Casino Player September 2022

PUBLISHER’SMESSAGE >>

Celebrating The Best Our annual review of your favorite casinos and their offerings

W elcome to Casino Player ’s 27th annual Best of Gaming awards. In this special edition we cele brate and recognize the BEST the casino gaming industry has to offer as voted by you, our readers. Players are once again visiting and exploring casino resorts with gusto.We asked our readers to choose their favorites when it comes to casinos from across the country, identifying prop erties that offer players the best and most enjoyable experience. Our survey is extensive,picking our readers’ brains across a wide spectrum of categories—best casino, best hotels, best suites, best table games, best slots, best spas, best golf courses, best sportsbooks and their offerings… the list goes on and on. And, as usual, the response was overwhelming! Thousands of readers have made their voices heard by selecting their favorites in numerous categories.Our Best of Gaming awards serves as an annual touchstone, a never-fading snapshot of gaming’s elite, and these coveted awards serve as a guide to go and enjoy all the outstanding options available to you. What makes something the“best”?According to the Oxford Dictionary, best is defined as the most excellent or desirable, excelling above others. Frankly, it all comes down to personal preference and exceptional experiences.These winning prop erties all have many of the same characteristics in common— quality amenities, diverse offerings, the latest technology, and, most importantly, consistently great customer service. There’s a lot to say about “please”and“thank you”and get ting service with a smile. And in the casino and hospitality industries, these simple traits are not only paramount, they are the key to customer loyalty. Let’s face it, satisfying guests who aren’t too happy about dropping hundreds of dollars at the craps table in 20 minutes or a bundle at the slot machines can be extremely challenging.No matter how a gaming corporation chooses to utilize their resources, the fact remains that no casino today can survive without making a guest’s time at the property as pleasant as possible.Casinos that focus on great guest service hit the jackpot themselves and our annual survey showcases the ones who do it right. Judging by the results of this year’s Best of Gaming awards, it’s clear that there are so many great choices for fun, entertain ment and casino action in our gaming community. I want to take a moment to thank each one of our readers for their participa

tion in this year’s awards issue—we quite literally couldn’t do it without you.We hope you will use this special issue to plan your next casino excursion—perhaps you’ll even visit one or more of the winners and see for yourself what you’ve been missing. Also in this month’s issue, veteran gaming journalist Frank Scoblete gives his expert advice on ways to handle peer pres sure in the casino.There’s no question we’ve all experienced players who like to voice their opinions during game play, even when playing perfect strategy. If poker is your game, there’s still plenty of poker action across the country with the World Poker Tour, including some high-stakes action. As the casino industry expands, the same old slot machine myths survive—many through a misunderstanding of how slots work. Slot guru Frank Legato breaks this all down,detailing how slots actually work. With football season kicking off and the growing popular ity of sports betting,we give you a beginner’s guide to working the books to help you navigate game day. Beyond the money lines and point spreads, sportsbooks offer a range of alternative bets designed to cover many possibilities and we look at them all and give you the best tips to be an outright winner. Lastly, live entertainment is back in full swing,with some of today’s biggest stars—fromAdele and Miranda Lambert to Katy Perry and Aerosmith—taking the stage for their own residen cies in Las Vegas. Coming out of the pandemic, the appetite for live events is higher than ever and we are all eager to see our favorite performers on stage once again.When planning your next casino excursion, we’ve got all this covered so be sure to check out our nation-wide entertainment listings in the back of the book for all the upcoming shows.We’ve compiled a list of all the currently announced headliners, comedians, concerts and production shows at casinos across America. Cheers to good health, good luck and winning days!

Lisa Robertson-Dziedzic Publisher lrobertson@casinocenter.com

6 S E P T E M B E R 2 0 2 2 • w w w . c a s i n o c e n t e r . c o m