not trying to dump on poker (i love and enjoy the game) but its worse than that.

not breaking news to anyone but Poker is also the least profitable sq footage in the casino.

So net profit numbers are below 1-4% of total margin dollars, aka a rounding error on casinos income statement.

Yes, casino execs get measured on revenue but EBITDA type measurements are what matters.

Yes we are.

Sadly, our administration was more worried about "keeping their numbers low " in the beginning, and now more worried about Stock Market, general economy and their impact on November Elections. The focus will soon turn to pointing fingers and trying to shift blame to others for not taking quicker action at the Fed level and also shoring up our health care system.

You seem to have a strong opinion on this matter. I'm curious what "not good numbers" means to you. What is your prediction?

What does this mean?

I'm impressed with your skill in knowing what's in people's minds (you must be an unbeatable poker player). But I'm curious.. are you putting forth that government officials should not worry about things like the economy?

So you are saying politicians will blame each other in order to try and achieve political advantage? I would never have imagined it could be true.

not wanting to get in Trump discussion but early on when first cruise ship was quarantined off coast of CA, he did not want to let them off because he wanted to "keep his numbers low" meaning number of infected in US. you can google it watch the words come out of his mouth.


yes normal politicians are of course worried about the economy and they should be.

current admin is worried about all these things but sadly not because they really care about any of it, they only care how it impacts how they feel about themselves, how it reflects on them, and how it will impact their re-election. I know this to be true because it is and I took a psychology course in college.

p.s. yes , I am endboss at live poker. I have win rate of 3BBs/hour at the 1/2 NL game at Harrahs Cherokee over large sample size.


When **** hits the fan in the US, the current admin will accept NONE of the responsibility for not taking proper actions, instead they will shift blame to many others, and claim everything they did was perfect. all politicians do this to some degree but current administration are world class and have taken this skill to new levels of absurdity.

Peace to all. See you in Mass on Easter.

I'm curious, Lou, if your numbers for poker include lodging and concessions. Having 5 to >10 thousand poker players a day every day for 6 weeks at the Rio comes with enormous benefit to sales of food, drinks, clothing and other concession services, as well as hotel occupancy. So despite the rake, advertising, and broadcast revenues from the WSOP tournaments and attendant cash games after expenses contributing only a tiny percentage to overall profit, I would think the perks for Caesars are substantial. To me it's analogous to hosting something like 10 different four day conventions or 20 two day ones consecutively, and doing so in one of the slowest times of the year for their business.

^^ they don't and you are correct there are other financial benefits to having all those players in town in dead of summer.

MGM, TI, Venetian and all other casinos benefit to some degree.

By "not good numbers", I just mean "worse than Italy". (Which shouldn't really surprise people. The US has a population more than five times as big as Italy's). I can't put an exact number on what I think the long-term death toll will be, because it's way too early, and I'm not fully up to date on what each state is doing with regard to containment. Also, the numbers are still very low in some states (creating sample-size issues which mean local trends aren't clear), no one knows the 'true' fatality rate or when new treatments or tests are coming, so it would be foolish for me to put much confidence in any long-term prediction.
On current trends, the US is on track for about 3000 Covid fatalities per day by mid/late April, but I would hope that extreme measures are taken to flatten the curve urgently before such numbers become inevitable.
The NYT has uploaded an interactive model, which I think is based on an overly pessimistic CFR and infection rate. It might have been designed and published to try and scare people into action. If reality ends up being anything like what that model 'predicts', there will be hundreds of thousands (or even millions) of hospitalizations in the US.
The so-called 'professional super-forecasters' at GoodJudgment have been attempting to answer questions like yours for the past two months or so. The mean average of their educated guesses has been increasing pretty much every day, but here's their current forecast for the number of US Covid fatalities by this time next year:

I don't really know what to think of that, or of forecasters in general, but on the GJ website there are notes underneath the charts where the forecasters gave reasons for why they assigned probabilities to one thing or another.
More superforecaster predictions about Covid-19.

So, according to you, Trump wanted to limit the spread of the virus in the US. And you find reason to criticize him for this.

Anyhow, I try not to listen to the words coming out of Trump's mouth too often. He is not a particularly effective speaker. I prefer to observe the things he does. So he wanted to quarantine the ship (or did.. I don't remember)? I view that as a good thing, but I agree many people feel differently.

Well, I didn't know you took a psychology course in college. Based on that, I agree your opinion about the psychological motivations and feelings of strangers is more likely than not to be valid.


Well, like all usual, I'm curious what those "proper" actions are/were, according to those claiming they know, and would like to compare them both to what was done and to what was possible and/or prudent. In other words I prefer to react to things in a world of reality, and not so much something I make up in my mind.

That does sound impressive. You're not Will Kassouf, by any chance?

I sure hope so. According to some of the predictions in this thread and elsewhere, we'll all be lucky to survive to Easter.

I really wish people wouldn’t just post links without any description of the contents or even the title of the article.
Why not at least do it like this?

How Long Can Las Vegas Casino Companies Survive Covid-19 Shutdown? (from Reno Gazette Journal)

Ok.. but worse in what respect? Overall deaths? Mortality Rate?

Please provide a source as to that 3000 figure based on current "trends".

At its worse, I believe the daily death rate in Italy has been ~ 800/day. At this moment, the US death rate is on the order of 100-200/day. But you believe it will be 3000/day in the US within 3 weeks? That would represent a serious and almost unthinkable escalation.

Ultimately, it will not be EDC's call, unless the State gives an all clear ..... EDC will have to postpone or cancel or partenr up with "Life is Beautiful" maybe later in the year ?

Why unthinkable? 3 weeks ago, on March 5th, Italy had only 41. Yesterday 247 in US.
If Italy could go 18-20x in 3 weeks why the same thing is unthinkable in US?

Gaming revenue does not include peripheral revenue. Those additional revenues exist whether you are talking about a WSOP entrant or any other visitor to Vegas. Nearly 4 Million people visit Vegas every month (unitl now, of course). How many unique WSOP visitors do you think there are during the series? 100K? 200K? I don't have that number in front of me, but still, it is likely a drop in the bucket by Vegas-standards.

Regardless, like I said previously, it is not incorrect to say that the WSOP makes money (maybe even a lot of money), and the loss of the WSOP would have a significantly smaller effect on the local economy compared to other things that may or may not be going on as a consequence of Covid-19

US population is 6x that of Italy. Co-morbidities common in the US population. Italy acted late but it's not like the US has been on its toes. If you don't think the US can end up in a similar spot as Spain or Italy, which then equates to thousands dead/day, you're not paying attention.

It is unclear what factors went into the "daily burn" analysis. Is there a link to the actual analysis ?

(I have represented a government entity in a large Vegas casino Chapter 11 that ultimately liquidated, (think Pia Zadora) and against another airline-related group who was more successful at acquiring and rehabbing casinos facing dire straits . The devil is in the details, although a link to the general analysis would be good.)

I said almost unthinkable. I am open to the idea that anything is possible. However, this virus has a history you can look at to predict the future. Of course future predictions are not going to be 100% accurate (particularly in different countries) and circumstances are ever-evolving. However you cannot compare the very beginning of the outbreak to now and say that three week period will be the same as the next 3 week period. At some point there will be a "peak". Every source I have seen has estimates this "peak" will occur within in the next week or so (certainly by mid-April). This is why the quasi-lockdowns were set for the first/second week of April. If the peak does not occur by that time frame, then all bets are off. But I do't necessarily see a reason to assume it won't.

No, I remember the press conference when he said this. He clearly made the point that as long as they stay on the ship, the numbers won't be reported as US numbers, and he wanted the reported number for the US to be lower. In fact, here is the clip:

I assume you're replying to my comments. If so, please include the comments in the reply using the "Quote" button. It makes it easier to know what you're referring to.

Anyhow, I don't really see why we should assume the US is following the Spain/Italy scenario model. The US is a few days behind on the "timeframe" of the pandemic compared to these countries, but the mortality rate of confirmed cases in those countries has been 7-10% since very early on. In the US its been < ~1.5% and pretty much the whole time. Of course, this does not mean things won't get worse in the US between now and whenever the peak occurs. And the number deaths/day will lag the peak by a bit. But if you look at the new cases numbers in the US, it looks like the "curve" is being flattened. Just going by these numbers it just seems far-fetched to me that we will see 3K deaths per day unless the healthcare apocalypse some predict ends up being a reality. But this is all my opinion.

Not only took a psychology class... got a C+ (improving overall GPA) so yeah, you can pretty much take what I say to the bank.

Oh course you and Bobo are right. I managed to type in USA without calculating the expected outcome.

Sad to see op is banned though. Can we ask what he did wrong?

Please reference at least one credible source that backs up this assertion-

one

First off, Trump doesn't clearly make any point... ever. So you're way off to start.

However, if you watch the full interview, what he said in his usual rambling manner was that A) He would prefer the passengers stay on for the "numbers" B) He would not be the one making the decision, C) As far as he knew there were risks to either decision, and D) he would prioritize the health of the people over "numbers" if that's what it came down to.

Take from that what you will.

Yes, he said there are risks with either decision, which helps make the point that his preference was not because he was trying to limit the spread of the virus in the US as you were saying to PT Lou. He clearly said he'd rather they stay on the ship because the reported number would be lower.

I did watch the full interview. Watch the 15 seconds starting from this pause point below in a longer video of that same press conference. He again makes the point (despite your joke that he never does) that he "like[s] the numbers" and he would "rather have the numbers stay where they are." He points out that the 240 and the 11 will be higher -- not that they'll infect other US people. When you were saying that's what he was trying to do, you are the one making the leap because he never even said that, yet you seem to be refuting things he actually said.
https://youtu.be/X5ZkUzOAnVo?t=65

I have been focusing on NY since that is the most dire situation in the US at this time, with half the confirmed cases...

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/st...ys/ar-BB11DUPM

In any case, if you are suggesting the peak could be later, I think you could be right in some cases. It likely depends on the location to a large degree... ie when were the first reported cases, how many were there, etc.

I will say that you can look at the effects of a virus in the countries where the peak has been reached... China, S. Korea, and potentially now Italy and the curves seem to reach their peak in the 3-5 week range from onset of significant increases in new cases. I think it would be fair to assume this same sort of timeframe for individual regions in the US which experience the explosion in cases. The US is a big country, of course, so it is possible more "hotspots" could appear.

Your assertion was that the US peak would be in ONE week- two tops. This article says the best case for NY only is 2 weeks minimum and more likely at least 3 weeks

Try again