Issue #206
Las Vegas 2004 Special Report
Dear Reader,
I tried to get this out yesterday, but by about 11:00 am I had definitely drunken too much champagne already, being my b-day and all. But I was a dedicated trooper - pounding out this long awaited newsletter on a day I should have been partaking in jocular revelry. I planned on revealing my Las Vegas exploits, and I hoped to maintain myself over the hours that it would have taken to write, but the writing effort began to spiral into something unexpected and strange. So I said the hell with it and caved. The newsletter would have to wait until today.
But that's good ain't it?
Celebratingly yours,
Bryan
In this issue:
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This was an exclusive dinner for a number of affiliates and choice industry people, and the food was absolutely mind blowing. Huge salads toped with some Asian sauce and peanuts and cashews, yummy fish and other Ameri-Asian foods. Good choice Partnerlogic! And I wish I were more coherent during this dinner, it was like six am to me but 9 pm local. There was no way for me to join the band of partyers onward to Mandalay Bay's nightclub. I was pretty much tripped out.
Las Vegas is the best place for the jetlagged. Time is inconsequential - and the city never really sleeps. My room was adequate, but it was more like the Motel 6 of the strip. But here I was, all revved up and ready to go for the Casino Affiliate Conference which was to kick off the following day.
And what a day it was. If you are a casino operator or anyone involved with the promotion of online casinos, and you weren't there, you sorely missed out on one of the best attended affiliate conferences yet. I can't preach enough on how important it is for affiliates to meet their affiliate managers in person to get that face-to-face thing going, as well as meeting some of the operators in person as well. I take these conferences seriously; my main mission is to meet with whomever - mostly operators who have questions about certain player issues, and with affiliate managers who are in league with righteousness, or those who are anticipating walking the road to roguedom. Fortunately, most casino operations are watching their Ps and Qs, and there are not too many outstanding issues at the moment.
But I do get the occasional amusement out of the "newbie" affiliate sales person. One of the first persons who approached me as I walked onto the conference booth arena was a rep from Casino Blasters (Golden Palace). He excitedly explained how I could make more money with him than from anyone else, but I told him quietly and straight out that I do not promote Golden Palace, nor do I accept advertising from Playtech casinos at the moment. He seemed totally shocked and yet intrigued on why I wasn't interested in promoting his product. I told him I'd explain it in an email since it was a rather complex explanation.
But I did explain that Playtech and I do not see things eye-to-eye, and I left it at that and moved on. I wasn't there to rain on his parade.
The food was located in the middle of the room, and that is where I met with a few industry people. To include representatives from iGlobalmedia. Some of you may recall some software issues that iGlobalmedia had in the past that were subsequently corrected. And as most of you know, iGlobalmedia is the prime mover of Party Poker, and their software is now reviewed by BMM. Things seem to be going smoothly, but there is a thread in our forum at Casinomeister that concerns me. Seems that there is some glitchiness in the way browsers handle some of their games. This has been a matter under discussion here. I hope by press time next week all of this will have been explained and resolved.
Making my rounds about the room, I met Ted Loh and we immediately went into hyper drive downstairs where we commenced on our annual Slots/VP experimentational ass kicking. Some times we kick ass; sometimes it's our asses that get kicked. To avoid any embarrassment, I won't go into any further discussion about this. Continuation as you scroll down....
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continuation...
The CAC was a brilliant success and ended on an interesting note with a much anticipated event: online casino personalities were to mud wrestle with professional women wrestlers. Mark Lesnick attempted to convince Michael (girly-boy) Casselli and me to have a re-match in the mud (MC cheated in Toronto's bout if you remember), but we turned it down thinking it would be a little weird wresting each other all slicked down and such. You might as well slather yourself in baby oil and wrestle naked. Don't think I wanna do that with Michael. Alas, when the show began, it turned out that the casino (The Frontier) had reneged on Marc Lesnick's deal and would not allow any guys to wrestle the women. Originally guys were to volunteer to wrestle five women at a time; any guy left in the ring unpinned after 30 minutes was to be awarded an iPod. Well that didn't happen, but we were rewarded with the sight of a number of young college girls taking on each other in the ring of mud. It was pretty hilarious, and not degrading whatsoever. Really! The MC was a good ol' boy from Nashville, whose running commentaries had me in stitches. I don't get a chance to hear real down to earth American humour live like this too often.
And I was looking forward to the following day when the "really" big event was supposed to kick off. The Global Gaming Exposition: the largest gaming exposition in the free world, touting over 750 exhibitors and over 100 conference sessions; this was my fourth attendance starting with my first in October 2001. The G2E has always been important to me since this has attracted just about every software provider and licensor of online casinos that you could imagine. This is a exhibition where I make most of my contacts - it has been a crucial "must attend" event for Casinomeister. But after this visit, I'm beginning to feel that the online gaming community is the red-headed step-child of the brick and mortar world.
The exhibition was a success for the G2E, but a flop for anyone involved with online gaming. I was extremely disappointed with the vendor turnout and there were virtually no booths pertaining to cyber-gaming. Playtech had a booth. Netentertainment had a booth. IGC had a booth. Angelciti had a booth, but it was empty. That was about it except for maybe a couple of others that were positioned helter skelter amongst the rest.
Me thinks the G2E has gotten too big for its britches. "More is better" should be their slogan since the showroom floors were huge, but much of it had hardly anything to do with gaming whatsoever. There was an entire floor devoted entirely to food caterers; the food and restaurants found in B&M casinos. Well the free samples were fine and dandy, but what the hell? These folks should have their own exhibition. This just seemed to be a tag-along effort. And throughout the entire main level of the showroom floor were booths presenting items that casinos use for freebies and comps (watches, stuffed animals, vacation packages, etc.). Sheesh! Talk about a loss of focus. After this year, they will probably lose all support from the online community.
And this is pretty odd for me to figure out. Someone mentioned to me that it was the uncertain legal environment that has turned off the online vendors from this event. This may be true, but just last week I was spotting televised ads for Party Poker on the Game Show Channel, and CNN at the moment is running Sportsbooks and Casinos on CNNtext. And what about online Poker? This phenomena is supposed to be exploding online and offline with special televised programing dedicated to poker rooms tournaments. I just don't get it.
Each year I report on the slew of innovative new games coming out from IGT, etc. Last year we had the Twilight Zone, Star Wars, and Monty Python's the Holy Grail just to name a few. This year...nothin'. Nothin' worth talking about except for one. The game worth mentioning is the new "Fistful of Dollars" slots from WMS Gaming. For you Spaghetti Western fans - this is it. WMS has teamed up with Clint Eastwood, MGM and Warner Bros. to produce one of the best video slots coming out this year (due to hit the B&Ms February 2005!). The steely-eyed man with no name brings the player into this five reel video slot where there are three bonus rounds to muster. Inspired by the sights and sounds of Clint's good guy vs the bad guy confrontations, this will be the coveted game on the gaming room floor come February. Keep you eyes open for this one. And yes, Clint was there to help introduce the game.
Continuation as you scroll down....
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Fact:
It was not a beer; it was a Corona. I had drank about half of this yellow liquid when it suddenly occurred to me that this was not beer. It was a mockery of a beer. My instincts were to throw it into the trash - which I did without hesitation or after-thought.
See, it's not so hard to get a peace offering out of me. I'm a Libra. So who's next?
And for those of you who didn't get the chance to buy me a beer in Vegas, I'll be in Barcelona in about three weeks...
WHILE I WAS GONE:
There has been an incredible amount of player fraud coming out of Israel, and a few other cases of player scams. These will get my full attention next week. Til then...
Peace
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Bryan Bailey Webmeister Casinomeister |  |