Saturday, December 5, 2009

Losing at the Casino

Ugh.

Mr. Watanabe was offered quite the time as he lost $120 odd million. It is almost as if he could have luxuriated worse than Caligula on the funds and still had a few tens of millions to toss around like confetti without ever stopping into Nevada. Or he could have spent a hundred million on any other manner of product and experience and then luxuriated worse than Caligula on the scraps----er, however poorly stated, we can each imagine some egregious extravagance with enough left over to feed a horde of, or hordes of, orphans.

via Althouse:

"During a year-long gambling binge at the Caesars Palace and Rio casinos in 2007, Terrance Watanabe managed to lose nearly $127 million.

The run is believed to be one of the biggest losing streaks by an individual in Las Vegas history. It devoured much of Mr. Watanabe's personal fortune, he says, which he built up over more than two decades running his family's party-favor import business in Omaha, Neb. It also benefitted the two
casinos' parent company, Harrah's Entertainment Inc., which derived about 5.6% of its Las Vegas gambling revenue from Mr. Watanabe that year..
."




Well, it's not too much of a stretch to imagine that a fortune built on party-favors be blown frivolously and with upsetting haste.

I would invoke Rip Taylor and confetti but who knows the traffic that might generate.



1 comment:

Adam said...

"I made millions in software, but lost it all at the track." -Groundskeeper Willie