The reason for this flood of money is, as you suspect, a healthy supply of tourists willing to go “all out” because they’re in Vegas. So-called “bottle service” is the norm—it’s typical for a group of guys to get a table at an upscale club, and be required to buy two or three bottles, ringing up a tab around $2,000. Sometimes customers drop five, 10, even $25,000 in a single night. The stories are endless, but one night recently at Blush inside the Wynn, Lakers star Kobe Bryant and a local poker pro named Antonio Esfandiari had a decadent battle to see who could buy more bottles of Cristal (each bottle delivered with sparklers attached by sexy waitresses). By the time the thrills were over, Antonio and his crew had bought 26 bottles, easily beating Kobe’s 15 bottles. Here’s the kicker: bottles cost $1,600 each!

All this energy works on a creative level too—Vegas is the gathering place for many deejays and a place where the art form is progressed. DJ AM set the tone by playing in a style now labeled “mash-up,” which is really being a Pop culture blender and playing everything from rap to Rock to House to Electro all in a single hour. But with so many venues open, deejays that specialize in one genre like Hip Hop or House can get deep into their style, while still working to please as wide an audience as possible. Most tourists are not musically sophisticated, so there is a general vibe from club owners to “play the hits” so they can keep bar revenue as high as possible.

DX: In an interview with Complex you said you "learned so much more about business and the entertainment industry, about the economy of the planet earth while in Vegas." Can you explain in more detail about your comments. What are some concrete examples/lessons you've learned or seen while in
Vegas?
JS: What I meant by that comment is that all the major properties on the Las Vegas strip offer a great window onto the business trends of our economy. Each of these huge casinos—with their gambling floor, their nightclubs, their restaurants—is an economic infrastructure that can test new products efficiently, support and build on what’s working and weed out what’s not working.

One major illustration of this is the thriving nightclub scene, as I described in the last answer. There have been many millions made from nightclubs out here, mostly by young guys in their twenties and thirties. I see this success as I watch many friends in the music biz in New York and L.A. losing their jobs, changing careers and struggling to make ends meet.

I used to think that entertainment businesses with a national focus like mine (marketing their goods to the whole country and world) had the upper hand on those with a local focus (targeting a specific community of customers). Now I see that when it comes to Vegas, the opposite is true. The constant flow of tourists from around the world with money to spend creates a “bull market” for the best goods and services in this town. And those who offer the best are thriving, even in a down market for entertainment and a down economy in general.

I’m launching an artist now named Keith From Up Da Block; he’s a brilliant parody artist from Philly, he writes and performs hilarious song parodies, which I’m confident the world will find entertaining. Hip-hop especially needs a good laugh like never before. We’re positioning Keith as a web-ready artist, using YouTube and MySpace to spread the word about his songs and videos. But our ultimate goal is to make him a headliner here in Vegas, where we can build a business around his live performances.
Not to be a downer, but one thing I always think about as “kryptonite” for Las Vegas is terrorism. Vegas can weather the bad economy (by luring customers from thriving economies like Asia), Vegas can survive the downswing in real estate values (by taking major investments from Dubai), but if another act of terrorism happens anywhere, especially here, all bets are off. Nobody wants to travel or gamble or party when their life may be threatened.

I was in Lower Manhattan on 9/11 but I was in Vegas a couple weeks after, and it was a ghost town. Many people lost their jobs, and it took about three years for traffic and revenues to catch back up. The recent ricin scares here certainly don’t help matters, though it appears to be a lone nutcase, not organized terrorism.

DX: What are some simple rules that you use when playing high stakes poker?
JS: Okay, I’ll focus on No Limit Hold ‘Em, which is the game I play most often, and the game that people usually see on TV. Three key things to pay attention to are: starting hand selection, position, bankroll management. There’s not enough space here to go into detail about each one but I’ll try to summarize.

Starting Hand Selection

Starting hands in Hold ‘Em should be limited to pairs (AA, 10 10), suited connectors (6spades-7spades, 10clubs-Jclubs) and two big cards (AK, KQ). Some other hands are playable, like A-9 suited, but only in late position. Fold everything else.

Position

Position refers to when you act in a specific hand, as a dealer button moves one position each hand, giving each player an equal chance to play each “position” once per round. Late position is an advantage because you can see what everyone else does first, giving the player on “the button” maximum information. When you’re in late position, you can loosen up your starting hand requirements and also try to steal pots by playing aggressive; when you’re in early position, you need to “tighten up” and play much more selectively.

Bankroll Management Continued on page 3 »