Hello players! And thanks so much for streaming another edition of This Week in Gambling where we have gambling news and election results to share with you from six different states about casino and sports betting expansion! But first it’s this week’s big story!

Way back in February of this year things in Las Vegas were just humming along… business as usual. Corona was something you bought with your friends on Cinco de Mayo. And “socially distant” meant you just didn’t have a Facebook page. But then… all hell broke loose in March as the pandemic swept over the globe. And for the first time ever Las Vegas shut down. Of course it only took him a few months to figure out that no money was rolling in, so in June – one by one – the casinos and resorts slowly started to reopen.

Since that time many (but not all) of the Vegas properties have been welcoming guests back. The problem is not all the guests are actually coming back. In fact, Vegas tourism is down 60% from the year before, and the pandemic looks as if it’s still far from over. So what to do, what to do? The solution for some appears to be more Vegas casino closures… only this time it won’t be a complete shutdown, just weekdays. You know like Monday through Thursday closed, and then opening their doors on the weekends just in time for all you partiers to head on down.

Park MGM, The Palazzo, Planet Hollywood, The Encore and the LINQ have all announced midweek closures. And if you think that’s bad, check this out: The owners of the Sands Corporation are so distressed by the situation with the pandemic they’re actually thinking about selling off their properties and getting the hell out of Las Vegas altogether! Billionaire Sheldon Adelson has had enough and he says Coronavirus be damned! He’s actually shopping his Vegas properties (The Palazzo and the Venetian) and he’s only asking $6 billion dollars for the pair. I suppose I could buy them… throw a little paint on them flip ’em.

Also, despite the midweek closures there is at least one more Vegas casino that’s been shuttered but set to reopen before the end of the year. And six states had gambling legislation on the ballot this past election day… we’ll discuss all of that when we come back from the break.

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The last Caesar’s property that’s still closed in Las Vegas has announced that they will reopen before the end of the year. The Rio says that they will welcome guests back in time to celebrate New Year’s eve. Of course, New Year’s eve is on a Thursday this year, so hopefully the Rio isn’t one of those casinos that’s closed during the middle of the week!

Also, we just released another new game review… cause that’s a what we do! This time it’s for the Vault of Fortune online slot from our friends at Yggdrasil. It’s a five real game with 20 pay lines and comes with bonus spins, a bonus round, wilds, scatters and cascading reels. You can find this review and hundreds more when you visit and subscribe to our YouTube channel.

And finally this week, the election is now behind us, thank God! And voters in Colorado, Virginia and Nebraska went to the polls and decided they want expanded casino gambling! And as nice as that news is, wait till you hear about sports betting: Louisiana, Maryland and South Dakota have all decided to legalize betting on sports within their borders! That means that 25 of the 50 states in America now regulate the activity! And if my high school math is correct, that’s about half!

Of course, there was the whole presidential election thing, too… but i don’t really care about that. I didn’t pay attention! I don’t even know who won! But if  I was a betting man, my guess would be the winner was some old white guy. Am I right?