $18 playing poker and saved three $1 chips. Being underage didn’t stop me from exploring the poker rooms in Northern California or casinos at Lake Tahoe, and I always found chips to collect, adding a bit of rebellious fun to … Read more
What exactly makes people collect casino chips? Is it the round shape? After all, who hasn’t taken a coin of some type and flipped it – heads, tails, heads, tails-that’s a universal urge. But chips, I’m not sure if they evoke the same instinct, yet they hold a special allure for many collectors like us. … Read more
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 … Read more
I’ve thought “Totally Nevada” since I was a kid in the 1970s, when we traveled through the state. There were so many things to do (skiing, horseback riding, swimming at Lake Mead and Lake Tahoe, sneaking into the Sahara pool on the Strip, and wandering the casinos looking for loose quarters in the coin trays … Read more
So here we are, halfway between Casino Arizona’s Talking Stick Resort in 60 degrees Scottsdale and Buffalo Thunder, outside Santa Fe in New Mexico. All right, halfway may not be accurate. I can’t remember. Talking Stick has 497 rooms, Buffalo Thunder has 395. Heber, Arizona, along highway 260, 40 miles … Read more
The 2010 edition of the CC>CC convention hits Las Vegas in just a few weeks. This year’s event is being held at the South Point Casino. Conventioneers will begin arriving as early as the 18th, but the main event, the show in the Grand Ballroom, opens to the public on June 24th at 10:00 AM … Read more
