What a week for gambling news! So many casinos in Las Vegas reopening at full capacity! And the same is happening for Atlantic City casinos, too!! And what will become of the social distancing and face mask requirements?

Howdy, neighbors! And welcome to another edition of This Week in Gambling! Vaccination numbers are up! We’re close to Las Vegas reopening fully! And all across America things are returning to normal… and that is this week’s big story!

On our last show I listed three casinos for you, all on the Las Vegas strip, which had been allowed to open at full capacity with no social distancing restrictions. And now, here we are less than a week later, and already the list of casinos open at 100% has grown substantially.

These are the casinos in Las Vegas which have met the vaccination threshold set forth by the Nevada Gaming Control Board, which are now allowed to operate at 100% capacity (along with the Centers for Disease Control) has decided that casinos which are allowed to operate at full capacity are also free to decide for themselves any rules and requirements about social distancing and whether or not guests are required to wear a face mask!

This means that as we watch Las Vegas reopening, casinos are now free to drop all COVID restrictions previously in place if they want to… but it also means that casinos are free to keep all COVID restrictions in place if they want to. So, if you’re planning a trip to Vegas and this sort of thing is important to you, then you may want to check into that before you book your trip.

Not to be outdone, all nine of Atlantic City’s casinos have been given the green light to go to full capacity starting this week. However, unlike Nevada, the Governor of New Jersey is keeping all social distancing and face mask requirements in place… at least for now. Of course there are other signs that the gambling industry here in America is making a full recovery after the pandemic.

If you need more proof that gambling in America is making a full recovery then check this out: The American Gaming Association is reporting that commercial gambling in the United States took in $11 billion just in the first quarter of this year!  And that, my friends, is a record! But, I guess technically that $11 billion only ties a record previously set back in 2019, but who cares! The point is that the gambling industry in America has already returned to pre-pandemic numbers, and that’s encouraging!

This week’s game review is for the Loco the Monkey online slot from our friends at Quickspin… a five reel, 50 pay line game with bonus spins and a bonus round, along with wild and scatter symbols! You can find this review and hundreds more for both online and land-based slots when you visit our YouTube channel.

And finally this week, Las Vegas reopening has been great news up to this point, so let’s keep it going and end the show on a high note as Cirque du Solei just announced that most all of their shows will be returning to theaters in Las Vegas over the course of the summer. So, casinos good… Shows good… and my work here is don!