The wiry college dropout showed up one day at a Las Vegas rugby field, looking for something more physically demanding than playing blackjack. A collegiate wrestler and former star high school tailback, Anthony Curtis had just moved to Southern Nevada and he wanted something “cool” to do and decided to try rugby.
One veteran player, a former sprinter who had attended University of Nevada, Las Vegas on a track scholarship, volunteered to line up opposite the new guy. It didn’t go as expected.
“I said ‘I got him,’” recalled would-be defender Max Rubin, now a casino consultant. “I took a step, and, pfft, he was gone. I’ll never forget the feeling.”
Curtis, the guy who buzzed past Rubin, is now publisher of the Las Vegas Advisor newsletter and website and the go-to expert for thoughtful perspective on gaming events and trends.
Forty years after his debut on the rugby pitch, Curtis still operates at a speed few can match. He is the do-it-all publisher, writer, reviewer, and resident guru of LVA, which provides in-depth coverage of the Las Vegas experience, plus a valuable book of coupons for gambling, food, drinks and lodging.
He’s an unofficial ambassador for Las Vegas, often appearing in national and international media reports on everything from entertainment options to the impact of the Oct. 1 shootings. Curtis is as comfortable discussing marketing strategy with CEOs of multi-billion-dollar corporations as he is talking about buffet options with gamblers who get their kicks from $10 blackjack and 25-cent video poker.
And, in the ultimate business test, he turns a profit. An endeavor that began with a pledge to his dad has grown into a unique enterprise that somehow pays off for everyone involved – casinos, gamblers, and himself.
‘Hard-core’ honesty
During an interview at his plain-looking offices west of the Strip near the Rio Hotel Casino, Curtis said LVA subscribers frequently stop in to thank him for making their trip more enjoyable and affordable. He says he sets them straight.
“This is a job. This is commerce,” he explains. “I’m not doing it because I’m such a nice guy. I’m doing it because I’m making money.”
Friends and associates say such blunt honesty is a Curtis trait.
“He is adamantly hard-core – maniacal, almost a little bit of being psychopathic – honest about everything he says and does,” Rubin said. “And he doesn’t care what the ramifications are, because truth is paramount to him.”
Anthony Curtis inside his Huntington Press warehouse (photo from the Las Vegas Review-Journal)
Curtis’s integrity sets the company apart from many other small publishing houses, according to Deke Castleman, LVA’s editor for almost 30 years. A former travel writer and editor, Castleman says many in that business “have their hands out” for free trips or meals, a practice that can shade writers’ views of the businesses on which they’re reporting.
In contrast, Curtis has never taken a comp when checking out a restaurant, bar or other attraction for the Advisor, Castleman says. “His feeling is that you can’t take a comp from a service provider and remain objective.”
One reason readers swear by Las Vegas Advisor is the credibility it has established in the past 35 years. Curtis and his team – but mostly Curtis – find deals throughout Sin City. They eat the food, drink the drinks, see the shows, and check out the games.
Rubin calls Curtis “the most knowledgeable guy in the industry, period.”
“He doesn’t lie, doesn’t shade the truth. It would make him a terrible politician,” Rubin says. “But as a reader and being able to depend on what he says and does and promises, it’s a wonderful thing.”
In the beginning
That skill in finding ways to stretch a Las Vegas bankroll grew out of necessity in Curtis’s early days as a professional gambler.
After attending Duke and UCLA on wrestling scholarships, he left college short of his degree and moved to Las Vegas in 1979 when he turned 21, intent on becoming a professional blackjack player. He had set aside about $2,800 for his new profession, and won $23 at the Sahara on his first day of play. On the second day, he lost $1,800.
The “quick comeuppance” forced him into real-world jobs, including stints as a lifeguard, stockbroker and bar bouncer. It also led him into the world of couponing.
“He was doing these things called coupon runs to survive,” Rubin recalls, describing how Curtis would start at the Hacienda at the far south end of the Strip and work his way to Jerry’s Nugget in North Las Vegas.
“He’d get two bucks here, three bucks there, and a free meal here, and a free beer there, whatever they were giving away,” Rubin says. “He called it ‘couponomy.’” The name stuck; it’s still the title of Curtis’s monthly roundup of deals in Las Vegas Advisor.
Curtis pitched the idea of a Las Vegas newsletter to his father, a university professor who understandably wasn’t pleased with his son’s decision to drop out of school to play blackjack.
“I told him I had a secondary plan, to enhance what I was doing if it didn’t work out, or even more so if it did work out,” Curtis says. “I began that pursuit really early, just to see if I was full of s**t or if it really would work.”
The first copy of LVA, “an ugly, square-looking thing of about 30 pages,” appeared in 1983, and was reproduced on a photocopier.
Rubin was running a company that transmitted reader-board information to bars and let Curtis use the office at night to put LVA together for its handful of subscribers.
Then Curtis’s original career track began to pay off. Blackjack legend Stanford Wong decided to put together a tournament team and recruited Curtis to be among its first members. In addition to winning money at tournaments, the team took advantage of casino promotions that Wong had analyzed as profitable for professional players. Curtis’s work with Wong led to profitable play with teams in Atlantic City, island casinos, and other locations.
Curtis said he made so much money and played such long hours that he had to trim the newsletter to a four-page tip sheet called Las Vegas Advisor Recommendations. He gambled professionally into the early 1990s, when he “got serious” about the newsletter.
One of his helpers was Jean Scott, a high school English teacher who started visiting Las Vegas in 1984. Curtis’s 1993 book, “Bargain City,” documented how visitors could reduce the price of a Vegas vacation and included a passage telling how Scott, dubbed the “Queen of Ku Pon,” scored 49 nights of free hotel rooms during a 50-night stay.
“We called ourselves scramblers,” says Scott, who tipped Curtis about deals. “I was out doing them, and his emphasis was writing about them.” Although she eventually authored several popular books for Curtis’s Huntington Press, Scott had no thoughts about writing at that time. “I wanted to play, to have fun. That’s why I shoveled all my information to him. I got paid in coupons sometimes.”
Las Vegas Advisor now has about 15,000 “members” who pay for the 12-page monthly newsletter ($37 a year for online, $50 a year for a hard copy). The newsletter is filled with what Curtis calls “street-level” information, reviews and the popular list of the Top 10 Values in Las Vegas. But Curtis and Castleman agree that the real subscription driver is the “Member Rewards Book,” which this year has 127 coupons for gambling, food, drink, and entertainment deals at more than 60 Las Vegas casinos and other attractions. Members also have access to web-only deals.
Casinos and other businesses involved pay LVA nothing to have their coupons included. A subscriber can easily recoup the annual LVA cost through the coupons; the most valuable one is worth up to $50 off food, drink or hotel charges at the Palms.
Everybody’s happy
Curtis’s pitch to Las Vegas businesses – and soon to casinos in other states, airlines, car rental companies and ride-sharing operations – is that LVA readers are middle-class and spend three times more money on their trips than typical tourists.
“It’s one of those rare things where all parties come out happy,” he said. Casinos profit from the visitors; the visitors get free buffets, match-play offers, or show tickets; and Las Vegas Advisor makes money from subscriptions.
“Somebody’s got to lose somewhere; it’s not a zero-sum game,” Curtis says. That would fall onto players who spend more on gambling than the value of the coupons they redeem.
“But they’re happy because they’re getting a mini-comp,” he continues. “They’re saving money, so they’re happy, too.”
Christina Ellis, marketing director at the family-owned Ellis Island east of the Strip, said the casino and Curtis have been fans of each other since 1989. The Ellis Island steak special was first included the LVA Top 10 deals in 1989 when the cost was $2.99 for a full meal, she said. Now costing $7.99, it still ranks No. 1 in the LVA list.
“Over the years, he’s become a great advocate for us, which we love. He helps us get a lot of people in the door,” Ellis says. “He’s told us what he likes, and he’s told us what he hasn’t liked.”
That last part can grate on some people.
Curtis insists that any offer in the LVA rewards book be at least as good as what’s generally available elsewhere, and he has refused offers that he considered too chintzy.
He recalls when New York-New York offered to honor coupons for a free pretzel.
“I don’t want a pretzel, man,” Curtis says, comparing that with other offers in the book: two-for-ones to the best buffets in town, three free rounds of drinks at Ellis Island, the $50 deal at the Palms.
“A pretzel?” he scoffs. “It doesn’t make sense. Give them a deal. Give the customers something that’s going to motivate them.”
The casino ultimately agreed to a two-for-one deal on the Big Apple roller coaster, but MGM dropped out of the book entirely.
“We’re not going to take (an offer) just to take it,” Curtis says. “It’s got to be a good deal.”
Castleman says some Strip casinos simply don’t want coupon users, catering instead to people willing to pay full price.
Curtis says coupon negotiations can get contentious.
“Sometimes people just don’t like me. I’ve heard, ‘He’s too aggressive. We’re trying to work with him, and he gets in my face.’”
His response: “No, I’m trying to help you. I’m trying to tell you what works, and you’re not listening.”
Rubin says Curtis “walks a unique tightrope” between serving casinos and serving readers, but he will not allow either side get too much from the other.
“If (casinos) ask him to do something that could be detrimental to his readers to the benefit of the casino, he won’t do it,” Rubin says. “On the flip side, if the readers ask him to do something that would be detrimental to the casino, he won’t do that either.”
‘Ideal’ customers
Because one of LVA’s missions is to educate gamblers about the best bets and strategies, some casinos might be leery of attracting too many newsletter subscribers. Based on human nature, that’s not a serious worry, Curtis contends.
“If there has to be a loser in the triangle, it’s the player,” he says. “Our customers hear about us because they want to know about gambling, and they’re searching for the magic pill. They get into our program, but they don’t want to work at (learning the best strategies).”
“They go and exceed the giveback. That’s the nature of comps. It goes back a hundred years.”
He estimates that only 100-to-150 players in the country are skilled enough to be truly “dangerous” to casino bottom lines. Almost all, he said, subscribe to LVA.
“Another 14,000 (subscribers) are wannabes who enjoy gambling,” Curtis said. “They’re good, ideal customers (for casinos). I always argue that, and I think that the numbers that I’ve seen over the years bear that out as well.”
If casinos allowed him at a table game, Curtis would be among those dangerous players. One illustration of his skills developed through Wong and on his own is his attendance at all 22 sessions of the Blackjack Ball, an annual invitation-only event hosted by Rubin to honor the top players in the world. The evening includes a competition to determine the year’s best player. Curtis has made the final table, which includes tests of a player’s ability to cut, steer, memorize, and count cards, more than anyone else. He won the title in 2017, and he would have won in 2018 if he hadn’t been disqualified for forgetting to answer one question on a written test, Rubin said.
“It shows you the extent of how good he is at everything he does. Blackjack is just one in his quiver of maybe 10 arrows,” Rubin added.
Las Vegas casino have banned Curtis from any house-banked table games, indicating the threat of his skills. Curtis said he tried to play a few times after being banned but was backed off in each case.
“I don’t poke the bear any more,” Curtis said. Staying true to his advantage-play days, he emphasizes that he bets only on beatable games: sports wagering, video poker, and poker.
“He’s an expert in many fields,” Rubin said. “He can understand a given situation better than almost anybody I know, and he can also articulate and write about it in common speak so everyone can understand.”
Huntington Press
Curtis’s book-publishing operation, Huntington Press, once focused exclusively on gambling-related topics. Early titles include Curtis’s own “Bargain City,” Rubin’s “Comp City,” and Scott’s “Frugal Gambler” series.
The offerings have expanded to include novels and non-gambling guides such as “Gay Las Vegas,” “Hiking Las Vegas,” and “Eating Las Vegas.” A book about the NHL’s Vegas Golden Knights, whose first season ended with an appearance in the Stanley Cup Final, is near publication.
Nine titles on sports betting are in the works, as Curtis hopes to capitalize on the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision that allows states other than Nevada to regulate sports betting.
“This decision is absolutely one of biggest decisions in gambling in decades,” Curtis said. “It will open up a brand-new market.”
That ability to recognize what interests people and provide the information they want is the hallmark of an editor-publisher who stays in touch with his audience.
“I trust the opinions expressed by Anthony and the other writers,” said longtime LVA member Frank Weston, 74, of Berlin, Conn.
Maintaining credibility is part of the job description for Curtis.
“My job is to look for things that other people have and to tell people about it,” Curtis said. “If somebody comes up with a great deal, we write about it in the newsletter, whether we have a piece of it or not.”
For example, he notes the shrimp cocktail at Skyline Casino in Henderson, which has never had an offer in the coupon book, was on the Top 10 list for six years before falling off this year because of a price increase.
“We’re very honest with our customers,” Curtis says. “We tell them what’s going on. We absolutely try to make it good news, except for resort fees and parking fees, which are the bane of everyone’s existence. There’s so much good in this town. Why not concentrate on the good?”
John L. Smith, named to the Nevada Press Association Hall of Fame after a 31-year career with Las Vegas Review-Journal and now a contributor to CDC Gaming Reports, says few people can match Curtis’s knowledge of casino culture.
“He combines an understanding of real value vs. marketed value,” Smith said. “He’s simply the best in the business in that regard.”
‘A kid in a candy store’
He’s been top dog at Las Vegas Advisor for 35 years, but Curtis’s work schedule resembles that of a business owner just starting out. Long workdays and seven-day workweeks are routine. He takes few vacations, but even those often involve Reno, Lake Tahoe or somewhere else with a casino “where I can do business.”
Interviewed on Memorial Day, Castleman gives a “top of my head” example of Curtis’s schedule from that weekend: two appearances at Zorkfest, a casino and travel advice gathering co-sponsored by LVA; the June newsletter was due in a day, requiring Curtis’s writing and editing; his sports-betting “takes a fair amount of time;” three books were nearing completion; and the big project, a sports betting exchange that could conceivably generate millions of dollars, always commands attention.
“Even at age 61, Anthony is like a kid in the candy store,” Castleman says. “He wants to do everything.”
Curtis says the sports-betting exchange reflects not only his personal interest in that type of wagering but also the future of business in general. The exchange would function person-to-person, much like Uber, Lyft or AirBnB.
The one-time broker says it resembles the process of matching a stock buyer and a stock seller, with the exchange getting a commission for the transaction. Two people could agree on a bet and place it through a betting exchange app, eliminating the need for a bookie. Curtis and other investors are raising capital for the project
“This is a phenomenon that’s basically worldwide except in the United States,” he says. “It’s a cool way to bet.
“Whether it’s us who do it or whoever, there will be a betting exchange or two or three in the United States,” Curtis said. “We are attempting to be among the first.” In June, Betfair US, a subsidiary of one of the largest sports betting exchanges in the world, contracted with New Jersey’s Meadowlands Racetrack in New Jersey.
Succeeding with the exchange also might ease the sting from not being fully prepared to capitalize on the poker boom over the last 15 years.
“I think I missed the poker rush from a business standpoint,” Curtis says. “I want to be on the cutting edge of the sports-betting rush.”
Rubin says that unlike many gamblers, Curtis is not driven by money alone.
“Anthony is the first one to buy the first round. He leaves the biggest tips. He has the most fun. He is a guy who really, really enjoys the trappings of the lifestyle he touts,” Rubin said. “He is experiencing the Vegas life for the public. It’s almost as if this is their town, too, because he’s given them the inside scoop.”
