Alluring Lady Luck — Vito Zuppardo

Tales of Lady Luck are stories during my twenty-five years in the gaming business.

The opportunity I had in 1975 was enormous. There were no casinos on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi, and nothing in Louisiana other than horse racing. The Louisiana lottery didn't get voted in until sixteen years later. We had people hungry for gambling, and they came in droves once the word got out.

What I saw as I got into the business was the need for the little guy with maybe five hundred dollars to gamble with. So I developed programs that touched everyone, from the player with five hundred to the high roller with a hundred thousand dollars. Of course, the more you gambled, the more perks you got: large suites, better restaurants, and private jets. I had it all covered, and flew from eighteen cities, moving over twelve hundred people a month, and made a statement so big in Las Vegas that Nevada Gaming Control had me on their radar.

Published in the Las Vegas Review was an article that my customers had left over sixty million dollars on the casino tables in two years.

Here are some topics my gaming clients found interesting when we would sit around a table in a cocktail lounge at the Riviera Hotel in Las Vegas or Harrah Lake Tahoe. They loved to hear the stories, and at times, they were part of the story. The problems, demands, and things that went wrong are just too crazy to dream up.

Based on true events.