Eight Eight O Eight ( 888 ) In Vegas

Even as the last rocket explodes and fades out into the darkened sky, Vegas can look forward to another big weekend coming up in August. Based upon the fact that the Chinese New Year rivals January First New Year's Eve for casino revenues, it would not be a stretch of the imagination to predict that the weekend starting Friday August 8, 2008 will be a big winner for the major casinos. Or maybe not.

The Chinese, whose 888 (ba ba ba in Mandarin) is the equivalent of our 777, will have their chance at big luck on Aug. 8, 2008 when the day ciphers out to 8/8/08.
The Chinese as a group are huge gamblers, which explains why some casinos project making more money on high stakes Chinese junkets for the Chinese New Year than they do on any other day of the year, including our traditional New Year's on January first.

The day 08-08-2008 is considered to be more meaningful to the Chinese than 07-07-2007 was. It is the day chosen as fortunate for the start of the Chinese 2008 Olympics in Beijing. So many more affluent Chinese from Hong Kong may be diverted there, as opposed to visiting Vegas.

Whether any actual gaming revenue spike occurs, as it no doubt did for July Fourth weekend, will remain to be seen. The casinos are very reluctant in revealing actual profits and revenues when they are down. Lately, the casinos revenues are trending south along with the gaming stock index.