The number of tourists visiting Las Vegas fell this summer, but gaming revenue increased for many casino operators throughout the valley. Nearly 3,000 miles away in Atlantic City, the story was comparable as visitation to the seaside resort was essentially flat, but casinos had their best summer in over a decade.

Las Vegas casinos are moving towards a smoke-free future due to investor pressure and changing public views. While most Las Vegas Strip resorts still allow smoking on their gaming floors, more and more people want casino operators to think again.

It’s been nearly two decades since Nevada legislators banned indoor smoking in public places, but the exceptions they made for businesses like casinos, bars, strip clubs and brothels remain intact. Aside from Park MGM, Strip resorts have kept casino smoking in place since then, but recent shareholder votes suggest public opinion could be trending in favor of eliminating that allowance.

In the Oscar-nominated 2003 movie “The Cooler,” William H. Macy portrays a downtown Las Vegas casino employee whose job is to reverse winning streaks. Bernie Lootz — get it, lose? — has such extraordinary bad luck, all he needs to do is sit next to a guest experiencing good luck and it stops.

Five red roulette numbers hitting in a row doesn’t mean a black one is more likely on the sixth spin. Even if you recognize the truth of this statement, whenever that sixth spin lands on black, it can still be difficult to resist learning incorrectly from the experience.

Reducing free play offers to gamblers has a minimal impact on the likelihood that they will return to a casino, according to a new academic study. However, completely removing free play incentives could prove problematic for casino operators, according to the same study.

Reducing free play offers to gamblers has minimal impact on whether customers will return to a casino property, according to a new academic research study. Eliminating free-play incentives, however, might prove to be problematic for casino operators, the study found.

Free play campaigns—those casino incentives in which customers are given money to gamble on the house — have historically grown exponentially as a form of competition between gaming institutions. If one casino offers $10 in free play, but a consumer chooses another that offers $15, then the first casino will adapt to offer $20 and so on.