Schuetz: The Wit And Wisdom Of Roxy Roxborough

“Life does not get any better for the complainer.”

— Roxy Roxborough

I was recently playing with my favorite artificial intelligence app, describing my past sins and bad habits to this point in my life. I then asked how many more years I could expect to live. The answer was a negative 12. 

This convinced me that if I had something that I wanted to say or do, I’d better say or do it pretty soon.

One observation I can safely make is that the longer a person is in and around the gambling industry, the less important the things they did become, and the more important the people they met along the way become. And Michael “Roxy” Roxborough is a great example of that observation. Roxy could never be appropriately described, but here is an acceptable effort by Todd Dewey.

I met Roxy at the coffee shop at the Frontier Hotel & Casino in 1986. I was with the Frontier’s president, John Miner, and Lenny DelGenio, the property’s keno manager. 

Don’t bother looking for the Frontier on your next trip to Las Vegas, for it is long gone. It was an old Howard Hughes property run by the Summa Corporation. Its main claim to fame during my tenure was that we had Siegfried & Roy in our showroom, and that was a big deal. I was the Frontier’s EVP of casino operations, and a lot of people in Las Vegas liked me because I had the power of the pen for the show. We also had a great gourmet room.

Lenny had talked John and me into considering introducing a sportsbook on the property.

Lenny had acquired a great relationship with the press, and every year he would post what he saw as the odds for the Academy Awards. This was always filmed and would run in a number of news outlets across the country as a novelty piece on the entertainment news, and Lenny became quite well known for it. It is also important to understand that this was for amusement and entertainment purposes only, for no regulated gaming environment could take action on such a thing back then. Beyond that, it was unclear to me what more Lenny knew about bookmaking.

Building the book

Our goal became to offer a low-limit recreational book that would keep our customers from walking up the street to the Stardust when they wanted to get down. In other words, we wanted to keep our guests inside our building, because if they went to the Stardust to bet on sports, they might settle onto a Stardust blackjack or dice game, which was not consistent with us getting nice year-end bonuses at the Frontier.

We also planned to set higher limits on faces, meaning we would allow our known high rollers to extend their sportsbook betting limits, since if they beat us in the book, it would probably find its way to one of our table games.

Since John and I knew basically nothing about the booking business, other than how to lose our own money, we were unclear about Lenny’s skill set. We wanted to talk to some other folks about what we were contemplating, so Lenny rounded up Roxy to visit with us.

While it was nice to have John, Frontier’s president, at the meeting, he was of the bean-counting species of casino executive, and I knew I would be held accountable for any problems with this book. I was therefore actively seeking smart assets to help me navigate this challenge, and it was nice to meet Roxy.

One of the first things that was clear about Roxy was that he was very smart. He’d also had a sufficient number of life experiences to be credible. He was also very gracious and polite. That meeting took place 39 years ago, and all of my observations of Roxy made then still hold true today.

At that time, Roxy was running Las Vegas Sports Consultants, whose main function was to help books establish betting lines. He was also embracing automation and computerization in the betting space, and it was obvious he was forward-thinking.

The more you know …

Well, we opened our little book at the Frontier, and did I ever get an education. It contributed very few percentage points toward our revenue and demanded a great deal of my time and attention. In other words, it offered a terrible ROI for my efforts.

But it was a great learning opportunity. It is often easier to learn from a challenging experience than from a smooth one.

Bob Gregorka, another notable sportsbook operator, also became involved, and his energy was appreciated. Also, one of the other Summa properties was being demolished, and it had offered a book run by Sonny Reizner. Summa asked if I could use Sonny, and I replied that I could.

I hired Sonny as a sportsbook host, mainly to get another set of eyes on an operation that did not always overwhelm me with confidence. The host title was a bit of a fiction, but I did that to avoid any concern on Lenny’s part that he was being replaced. I did not fool anyone, and there was always this curious vibe when Sonny and Lenny were in the book together.

Well, in the insanity I had created for myself in this very small booking operation, it was always nice to see Roxy when he would drift through. I knew I had a smart set of eyes on the property. I was also fortunate to hang out with Sonny, and he did his best to make me smarter. And Lenny was always entertaining and quite good at the marketing piece. 

At the end of the day, however, it was a circus, and I was the somewhat confused ringleader, surrounded by a very curious team. People who were around during this time and knew these different personalities would know what I am talking about. I was herding cats.

I then discovered that Summa had sold the Frontier to the Elardi family, mainly involved in Laughlin, and after meeting the new owners, we all agreed that I should leave.

Change of scenery

It was at this time that John Miner was approached to become the president of the Stardust, an old mob joint with a great book. The Boyd Group had bought the store and replaced the mob folks with their own people, who were mainly familiar with local, low-limit operations. They were a fish out of the water on the Las Vegas Strip, and it was beginning to show in their numbers. So, they brought John and me in, for we had a good reputation at running a Las Vegas Strip casino.

This taught me an important lesson: The mob guys knew how to run a casino (aside from a chronic habit of underreporting taxable revenues). In contrast, the folks who ran operations targeting local folks were ill-equipped to run higher-limits Strip operations. A locals’ joint and a Las Vegas Strip location are different kettles of fish.

Well, when I got to the Stardust, I had graduated to not only a big and high-limit book, but a high-limit book on steroids. I also found that Roxy was in the mix, providing the store with opening numbers and other bits of advice, and that was no small task.

The Stardust book had 11 payphones right outside the book entrance, and those were the 11 highest-revenue-producing phones in the U.S. We took Billy Walters’ action at very high limits, and yes, he beat us, but he also made us smarter. 

We opened our betting lines at 8 a.m., when the rest of the world opened at 10. And bettors around the world understood the term “the Stardust line.” The person who ran the book was Scott Schletter, who became a dear friend and associate, and you will find softer spots in a brickyard. He was tough and needed to be. And those opening numbers were provided by Roxy.

Roxy had been working with Scott before I got there, and he basically alternated between being the Wizard of Odds on the good days and the Evil One on days we got hammered. Scottie would want to fire him on a fairly regular basis, but that was just Scottie’s style, for he often wanted to fire me, and I was his boss and friend.

It was great fun, almost 35 years later, in 2022, when Scott, Roxy, and I comprised a panel at the first BetBash in Las Vegas. We were basically talking about the good old days. It was also an honor that year to watch both of these friends be inducted into the inaugural Sports Gambling Hall of Fame and to personally introduce Scott into the Hall.

This past year, again at BetBash, Roxy, Scott, and I were invited to a private dinner to celebrate the SGHOF. After dinner, Roxy and I went to the Legacy Bar, a rooftop bar on the 60th floor at the Circa Resort & Casino with an incredible view and atmosphere. Roxy and I sat up there for way too many hours, doing what old friends do, telling stories and laughing about old times and what it all meant. It was there that I first suggested we begin memorializing his wit and wisdom.

Enduring Roxy-isms

It took a few emails and phone calls to capture Roxy’s wit and wisdom, but he came around. Ladies and gentlemen, what follows is the wit and wisdom of Roxy.

I suggest that you not take these words lightly. This is profound wisdom from a man with incredible insight, who has lived life to the fullest and continues to do so. The worst thing that could happen is that you learn something:

• If you’re a carpenter, you go to work with a hammer. If you’re a gambler, you go to work with money. In the end, though, the carpenter and the gambler are looking to secure the same thing.
• Morality is personal. I found it much easier to take the “high road” when there was more money in it.
• Is going broke a learning experience? It is, unless you get used to it.
• Sports betting is brutal on relationships. There is supposed to be a life balance, but I never found it.
• The biggest bet you ever make is the one you can’t pay if you lose.
• By the time you are 30, you should have moved on to a more fulfilling life than gambling.
• Be gracious: It is free and it is becoming. 
• Two quotes to live by: “I would rather have a good bet than a good opinion,” spoken by horse player deluxe Maury Wolff; and, in the words of author and motivational speaker Zig Ziglar, “You can get everything out of life that you want, as long as you help enough other people get what they want.”

Thanks, Roxy.

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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.