Just about every day of the week, high-stakes Texas gamblers from Houston, Dallas-Fort Worth, Austin, Midland-Odessa and other Texas cities board non-stop flights to Las Vegas for free. The casinos pick up the tab – not only for the flight but also for rooms, meals, drinks and incidentals. All the gambler has to do is agree to buy a certain amount of chips and put them into play.

Former Texas Monthly editor Greg Curtis, writing about this phenomenon years ago, suggested that the casinos saw these bettors as a good bet for two reasons: “Texans like to gamble, and they are bad gamblers.”