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Last year I received a blackjack book that was so full of bad advice that I ripped it to pieces before recycling, just there would be no danger of that copy ever misleading an unsuspecting player.
Still, I try to bring the good ones to your attention, and in that duty I've been sadly remiss. My bookshelf is straining under the weight
of worthy tomes that have stacked up since I last wrote a column of reviews -- books ranging from slot machines to poker and high rollers to mob lawyers turned politician. So over the next few weeks, I'm going to share some of the best of my recent reading list.
Whale Hunt in the Desert: The Secret Las Vegas of Superhost Steve Cyr, by Deke Castleman (Huntington Press, $24.95, hardcover, 310 pages).
The care and feeding of whales is a high priority in the casino world, and Steve Cyr has raised that to an art form.
These "whales" are big players, the high-stakes gamblers with credit lines in the hundreds of thousands, even millions of dollars
who are willing to wager thousands or more on a single hand. At the Las Vegas Hilton, Cyr revolutionized the casino host trade,
using telemarketing techniques, show-up money and discounts on losses to land the Moby Dicks of high-stakes baccarat,
craps and blackjacks.
Before Cyr, hosts were mostly a passive lot, waiting for high rollers to come to their casinos before offering them perks and
services to keep them comign back. Cyr changed all that as he and his specially selected team of hosts took a more aggressive approach. They paid limousine drivers for information on high rollers at other casinos. They pretended a competing casino had messed up a premium player's reservations for a Hilton show so Cyr could play the hero, and entice the customer to change
casinos. And the success enabled Cyr to spur the Hilton to build its premium Sky Villas, such as the 15,400-sqyare foot
Verona, with 30-foot high hand-painted ceilings, gold furnishings, three bedrooms, a media room, an $85,000 grand piano
and ... well, you get the idea. All the better to lure the guys who'll drop millions on a shuffle of the cards.
Castleman, senior editor at Huntington Press who's edited more than 40 books on gambling, written the well-respected
Compass Guide to Las Vegas and co-written and edited the Las Vegas Advisor newsletter with publisher Anthony Curtis,
gives a fascinating, entertaining behind-the-scenes look at the lengths casinos will go to harpoon the big ones.
Whale Hunt in the Desert doesn't shy away from the conflicts in the host-high roller relationship. The host has to be a glad
hander, the player's best friend, but at the same time is rooting for player losses --the bigger the better come bonus time.
Is it better to rein in a losing player on tilt, hoping for long-term business, or to burn through his bankroll now? Can the
host even do anything when a problem gambler has present and future on the line?
Few of us live in the world of Cyr's clients. The only time I've ever seen a Sky Villa was at a party for several dozen
gambling writers. But the glimpse Castleman gives us of that world, with all its ups and downs, makes Whale Hunt in
the Desert one of the best gambling books I've seen in a long time.
