ONLINE GAMBLING AND CASINO GUIDE

The Strip vs. Downtown.

For the past ten years, this debate has pitted friend against friend, brother against brother, countrymen against countrymen.

It has split up families and has been responsible for countless wars.  Two involving nukes.

Few people know this, but the Fremont Street vs. Las Vegas Boulevard debate was the original cause of disharmony in the Middle East.

These days, I’m Switzerland.

I like both Vegas entertainment jurisdictions pretty much equally at this point.

I don’t think I would be completely satisfied with just one or the other, and I tend to split actual gaming time between the two places pretty evenly.  I spend more raw minutes on The Strip, though, because it just takes longer to get from one place to another.

I can actually game in the Plaza, Binion’s, and Golden Nugget within the same hour, but it would take me three times as long to play 10 hands each at the Sahara, Mandalay, and Planet Hollywood.

Of course, the dichotomy of these two factions of Vegas gaming are also the strengths of each area.

While Downtown is infinitely more pedestrian friendly, it would be patently impossible to put the Bellagio Fountains, the Mirage Volcano, the Eiffel Tower, and the MGM Grand Garden Arena in the small footprint that Fremont Street occupies.

Neither is better or worse, they are just different.  An ideal Vegas vacation would probably entail a trip to both because you cannot get the full Vegas experience spending time in only one jurisdiction.

That being said, on the days when all I want to do is gamble … it’s getting harder to justify anything south of The Riviera.  It’s as though a line has been drawn at Desert Inn Road where everyone north of this demarcation gets reasonable odds, and everyone south of it gets an oblong shaft in the brown eye.

Since the first two nights of this past weekend were primarily geared toward gambling, I stayed north of the unofficial high/low gambling IQ line.  Far north.

While my endeavors on Friday have already been documented, I decided to take a nostalgia trip and hit an old favorite on Saturday.

Many years ago, I played my very first hand of live Blackjack at a hotel/casino known as the California.

I had racked up a fair amount of coin hopper slot play at the Luxor by this time, but my graduation to table games happened Downtown.

This transition was made at a $3 Cal table, and I only knew the most rudimentary rules of the game.  Like the dilemma that many tourists face today, I played the Cal before I was even aware that there were variations of 21.  I thought Blackjack was Blackjack.  They probably could have gotten away with paying me 10:9 back then.

Despite this, I do remember winning a pretty impressive amount of money, building up my confidence, and then moving onto places like the Mirage and the Bellagio … but the nexus of my table gaming was the semi-obscure California.

Blackjack wasn’t my only “first” here, though.  This was also the first place I ever stayed Downtown.

Why?

Because my escalating $3 play (I was betting it up by the end of the session) earned me a free room thus representing the first time I was ever comped in Vegas.

The California is not a place where most people have Vegas “firsts”, but what can I tell you.  Things happen when you least expect them to.

Not only that, but it was the first place I ever paid a transvestite midget to tapdance on my scrotum while pinching my nipples and singing the Star Spangled Banner.

Okay, that was an exaggeration.  The song was America the Beautiful.  What kind of sick freak would sing the national anthem under such circumstances?

This was also the first place I ever ate a Spam Bomb (which has since been renamed “Spam Musubi”), and I have been eating these unhealthy treats ever since.

I don’t play in the Cal very often anymore, but every time I pass the old and bright place, it triggers memories of huge wins at three dollar tables.

This weekend, I felt that I was long overdue to pay homage.

When I walked into the casino, the first thing that struck me was that some things never change.  A decade ago, the Cal catered to a 90%+ Hawaiian/Asian clientele, and here in 2009, it was no different.

The California is an Asian hotel because they aggressively market to the Pacific Islands, and many people from these areas know nothing of Vegas outside the walls of this particular  property.

As I walked up and down the isles of Hawaiian-themed slot machines, I realized that I was one of the few people of Caucasian persuasion in the joint, but it was an extremely pleasant atmosphere.

There were several $5 3:2 Double Deck tables, full-pay VP machines were the rule rather than the exception, and I elicited a smile from every waitress I passed.

I took a seat at one of the DD tables, pulled out a couple of bills, and struck up a language-barriered, yet still understandable conversation with the dealer.  I remarked that the games were quite advantageous compared to the rest of Vegas, and she said “Do you want to know a secret?”.

Ever the inquisitive sort, I replied “sure”.

“Asians know their gambling, they will never play that garbage over there”, she said motioning toward the wall … which I can only assume meant “The Strip”.

“Well, I’m here, does this make me an honorary Asian?”, I asked.

“You’re too tall”, she said with a smile, “but you picked the right casino anyway”.

How about that?  Apparently, I picked the right casino from day one.  Take that naysayers!

I played about an hour and a half of jack, but this time my luck seemed to have waned along with my agility and intellect.  You can’t count on beginner’s luck after a couple million hands of the same game.

It wasn’t too bad, though.  It was a back and forth session ending with a string of losses, but I was probably only down 30% when I got up.

After my session, I walked around to take in the atmosphere.  Given its location and age, this casino is doing well.  It has a happy and friendly vibe to it.  There was a large room where people were singing karaoke while playing Bingo, and everyone seemed oblivious to the problems of the world.

Despite the unfortunate name of the property, there wasn’t a single douchenugget to be found under the roof.  This alone was worth the 30% give-up.

Due to its targeting of a very specific clientele, I think that the Cal has more die-hard loyalty than possibly any other casino in Vegas.  This probably even makes it slightly more recession-proof than the average Vegas hotel.

While most of the clientele was decidedly on the older side (50+), I saw quite a few multi-generational families walking around.  A couple of times I saw a 70 year old grandpa explaining the finer points of gaming to his 25 year old granddaughter.

What does this mean?  It means that those of you with a propensity for the Asian ladies might be well-served to walk two blocks north of Fremont Street to the Cal.  I can’t promise anything, but your chances are certainly better here than they are at the Western.

I will probably be returning to the Cal in the near future.  I had forgotten just how good the gaming was, and when combined with the service and the “Pacific scenery”, it’s definitely one of the most underrated properties Downtown.

In any event, it was a pleasant walk down memory lane this weekend.  I wish it could have been a profitable walk as well, but at this casino, I can definitely say that I am “up” lifetime.

The Cal is also the place that is solely responsible for converting me from a model and moral citizen into the degenerate gambler than I am today.

Now you know who to blame.

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