These chips of mine are from Vegas casinos that no longer exist, at least not as they were when I visited them. The buildings are still there in Vegas, there are replacement casinos in those buildings, but the businesses are no more. I miss them all to a degree.

The Aladdin was a fine, underrated place. It also was virtually impossible to reach from the Strip, had one of the most confusing layouts in the history of mankind and specialized in surliness. It went bankrupt. Planet Hollywood casino and hotel has opened in its place, although the Aladdin’s onion domes and stupid magic carpet motifs are still being removed; I have a room there for a Vegas boys’ trip in two weeks.

Harrah’s took over the Barbary Coast this year in a land swap deal and renamed it Bill’s Gamblin’ Hall for reasons unknown. It’s still my favorite little mid-Strip dump. This chip is from my greatest short-term haul in Vegas history: One hour, nine hundred bucks at a blackjack table. I was playing black chips by the time the streak ended, and I never play black chips.

And the Horseshoe…oh, how I miss the Horseshoe. The guy in the middle is Benny Binion, old-school Vegas legend, one-time Texas mobster, a guy who knew how to give a player a fair shake while siphoning away his cash. There’s still a building in its place in downtown Vegas called Binion’s, but they had to drop the ‘Horseshoe’ brand because Harrah’s owns that now, too. Harrah’s sold the place to a weak-sister West Virginia company, who just dumped it on the same company that owns the Four Queens (my favorite downtown gambling hall). Hopefully I’ll visit again in a couple of weeks, when I’ll see if there is still any of the old mojo at the craps table or if they still use those goofy clickers at the blackjack tables to get the cocktail waitresses to come around.

These chips remind me of some good times in a place that gets more corporate, more predictable, more expensive and more Disneyfied every time I go. But with the right crew and the right place, Vegas is still Vegas.