Casino Night -- The Self-Working System There are two major challenges when hosting a casino night: 1) finding enough
dealers to run the tables and 2) knowing what to do with the unlucky guests who lose all their money, but still want to gamble. Here's a system my wife and I invented that solves both of these problems... THE INVITE: All our guests received an invite that included a $1,000,000 bill (with a picture our six- month old photoshopped onto it). Every guest was asked to bring a small gift to the party. THE SETUP: Using a variety of beach-themed decorations from a local party supply store, we converted our garage into a "Tropical Paradise Casino.ö This included a ten-foot tall palm tree, a large inflatable shark, a pirates treasure chest, tiki torches, etc.... Major items in the garage that could not be removed were either a) covered with a blue tarp and draped with fish netting and decorated with fish or b) decorated and put to use, such as the washer and dryer which were converted into a bar. Our casino had several types of tables: roulette, blackjack, craps, and poker. The first three were felts purchased at the ôWorldÆs Largest Gift Shopö in Las Vegas and the poker table was bought for $50 at Bed, Bath, and Beyond. Since California laws do not permit people to own (non-antique) slot machines, we downloaded MP3 slot machine sounds and had them playing in the background. For non-gamblers (or folks who needed a break), we had ôlife-sizedö video games by projecting PlayStation games onto a blank wall using a projector (borrowed from work). And we even built a mini-stageùcomplete with a spotlight, stool, and a microphone attached to a Karaoke systemùto provide a platform for any budding standup comics or lounge singers. As an extra touch, we included our remote friends and family who live on the other coast by setting up a live feed. This camera, strategically placed in an upper corner of the room, acted as our ôeye in the skyö by posting a new surveillance-style image to the web every 30 seconds. THE BIG NIGHT: As guest entered, we handed them each a $1,000,000 dollars in chips (white = $10,000, red = $50,000, blue = $100,00, and gold $200,000). These guests were then free to gamble, eat, mingle, ORùthe solution to the problems mentioned earlierùdeal. How did we entice guests to work the party? By ôpayingö them! Guests were paid $10,000 for dealing a black jack or poker hand or for running a spin of the roulette wheel. $50,000 for every shooter was paid to the craps dealerùsince this can be a more complex game to run. This way, we never had a shortage of dealers and our (more unlucky) guests always had an opportunity to earn back their money! [Note: When we do the party again, weÆll even pay $50,000 per joke told or song sung as an incentive to get more people up on the stage to perform.] At the end of the evening (which was gauged by when people started to slow down their gambling), everyone cashed in the chips for raffle tickets ($10,000 per ticket). Even the non-gamblers had $1,000,000 to purchase tickets! We then raffled off the various gifts that people brought to the party. Each winner could either keep the item won OR trade it with any of the previous items raffled off earlier. This created a great sense of tension, since some of the items were really nice (such as a good bottle of wine, a gift certificate to the Gap, and a free Blockbuster rental), while others were purposefully lame (such as a can of corn). As the first phase of the party came to a close, the more hardcore gamblers remained to play poker for money. The whole time, our ôeye in the skyö silently captured imagesùmaking for great viewing the following morning!
