Quote Originally Posted by VegasSpider View Post
Quote Originally Posted by go_buccos View Post

Apologies if you have posted these before and I missed it but can we hear the 3k/5k robbery stories?

I’ve never posted about them before. These all occurred within a two year span in the early 2000s at the Rio.

The 5k robbery:

One of my friends was an older, southern gentleman who used to play mid/high limit omaha/8 and mixed with us. He came to town during the summer and had become infirmed. He had some heart issues and used a motorized cart (similar to Doyle/Mike Matusow). So they used to keep his cart at Valet and he used to Valet park and tip the valet guys two white chips ($1 each) every day and they used to get his cart for him and he would take the cart to play… and then the same on the way out… return the cart.. give the guys two white chips ($1 each) and they would store the cart until the next day. Rinse and repeat. One day on his way out, he tipped the valet guys two white chips … only one was a Rio white ($1) and the other was a Bellagio Flag ($5k). He got home and realized he was short a Flag and got in touch with the valet guys/dept and Jack Effel. The valet guys confirmed the 5k tip… and wouldn’t voluntarily give it back. Jack told him that there was nothing that he could do, couldn’t force them to give the money back.. as it was now an HR issue and my friend’s mistake. After weeks of back and forth and Jack being zero help, not offering him ANY restitution AT ALL in the form of rewards or comps etc. and the Rio not budging on compensating him either, my friend threatened to sue … and launch a massive negative PR campaign against the Rio… as his son, I believe, was an attorney in town and had some pretty reasonable PR connections. And they absolutely wouldn’t do a thing for him at all. Jack basically told him to go scratch. This guy was super nice and super integral to a lot of the games that we played at the time. He wouldn’t step foot back in the Rio after that… and as long as he was in town during the summer we played at the Bellagio and not at the Rio. He died a few short years later.
Wow… and to think these were the days before CET as a whole descended into the morass of greed and incompetence that it’s become today. Thanks very much for sharing.

As an aside it’s funny you mention the issue with the flag… my Vegas days are long behind me (I will never voluntarily set foot there again for reasons discussed ad nauseam in another thread here) but there was a time when I also occasionally found myself in some mid/higher-stakes O8 games at Bellagio. I always wondered why their 5k chips where white and how many issues that caused with players mistaking them for $1 chips (where white is the generally accepted standard) from other properties. Now I have at least one concrete example.

Thanks again for posting in such detail.