I was scoring up the Super Bowl (small loss) when Ocean called. Ocean is a good customer. He had a couple questions, and I told him fire away.
First he wanted to know if we were doing the Oscars again this year. Of course we are. I’m not thrilled about it –I’m half paranoid about inside information bubbling on the Internet, but I’m learning to embrace the inside mis-information. Most importantly, we do it as a service, so the customers won’t start betting online with bookies in Costa Rica.
Ocean was pleased. For what it’s worth, he likes The Artist at very short odds. He watches rom-coms. With his wife, he says. His favourite movie though is Love Story, and he cries shamelessly every time he watches it: he truly believes that love means never having to say you’re sorry. I’ve never figured that out. I’m forever apologizing to my wife for doing boneheaded things and saying stupid shit. And apologizing is a necessity But whatever. A happy customer is a beautiful thing. And I thought the phone call was over. And then Ocean said it.
“What do you have on the VIX for this summer?” Continue reading »
As you may have heard, Deutsche Bank owns a casino (/hotel) in Vegas, called the Cosmopolitan. The Germans never intended to run the joint, originally merely funding the project by developer Ian Bruce Eichner but in 2008 Eichner had to go and default on his loans. No one else wanted to invest in the place, so DB decided to man up and finish the job itself, laying out an additional $3 billion of its own money. Allowing themselves to get momentarily excited, Deutsche scrapped Eichner’s plans and hired its own team of gambling and real estate experts, architects and interior designers. The Cosmpolitan now includes “a three-story crystal-strewn bar meant to evoke the inside of a chandelier” and guests in its hotel reportedly love the massive rooms that typically sell-out. Unfortunately, the bank is nowhere near close to breaking even on its investment (and lost $139.5 million in 2010), which might have something to do with the fact that no one is gambling there. Instead, visitors think of it more as a place to eat dinner, get drunk, and then vomit while waiting to get into a club. Continue reading »
