Saturday 11 July 2009

Friday 10th July – Go East, Old Man

[I thought I ought to try and squeeze in a quick note about Las Vegas before I head off east. There may be no internet access for a while. But I'm sure your RSS reader will tell you when this comes back to life]

Las Vegas really sank to my expectations last night: I got hit on, as they say here. The Sahara Casino bar sells a reasonably good bitter on tap, called Alaskan. I was settling down for a nightcap watching the gamblers when this nice looking young black woman offered to go up stairs with me for what she called "a massage".

"You on your own?" she asked. "No", I said, "she's off gambling. We have a deal: she gives me a good seeing-to, then I let her go off and lose money at poker, and she lets me sit and drink beer". And when I turned to look at her again, she was gone. If only she'd been grown-up (although I suppose growing up in that business leaves its mark).

I think I've figured out something about Las Vegas. It's a low-skill gambling device.

When I was young, I would occasionally enjoy pulling the handle on a fruit machine. The chance element was clear; it was a bit of fun. Then they started adding buttons to 'hold' and 'nudge' and things like that, and I couldn't work out whether that increased or decreased the odds. So, of course, I couldn't use them any more.

Then I read a very erudite article (from, I think, someone at the Hudson Institute), which described these machines as "Low-Skill Gambling Devices". Since I could no longer understand them, that left me a little miffed. And I never went near them again. Apparently it's the button-pressing conversation which is the attraction, or at least that's what the article was getting at. So, although the machines hold no fascination for me, the players do.

So I lwas watching them: while I, myself, was being watched.

These big Las Vegas hotels are like cruise liners: you're not supposed to go out. They provide the whole deal. There is even a monorail connecting them all: the stations are named for the hotels they serve. So you can make day trips to the others.

They are, using the word, for once, correctly, fabulous. They are vulgar, condensed copies of the New York skyline, old Paris street scenes. One has a huge, computer-controlled fountain outside. Another puts on a pirate battle outside, with full-scale boats and pyrotechnic effects.

There is even one, and this is very puzzling, called "The Venetian", which is modelled after a Glasgow carpet factory.

I gave in, in the end: I had one gamble. The machine built into the bar is prepared to play poker with you. I fed it a dollar, which bought me five games. I played five games, with no wins, so that was that. It's those buttons, again: what do they do?

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