Whale Hunt in the Desert: The Secret Las Vegas of Casino Superhost Steve Cyr

John Grochowski, Chicago Sun-Times
Whale Hunt in the Desert one of the best gambling books I've seen in a long time.  

Book Description
In pre-1990s Las Vegas, casino marketing executives were all cut from the same cloth. Sharp-dressed, smooth-talking, and street-savvy, they rose through the ranks of operations--dealer, floorman, pit boss, shift boss, and casino manager. When it was time to leave the trenches, they went "upstairs" into the executive offices, where they hosted a handful of established players according to the unwritten rules of old-school Vegas. Then Steve Cyr showed up. A brash young telemarketer with a hotel-management degree from the the University of Nevada-Las Vegas and a "sales degree" earned in Las Vegas' notorious boilerrooms, Cyr barged through the back door of the Las Vegas Hilton and turned the old-school system on its head. Busting established barriers and trashing traditional taboos, he introduced new marketing tactics that were as scandalous as they were successful. In the process, he helped usher in a new style of luring the highest of high rollers: the whales. At the same time, Las Vegas was evolving from an outdated mob town to a world-class vacation destination, financed by the deep pockets of Gaming Inc. Ravenous for new reserves of disposable income, today's megacasinos now hunt whales to the ends of the Earth, landing them with super-stretch SUVs, palatial penthouse suites, Dom-and-Beluga cocktail parties, and the most beautiful women on the planet. If their bets start at five figures a hand, Cyr and his fellow whale hunters on on their tails. WHALE HUNT IN THE DESERT takes a definitive look at the shrouded world of ultra high rollers and the Faustian deals they forge with casinos via their hosts. This book examines the lifestyles and motivations of the world's biggest wagerers, lifting the veil off the highly guarded inner workings of the most money-oriented culture known to man.

About the Author
Author Deke Castleman has been in the gambling media business for more than 15 years and the travel-publishing business for 25. He's written numerous editions of Las Vegas and Nevada travel guides and, as senior editor at Las Vegas-based Huntington Press, he's edited upwards of 40 books on gambling and co-written more than 150 issues of Las Vegas' most respected gambling newsletter, the Las Vegas Advisor. This is his expose of the final undocumented frontier of the corporate-casino era: gambling's whales.


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      WHALE HUNT IN THE DESERT takes a definitive look at the shrouded world of ultra high rollers and the Faustian deals they forge with the casinos via their hosts. This book examines the lifestyles and motivations of the world's biggest wagerers, lifting the veil off the highly guarded inner workings of the most money-oriented culture known to man.


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