Furdell.com: Travelling to the frontiers of gambling places you've never been to.
The California/Nevada state line runs through Lake Tahoe, so the casinos are all on the east side. There are two spots with casinos, particualrly: State Line, located on the south shore, and a scatterring of gambling places towards the north end.
Go ahead and avoid the north side. The casinos there are small and sad -- filled with slot machines, but maybe 6 table games. Today I went to two different casinos on the north end, each of which had 6-8 gambing tables, and just 2-3 -- only blackjack -- actually open. (The other tables besides blackjack were craps and roullette -- nothing too exciting.) If that's not bad enough, the blackjack comes without the benefit of surrender, and they'll be hitting on soft 17. (The good news: at the place I played, a suited blackjack lead to a free bottle of cheap-ass wine, if you play $10 minimums, and you can trade 3 cheap-ass bottles for 1 good one -- which I did. The worse news: I lost about $175 on blackjack, which I believe I have pledged to never play again, several times.)
That's the dark side of Tahoe gambling. The south shore, on the other hand, is where it's at. There's names I've heard, like Caesars and Harrahs, and there's some local color like Harvey's. The Caesars wasn't hopping on a Sunday evening, but I was able to find a Pai Gow table, which is more than I can say for the north shore. Imagine something between Las Vegas strip and Las Vegas downtown -- a nice, pretty gaming house, but not too big only one area for table games, but with variety and a friendlier staff than you'd think.
That's what really struck me about the Caesars. (I'll visit more south shore casinos later, hopefully, but this was at least true of the Caesars.) The dealers were more upbeat and friendly than the Vegas dealers I'm used to. The craps lady was very helpful with the newbies, and the whole craps crew was very thankful for my tipping attempts; the Pai Gow fellas were personable and funny, and even gave us periodic updates on the girl with the big fake titties playing craps behind us.
One Pai Gow dealer even came up to our table after his shift was over to say goodbye -- unprecedented in my gambling life.
So there you have it. In Tahoe? Want to gamble? Stick to State Line at the south shore, where the real gambling is.