Mr. Ruffin, thank you for your candid interview responses. Your advise to "answer your own phone" and other basic horse-sense advise should be written into every would-be entrepreneur's (and banker's) basic training manual. I will pass some of your tips along in my discussions with my economics students I teach in adult dducation. At Treasure Island, sounds like you're a square shooter who takes care of your people. Offer us players some good deals and we'll see you there.

Durazzo, I'm with you that Indian casino's offer a less satsifying but closer scratchstone for my gambling itch than the total experience of Vegas.

One player-friendly outcome of the economic downturn seems to be that Vegas casino management is retreating to offering the common players better deals on rooms and meals.

I also think slot designers are going off the deep end by pushing complex machines that cost more and more to operate but offer less and less in paybacks to players--all for the sake of more razzle dazzle to "gawk at."
I don't give a damn if a machine offers me a Level 2 Phase at which I can return to play at a later time. Am I in an arcade or a gambling casino?
Give me simple, 95% payback machines, a reasonable price on rooms and meals, and throw in a smoke free environment, and I'll be back again and again, even though I have to drive 1,100 miles to do it.

Thank you, Ms. Benston, for bring us the cozy, fireside flavor of the lamentations and wistful epiphanies of the humbled casinos bigwigs. Makes a person almost feel sorry for them--but the rascals should have known better. "Overleveraging" sounds like a euphemism for out-of-control risk taking. These boys need to join the Problem Gamblers Group.

Two points to add to the above: (1) increasing fuel costs will further impact our Vegas experience beyond our own gas purchases.
The cost of diesel is over $5 per gallon, and diesel is what brings the "buffet" to the desert.
(2) The slot machine industry has hyped itself up
with fancy machines that guzzle megawatts of juice, further cuttng back on payout percentages.
Take me back to three reels and coins clattering into metal trays. That was my Vegas.

There once was a charming little casino on the Strip with a huge, jolly clown face beaming down at passersby. Merry-go-round horses beckonned to one's imagination from a mirrored side entryway. Inside there were $3 blackjack tables, slots that dropped real coins into your hand, and delicious hot dogs at the deli. Simple pleasures in a desert oasis... But now the clown is gone, usurped by a metropolitan transpant; its gleaming steel and glass towers seem to crowd elbow-to-elbow in their own shadows, gasping for blue sky . I crane my neck to stare at the rising skyline, and long for my simple, jolly friend.

I'm one of those old fashioned suckers that develops a liking for a machine, a machine which I have worked diligently to find and make friends with. A kind of trust develops over time. My faith that my slot machine will remain at a fixed pay-out percentage is now shattered with the specter of server manipulation.
So chalk up one more point for casino managers. You've given me one more reason not to come back.
---Old-school Slot Player