Just in from the thought-you’d-heard-it-all department:
The world’s most-viewed pornography site, Pornhub.com, has launched an online casino. It’s got real-life porn stars in lingerie dealing these live-action games from some studio in Costa Rica to Pornhub online casinos around the globe. They all have live chat boxes on the screen, and they chit-chat, bob and weave and pose and deal the cards and push the dice and whatever else they do.
I don’t know, because I’m not a Pornhub enthusiast. I’m sure it’s a positively boffo porn site, though, because it says here that Pornhub.com is the 67th most viewed website in the world, with more viewers than Amazon.co.uk, ESPN and CNN.
(Humans, evidently, are a depraved lot.)
I am, though, familiar with the online gaming publication in which I found this news nugget, CalvinAyre.com. Calvin Ayre is the Canadian billionaire who got his billions because he founded Bodog.com and became an online gaming pioneer. He is known for philanthropy, and for hosting parties with bikini-clad models in Costa Rica (there’s that country again) and points south.
After he cashed out Bodog, one of the things Ayre did was establish CalvinAyre.com as a not-for-profit internet gambling news website. The site advertises “Gambling News With an Edge”—it not only reports extensively on online gaming; it brings us stories like that one a couple of months ago where a dead poker player’s wake consisted of his friends dressing him in his favorite Yankees sweatshirt, cap and sunglasses and propping him up, all embalmed and hip, at a poker table with chips, cards and all his buddies, for some very creepy pictures.
(I think I was at that game. I thought the guy was bluffing.)
And now, CalvinAyre.com brings us this story about the new Pornhub casino with the cheeky headline, “Pornhub Launch Online Casino; Takes Live Dealer Action to an All-New Level.” According to the report, porn stars Monique Alexander and Dani Daniels worked “a few shifts to get the site off the ground,” and there is a “Strip Poker” game you can only get into if you have a webcam.
Gadzooks.
According to CalvinAyre.com, “The whole site is decked out in titillating teases, including shots of porn movie action when you win on the slot machines.”
OK, being a slot guy (it’s on my business card), I need to know more details here. Do they have bonus sequences involving mailmen and lonely widows? What sorts of bonus ladders are displayed? How do you translate porn into program math that will ensure the player has sufficient time on device?
After all, what could translate into gambling math more effectively than footage of rich women and buff landscapers on dining room tables?
The story says some of the croupier/porn stars will give you a little extra peek if you ask them really nice in their chat rooms. Of course, the chat will be beamed out over the internet to billions of people around the world, but what the hey? Just check your shame at the door of Pornhub Casino.
Anyway, going forward, we’ll be monitoring the Pornhub Casino as a service to the industry. We’ll screen every game, every card flip, every stick-poke, every flop, all the while watching the dealers closely.
So very closely.
Hey, it’s a security issue, right? You never know when a dealer is going to try to palm something. (Hey!)
Turning to other news, there’s a lot of rage being flung toward MGM Resorts on social media these days because they plan to charge actual money for self-parking on the Las Vegas Strip. There is an outrage among the old-timers, especially, who have seen their $1 shrimp cocktails, $4.99 prime rib and cheap coffee shops disappear.
I get their consternation. I remember when you got everything for free, but it wasn’t really free because you dumped twice as much at the tables and slots as you would have paid for a room and food in the first place. That was the business model put in place by our old pals Bugsy Siegel and Gus Greenbaum. Of course, things
didn’t work out for either of them, but the plan worked great for many of their successors who were not rubbed out.
These days, the Strip casinos are not about gambling; they’re about resort stuff for tourists, with gambling. Tourists generally expect to pay for parking, but it remains to be seen how they react when their last free-parking zone is removed.
Heck, I remember when they started charging for parking in Atlantic City. And everything worked out great there, right?
Oh, well. We’ll always have Costa Rica.
