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Wynn reverted to a favorite topic: his
controversial, September 2005 tip-redistribution
policy, in which pit bosses and boxmen get
slices of "toke" money that used to go
exclusively to dealers.
Though he backed off his longtime claim that he
has the best-paid dealers in town, Wynn said his
reallocation of tip money was producing results.
How? Well, blackjack hold had doubled in the
last three months.
Wynn dealers, a skeptical bunch of late, were
quick to pounce on their boss' non sequitur.
What, they wanted to know, did the one have to
do with the other?
Their annoyance with Wynn's apples-to-oranges
comparison must have made its way to Simpson's
mailbox because, after being "liberally
sprinkled with profanity and insults," he
revisited the issue the following Sunday. He
detained Wynn from jetting off to Sun Valley,
Idaho long enough to draw the CEO out on his
"tip sharing improves blackjack hold" assertion.
What followed was perhaps stranger still.
"[Wynn] credited his crew of team leaders,
motivated after receiving partial shares of the
tip pool, with the improvement, saying that they
had obviously been able to stop some blackjack
mischief -- referring to the lower hold
percentage that he thinks was likely caused by
cheating, collusion or supervisors who didn't
stop card counting," quoted
Simpson.
Whu-what?!
Here was the unprecedented spectacle of a casino
boss acknowledging "obvious" malfeasance in his
own casino, tempered by some ass-covering "he
thinks was likely" verbiage. How did Wynn know
of this allegedly self-evident mischief? Did his
pit bosses know about it, too, and sit on their
hands until their paychecks were sweetened, as
Wynn seemed to imply?
Also, if cheating, collusion and card counting
were so rampant, how did it escape the "eye in
the sky"? Who was in "collusion" with whom? Wynn
employees, perhaps? And, if his $60,000-a-year
pit bosses "didn't stop card counting," why on
God's green earth did Wynn reward them with a
$36,000 pay boost?
Dealer-activist Al Maurice, who works at The
Mirage and whose son deals at Wynn Las Vegas,
contended that Wynn, in the guise of praising
his pit bosses, was pushing them under the bus.
Or, as he wrote in a letter to Simpson that was
shared with CityLife, "Wynn certainly has a
strange way of displaying owner/employee
relations and boosting morale. First he calls
his dealers thieves and muggers and now he says
that his floor supervisors allowed cheating,
card counting and collusion which no one
believes for a second."
Wynn's new corporate spokeswoman, Jennifer Dunn,
did not respond to phone inquiries from
CityLife.
If Wynn had reason to believe that cheating and
collusion were afoot at his eponymous
megaresort, did he alert the Gaming Control
Board? Nope. Or, to use the diplomatic
phraseology of Control Board member Randall
Sayre, "The property has made no reports to the
Gaming Control Board with concern to the hold
percentage on their table games."
Were any casino owner with knowledge of cheating
to keep the Control Board in the dark, "it would
concern me," Sayre said, responding to a
hypothetical question. "Clearly, not reporting
it to us would migrate into the 'unsuitable
methods of operation' that we've got." In other
words, even if you keep your license you'll
probably be paying a big-ass penalty.
"The change is too big to be driven by luck,"
insisted Wynn. (Actually, casino executives
often say this or that property "played lucky,"
when experiencing a significant swing in table
game hold.)
Maybe so, but Sayre and Las Vegas Advisor
Publisher Anthony Curtis (a professional
blackjack player) politely took issue with
Wynn's single-faceted explanation, which employs
an isolated, three-month sample. "All of these
hold percentages bounce around, depending on
luck, depending on skill," Sayre argued, noting
they can swing considerably over the short term.
Curtis -- like Simpson, a vocal supporter of
Wynn's tip-redistribution policy -- wasn't sold
on Wynn Math, either. Calling from a California
beach ("More torture than relaxation, to be
honest with you"), he said he "kind of blanched
a little bit" when reading Simpson's column,
adding flatly, "They need more data. That
improvement sounded quite drastic and quick."
While maintaining that having dealers making
more (after tips) than pit bosses was
problematic and that Wynn's income
redistribution was "right on the money," Curtis
relegated Wynn's sudden-turnaround theory to the
realm of fairy tales: "What I would see as more
likely is that, because of better pay, they got
more qualified people in those positions. I
doubt that the same people would all of a sudden
say, 'Hey, we're getting paid more. Let's go
stop all these things that we were ignoring in
the past.' I just don't buy that."
Noting that blackjack hold is often a reflection
of time spent playing, Curtis suggested Wynn
should be giving his dealers some props, too.
"If the dealers are disgruntled, as you would
expect, then they would be poorer employees and
they would make the experience less for the
player, which would induce the player to leave
more quickly," said Curtis, who moonlights as
one of the star players on CBS' Ultimate
Blackjack Tour. "It cuts both ways. The hold
isn't just a function of how many problems
you're stopping."
Characteristically, Wynn couldn't resist
gloating to Simpson that his 20 percent
blackjack hold was well above the statewide
average. Taking a shot at his competitors (i.e.,
every other casino in Nevada), Wynn darkly
theorized that "there must be problems at a
bunch of other places."
Wynn's attempt at trash-talking fell on deaf
ears in at least one executive suite. A Station
Casinos representative said no one had mentioned
the Simpson column around the office.
It used to be that when Steve Wynn spoke, all
Vegas listened. Not anymore, it seems.
David McKee is a local freelance writer. He can
be reached at
mckee_news@cox.net.
Copyright © 2007, Las Vegas CityLife
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