Photo Courtesy (Nevada Casino History)

Sometimes it is amazing the lengths I will go for a good meal! When in Vegas, you can have Chef J. Joho's Eiffel Tower Restaurant serve you the most acclaimed cuisine available in any Las Vegas French restaurant, with lamb seasoned to perfection and foie gras unlike any other. And, you can enjoy your amazing meal inside the Eiffel Tower. It's a pretty cool experience.

If you haven't stopped into the Paris casino on the Las Vegas Strip, you will find a very friendly gaming house. The dealers are nice, the table games aren't squished together, and they offer the standard fare: blackjack, craps, roulette, keno and a race and sports book. However, if you want to see the Eiffel Tower and ride to the top for a spectacular 360 degree view 46 stories high on the Strip, this is the place! There is a small fee (starting at $7.50).

Afterwards, if you are hungry, you can eat in the Eiffel Tower Restaurant on the 11th floor. The full windows give you a terrific view of the Bellagio Fountains. The restaurant serves lunch at 11a.m. and dinner at 5p.m. The lunch menu is quite reasonable, with most of the main courses running about $20. On the other hand, if you are having dinner, don't forget your wallet, or your socks and shoes!

My wife and I had never ridden to the top of the Eiffel Tower, in Paris, or in Paris Las Vegas, so there we were. High above the Strip as the sun was setting. A wonderful experience. And, it made us hungry. So, on the ride down, why not stop at the restaurant for dinner?

Well, like a lot of Las Vegas tourists, I was wearing sandals. And yes, they do expect at least business casual dress for dinner. And, that's why I now have a pair of $9 Eiffel Tower Socks!

That's right, straight from the Paris gift shop on the heart of the Las Vegas strip. The black socks are magical. Not only do they have little Eiffel Tower designs on them, they also made my sandals look enough like shoes to get us into the restaurant, where my wife and I were able to have a great meal.

Being at least a little frugal, we passed on the Trilogy of Imported Caviar at $360, but our salmon and steak meals with a couple side dishes and a couple glasses of wine still ran about $250 with a tip. And, we'll go back again, the next time I win a poker tournament. Plus, I still have the socks!

This past World Series of Poker included the usual array of poker prowess by many poker stars, but amazingly, Doyle Brunson continues to play excellent poker. It's one thing to have a few good years as a poker pro. I have, and I'm not that impressed with myself. Other players are sharp and successful for a decade or more, but by and large, players begin to lose their focus after a dozen years or so in the bone-yards of poker. It's just a fact.

The money that is available now, and the notoriety that players can achieve with only a few TV appearances certainly has had a great impact on extending the careers of many players, but I'm just dumbfounded by the players who are getting to middle age and beyond and are still playing well. It's something new in the world of poker.

If you have ever read According to Doyle, then you know how Doyle Brunson thinks and how he has been able to make a career of playing an extremely hard game. What you might not know, or remember, is that those stories Doyle first wrote about in the 1980's for Poker Player Newspaper, were about his time playing in the 1950's.

Come on, the 1950's! He was playing successfully in the '50's and is still playing well. Baby I'm Amazed.

I've wondered about the eye-in-the-sky since I first heard a song by the same name. If you know the 1982 Alan Parsons Project song, "Eye in the Sky" then you might wonder if it has to do with casinos. I did. It does. A couple of great lines are: "dealing with fools, I can cheat you blind," and another is "looking at you, I can read your mind." I love the "Eye in the Sky" Buy Direct.

Now those lines may be a little esoteric, but the The Project's previous album was called "The Turn of a Friendly Card." Coincidence? Of course not.

Alan Parsons was an assistant engineer on the Beatles' "Abbey Road" and "Let It Be" albums. He also worked as the engineer on Pink Floyd's "The Dark Side of the Moon" album, all concept-based recordings. He met Eric Wollfson in the canteen of Abbey Road Studios in 1974 and the two musicians hit it off. Eventually they would form The Alan Parsons Project, and while not their first album, "The Turn of a Friendly Card" was certainly a story of its own.

If you don't know the album, don't feel bad, but the 1980 release tells the story (through light, progressive rock) of a middle-aged, frustrated and restless man who heads to the casino, ready to risk everything he has. Songs include titles like: May Be a Price to Pay, I Don't Wanna Go Home, Turn of a Lucky Card, and the hits Games People Play and Time. The latter, probably my favorite.

The album also includes Snake Eyes and Nothing Left to Lose, but Eye in the Sky came on the next album. Why? I can't figure it out.

Now the actual eye-in-the-sky that casinos use has been called many things. It's often referred to as the "peak" or the "tower," but one thing remains, it sees everything, if it is well designed and well-managed. While the "sky" used to consist of a guy laying on his belly across a dusty plywood beam in the cat-walks of the casino rafters training a pair of binoculars at the tables below, surveillance is very sophisticated now.

If you drop a dime on the floor, a good surveillance operator can switch cameras at the flick of the wrist, swivel a joystick to move a pan-and-tilt camera and zoom-in to read the date on the coin, in living color. That's why so many cheats are caught. It takes somebody, like an attentive pit boss on the gaming floor or a smooth operator (wait, that's another song) in the "eye" to know what to look for, but once a problem is detected, it's just a matter of time!

Much like Steve Wynn, who owns the Wynn casino in Las Vegas and Macao, Sheldon Adelson wants a Republican in the White House next year. Adelson, chairman and CEO of Las Vegas Sands Corp., which has properties on the strip and also in Macau, has investing $5 million in a "super PAC" trying to boost Republican Newt Gingrich's presidential campaign. According to the Associated Press (citing an unnamed source), Adelson is ready to contribute even more to try to win the White House for a GOP nominee.

At the same time, Las Vegas (and statewide Nevada casinos) properties are reporting their income is still lagging and the recession has not abated when it comes to gaming income. Both Adelson and Wynn have seen their Las Vegas resort income dwarfed by that made at their casinos in Macau. That's more a reflection of the great strides mainland China has made in the past few years economically, as the money flowing through Macau's 12 casinos is more than all Las Vegas casinos combined.

Wynn stated earlier this year that a change was needed in current US Government policies to ease the availability of loans and to give confidence to business owners/builders - both of which would help expansion in Las Vegas.

Meanwhile, expansion in other states continues, with Wynn considering a new casino venture in Massachusetts. Regardless of the impact of casinos in Mass. and Ohio, it is Florida that should have Las Vegas the most worried. Las Vegas may be "VEGAS" and the Bellagio may have its fountains and lake, but beautiful casinos along the shore of Florida will be a huge draw for casino goers.