Product Description

In pre-1990s Las Vegas, casino marketing executives were all cut from the same cloth; sharply-dressed and smooth-talking with 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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #507660 in Books
• Published on: 2004-09-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 319 pages

Review
Whale Hunt in the Desert one of the best gambling books I've seen in a long time.

  -- John Grochowski, Chicago Sun-Times

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

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.

Customer Reviews

Wondered what it was like to be a high roller?
If you want to read about Las Vegas's highest of high rollers, "whales," and what a casino will do to keep them happy, then this book won't fail to satisfy. Along the way you'll meet Steve Cyr, a young Turk casino host. A host is the casino's employee whose job it is to look after the big players and to keep them happy and, more importantly, keep them coming back and gambling more and more.

Much of the book is built around Cyr and his style (his style can be both inspiring and annoying). Cyr is about 70% time-share/condo salesperson and 35% cruise director and 10% Kato Kaelin (yeah, he's 115%). But the book is more than Cyr and his successful effort to modernize the way casinos market to high rollers. You'll meet some of the whales themselves. You'll find out about the mini-palaces casinos have built just for them. And one subject usually kept off the record is covered: do casinos provide sex to their top players?

The book is not a superficial People Magazine of famous celebs who frequent Vegas. It's about both sides of the table, the whales and the casinos and hosts who harpoon them. The dark side of gambling is offered up as gamblers spin downward out of control, losing millions. There are plenty of details and that's what really distinguishes this book. Other books have touched on the fantasy of the high roller's life. Such as Lifestyles of a High Roller, Anderson's Burning the Tables, Rubin's Comp City and a couple specials on the Travel Channel, but nothing has offered up the depth or detail of Whale Hunt.

The only thing missing from the book is more.

spellbinding
An utterly spellbinding behind-the-scenes look at the world's highest rollers and the professional sycophants/enablers, called casino hosts, who cater to their every whim while encouraging their every base instinct. I couldn't put it down. And Castleman's brief essay on gambling and religion at the end is worth the price of the whole book.

Compulsively Readable
If a non-fiction book can be classified as a page-turner, this is the one. Casino superhost Steve Cyr and the international cast of whales spring from the pages as larger-than-life, almost mythical, characters. Cyr takes center stage as the free-wheeling, fast-talking whale hunter, always pushing the envelope (and changing the entire industry in the process).

I especially enjoyed the cat-and-mouse interplay between Cyr and his "clients." On the one hand, he represents his casino bosses; his earnings are directly tied in to the big money losses of the whales. On the other hand, he must seem like the whales' best buddy, taking their side and making himself available 24/7 to satisfy their every whim. It's a fascinating balancing act, especially when a whale goes on "tilt" and runs the risk of permanently tapping out, thereby damaging Cyr's long-term revenue. I found myself going back and forth, sometimes rooting for Cyr, other times identifying with a particular whale, all the time knowing I could never be either. The later sections on whale psychology (and pathology) are equally fascinating. For anyone who's ever been to Vegas and peeked with amazement into a high-roller salon, marveling at the vast sums of money exchanging hands, this book is a must read.