Steve Wynn is to Las Vegas as Donald Trump is to New York: the uber-developer turned media celebrity who gave the world the Golden Nugget, Mirage and Bellagio casinos. And The Wynn Casino, which just opened in April, 2005 and cost a reported $2.7 billion, does not hold back. Any hotel/casino with a man-made 150-foot mountain featuring a man-made waterfall emptying into a man-made lake, and adorned with real paintings by Van Gogh, Renoir, Cezanne and Picasso, cannot be accused of being shy.
The Poker Room, whose 27 tables each contain an automatic shuffler, is off the main casino. An automated sign-up list is displayed on monitors, and the list is also available in the Casino’s hotel rooms, so that guests can call down to the poker room to signup for games and watch from their rooms as their turn comes up. Or a guest who wants to wander the Casino can be notified on a beeper when his or her name has moved to the top of the list.
Playing hours can be converted to house dollars, which are redeemable at the 18 restaurants on site. In the Poker Room itself, plasma monitors and sports tickers often follow major sports events, so that your sports-fan side does need to lose out to the card-player side.
To help drive traffic, poker champ and personality Daniel Negreanu is contracted to play exclusively at the Wynn Casino when he is in Vegas. Poker chips have RFID computer chips in them, allowing them to be tracked by radio signals and thus providing a major disincentive to anyone trying to bring in counterfeits.
And, if and when you tire of poker, the Casino/Hotel has two theaters, one of which is occupied by the world’s most startling circus, La Cirque du Soleil.
