Schuetz: You Can’t Stand Still If You Want To Learn The Gambling Business

“The gambling known as business looks with austere disfavor upon the business known as gambling.”

— Ambrose Bierce

When I was 17, my mother drove me from our home in a small agricultural community in Southern California to Reno, Nevada. This was in 1968, and she was dropping me off at the University of Nevada, Reno, where I had been accepted as an incoming freshman.

What most people find interesting today about Reno is that it was known as a casino center back when casinos were few and far between in the United States, as casino gaming was only legal in Nevada. Reno ranked second in market size and was a fairly vibrant market. This was well before the tribal casinos in California made the trip to Reno unnecessary for the massive population in California’s northern reaches who wanted to gamble. They could do it much closer to home.

I knew a bit about gambling prior to Reno because my father was a casual gambler. He served in the Navy during World War II, and one thing the war did for many men was teach them to gamble, mainly on dice. He also bet on sports at the barber shop in my small hometown. The owner of the barber shop was named Shorty, and he handled all of the action there.

One of the first things a new student did at the U of Nevada was to secure a fake ID.  Nevada’s driver’s licenses did not contain a photo of the driver at this time and were easy to knock off. There were some great forgers in the frats. For $20, I had a driver’s license and a draft card that said I was 21, understanding, at the time, I looked about 13. A bunch of us would cruise through the casinos, trying to act tremendously cool.

Well, this was the start of my education in gambling, and I have been in the business for over 50 years now, and it has been a real learning experience. In this article I’m going to discuss what I saw as important in helping me understand gambling, for I did not have the advantage of X (Twitter) then, which generates hundreds of experts daily.

My education begins

At the Reno campus, I took a statistics course from a brand-new professor in his first year, named Bill Eadington. This started a lifelong friendship, and the late, great Bill still defines the ultimate in gaming education.

I really started learning the realities of the business when I turned 21. I needed money to stay in college, so I started working in the casinos at night, writing keno, and later learned to deal blackjack and dice. This is where the real learning takes place.

I then moved into management and ascended (or is it descended?) to become many different things until I reached the position of president and CEO of a casino-hotel company in Las Vegas. This took about 25 years. I also had the opportunity to work in Macau, Louisiana, Minnesota, Atlantic City, Kansas, Austria, Lithuania, Detroit, and numerous other places. I have also been a regulator in California and on the island nation of Bermuda.

Those folks who know me know that I moved around a lot. I was never asked to leave a position, and I am proud of that. (I was once able to quit about 13 seconds before Sheldon Adelson tried to fire me during a rather heated discussion.)

I moved around in the business because I was either unhappy, bored, or offered a better deal. I believe that a willingness to move around is a valuable educational attitude.

Whenever I am visiting with someone who says they spent 20-some years at a specific location, I wonder how they learned anything toward the end of their tenure, for I do believe that learning curves have an early steep portion and then flatten. I also believe that there is value in looking at the same thing from different perspectives, and by moving about, one develops a greater understanding of the menu of options available to address different issues.

I now firmly believe that the best way to learn is to move around. Each stop will give you all new insights on how to do things, and you will benefit from the insight of many, rather than a few.

Better to remain silent …

I am also a firm believer that you can learn from anyone, and I want to present two vignettes that illustrate this.

I was brought to Las Vegas by Clyde Turner, the former Nevada regulator and chief financial officer of Golden Nugget, Inc., then chaired by Steve Wynn. At the time, the company consisted of the Golden Nugget in downtown Las Vegas and the Atlantic City Golden Nugget. I had sent a letter to the Golden Nugget, and it ended up on Clyde’s desk. At the time I sent the letter, I was dealing dice at night at Boomtown, a very large truck stop just outside of Reno. More importantly, I was living in Truckee with a beautiful Cuban woman and skiing at Squaw Valley at least five days a week. Being the idiot I can be, I thought I could improve on this lifestyle by going corporate.

As Clyde instructed me, I dutifully got on a flight in Reno to Las Vegas to sit through an interview, accompanied by my one suit (that did not fit), and away I went. I was met at the airport by a limo (a first for me) and stayed in a Golden Nugget suite (another first). I spent much of the next day visiting with Clyde and a few other folks, and then it came time for the end-of-day discussion.

Clyde and I were sitting at this elevated round table in his office, and he asked what it would take to get me into the firm. I acted like I was thinking, then said what I thought was a huge number, like $40,000. 

In retrospect, I now understand that Clyde probably had a hard time staying in his seat and not collapsing on the floor in hysterics. I was pretty dumb about such things then.

Well, we shook hands, and two weeks later, I was living in Las Vegas.

On one of our first meetings with some outside financial folks, Clyde had a short discussion with me about the rules. In preparing for the meeting, he said I was to carry the documents, and big document cases were in vogue at this time. He also mentioned that I needed to check the math on the work I had done and make sure it was right. He also said that if he were leaning into the conference table with his arms on it, I too should mimic that posture. More importantly, if he were to pull away from the table, leaning back in his chair, I should do the same to symbolically disengage from the discussion. He said that it was important because he never wanted us to send mixed signals.

The last thing he said was that he would recommend I not talk, even if asked a question, and that was his goal for me.

I had thought about this discussion for many years and came to understand that Clyde was a great mentor. He was teaching me how to behave in a meeting where not all of the participants were friendly. More importantly, his essential mandate to keep my mouth shut was a gift.

If someone had called on me at that meeting, I might have fainted. I would not have known what to say. By gagging me, I could be more at ease and pay attention to what was going on in the meeting. In other words, the prohibition on talking was so I could relax and watch the show. What Clyde gave me was the ability to sit at the table and learn, without having to worry about commenting on something I probably did not understand. 

I will always think of Clyde as a great mentor and role model to emulate in mentoring the people around me. He brought me into environments where I could learn — and learn in a low-risk way. That is a very cool thing for a boss to do.

Timing is everything

One of my accomplishments, of which I am still proud, is that I was a senior vice president at Adelson’s old Sands property on the Strip, and I quit after six weeks. I think that was the shortest tenure ever for that position, and the reasons it was short made me proud.

I had a number of people reporting to me, and as a rule, the property was understaffed and had lost many years of experience in the transition following the change in ownership and management. One of the areas was entertainment, and the person responsible for that department was one of the last employees left because the top three people had already made a rush to the exit.

This woman had done something that Adelson did not appreciate, and he went into her office and told her that in no uncertain terms. She came to me in tears.

I then went to Mr. Adelson and got clarification as to what he wanted. I ended the conversation by saying that in the future, I would appreciate it if he brought his concerns about the performance of people under my supervision to me. 

That lasted about a day. 

I had brought my administrative assistant with me when I moved to the Sands, and Adelson went off on her in a most rude way just a few days after the above-mentioned incident. And it was in front of a number of people — there is nothing worse than being berated in a crowd. Well, that was it. We got into a short argument, and then I quit, but a few seconds before I was sure he was going to fire me.

I never felt bad about walking away from a seemingly high-level job to stick up for a semblance of respect for one of the team members. My sense was that it might be easy to ignore such a thing, but the end result was an environment with little respect for anyone. I had decided that I was not going to enable that.

I quit because I did not want to associate my name with what I was seeing, and I will always appreciate Mr. Adelson for making it possible to understand that.

So, if you want to learn about gaming, get out there, move around, and make everyone a mentor, for both the better and the worse.

—

Richard Schuetz entered the gaming industry working nights as a blackjack and dice dealer while attending college and has since served in many capacities within the industry, including operations, finance, and marketing. He has held senior executive positions up to and including CEO in jurisdictions across the United States, including the gaming markets of Las Vegas, Atlantic City, Reno/Tahoe, Laughlin, Minnesota, Mississippi, and Louisiana. In addition, he has consulted and taught around the globe and served as a member of the California Gambling Control Commission and executive director of the Bermuda Casino Gaming Commission. He also publishes extensively on gaming, gaming regulation, diversity, and gaming history. Schuetz is the CEO of American Bettors’ Voice, a non-profit organization dedicated to giving sports bettors a seat at the table.