Happy Taxi

How to play Happy Taxi

Cleopatra’s Barge opened in September 1970 in what is now the Nobu Hotel tower, replacing the earlier Nero’s Nook lounge. The 180-seat lounge featured as its centerpiece a “floating” stage designed as a replica of the vessel aboard which the Egyptian queen is said to have bewitched Mark Antony.

The pleasure craft, installed in a shallow lagoon, featured a gold-painted, topless figurehead that extended far into the public walkway. Guests quickly turned rubbing the statue’s golden breasts for luck into a classic Vegas tradition; staff regularly repainted the most-touched areas.

Vital Vegas ranked the display No. 4 on his 2014 list of “10 Things You Can Rub for Good Luck in Las Vegas Without Getting Arrested,” a list that featured three other Caesars Palace entries: the hand of the Caesars statue (No. 1); Joe Louis’s boxing gloves (No. 8); and the toe of Michelangelo’s David replica (No. 9).

The barge itself never actually floated, by the way. That was just a myth. It sat on a fixed platform that created a mild rocking motion. That piece of Vegas engineering, like the statue’s original perch, is now history.

How to play Happy Taxi

“Publicly traded valuations are a reflection of the current interest rate environment,” Chad Beynon, lead gaming analyst for Macquarie, told iGB. “Whether it’s a long-term financial model on a growth company, you’re going to discount that back at a higher rate, or if it’s just a standard four-wall business, the cash flows in a higher interest rate environment are worth less.”

According to data from Yahoo Finance, the resort and casino sector is -41% over the last five years, and the overall gambling sector, which includes major sportsbooks and online operators, is +7%; the benchmark S&P 500 index, by comparison, is +71% during that span.

Two blockbuster developments in the casino space earlier this year seemed to indicate an increasingly bullish bet on the sector, including Fertitta Entertainment’s acquisition of Caesars Entertainment in May. The other is a subsequent takeover offer of MGM Resorts from its largest shareholder, Barry Diller’s People Inc. But a negative shift in market conditions could affect both deals.

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This past weekend, college hoops wagers topped the charts on Bodog, garnering 36.88% of the action. That was about 2.5% better than what the NCAA received, and substantially more than that of the third-place NHL, which only picked up 10.17%. After that, the UFC/MMA made an appearance with 4.15% before different soccer leagues captured four of the remaining top-ten spots. The Premier League was the best, with 3.34%, but tennis and golf snuck in next. The Australian Open Men’s Singles picked up 3.21% and the Genesis Invitational grabbed 2.47%. Germany’s Bundesliga, Spain’s La Liga and Italy’s Serie A rounded out the top-ten list, with Germany and Spain sharing 2.02% each and Italy getting 1.44% of the wagers.

Despite taking the top spot on the charts on Bodog this past weekend, NCAA games didn’t prove overly enticing to gamblers. The NBA captured almost all of the top-ten most-wagered events, with only one NCAA game making it to the list. Sports gamblers liked betting on the LA Clippers a lot, as the team’s games against the Utah Jazz and the Brooklyn Nets picked up 13.85% and 11.51%, respectively. In a surprise victory, the Clippers beat the Jazz on Friday, but couldn’t keep the run going and lost to the Nets on Sunday.

The Genesis Invitational, which Max Homa took down after a shoot-off with Tony Finau, attracted 10.79% of the wagers on Bodog this past weekend. Homa is intimately familiar with the course where the tournament is played, the Riviera Country Club, and has been a regular on the greens since he was two years old. With his Genesis win, Homa joins Bubba Watson as the only two players to take a Riviera victory with a bogey-free final round since 1990.