With the behemoth Global Gaming Expo 2016 in Las Vegas this week, it’s easy to forget the historical evolution of casino gambling in America isn’t a dusty academic pursuit, but a relatively recent phenomenon.
Much of gaming’s growth from the backroom to the boardroom has occurred in a single lifetime.
In Albert “Moky” Faccinto’s lifetime, as a matter of fact.
Faccinto, whose remarkable career on the casino floor and front office stretched from the card rooms of Steubenville to the carpeted splendor of Caesars Palace, died Sept. 17 at age 91. We quit life’s game a big winner with an adoring family at his side, a generation of casino executives and green-felt veterans in his debt, and a loving memorial service Monday at St. Thomas More Catholic Community Church celebrating his life.
If Faccinto’s name and moniker ring few bells with a new era of casino MBAs and game innovators, that’s a pity. Moky recorded his MBA on the street, starting as a newsy and shoeshine boy in Steubenville, Ohio, one of America’s great — and most notorious — illegal gambling centers. He watched the action before joining in himself as a 17-year-old break-in dealer at the Venetian in Steubenville.
Faccinto had a knack for cards and dice, facts and figures, and in short order he became a journeyman in casinos in Ohio, Indiana, Florida, and locales in between. In those days, the Mounds Club outside Cleveland was almost as busy as any gambling hall in far-off Las Vegas.
But eventually — and this is an integral part of the evolution of gambling in America — a guy wants to settle down, stop fading occasional heat, and practice his craft in a place where it’s legal and respectable. For Faccinto and a generation of craftsmen like him, that place was Las Vegas.
In the early 1950s, the Kefauver racket hearings didn’t stop gambling, but it did force a westward migration of sorts. Faccinto helped open the Dunes in 1955, then took a job at the Fremont under management that must have looked familiar. When he hooked up with gentleman Jackie Gaughan at the Las Vegas Club and El Cortez, Faccinto’s career reached a new level.
At that time, Jackie’s son Michael was a teen-ager limbering up for a casino career of his own. When he looked for seasoned advice in the casino pit, a young Gaughan found Moky willing to lend a hand.
“Moky broke me in,” says Gaughan, who these days owns the South Point. “I learned how to deal at the El Cortez while he was there. Years later, (Faccinto’s son) Big Al broke in under me. Moky was a sharp, honest guy and a great casino guy. He was one step above all the rest of the guys from that era. He understood gambling, and he understood the customers, and I never saw Moky without a smile.”
One of the things that separated Faccinto from others was his attention to detail and ability to adapt to changes in the casino industry. As gambling tastes expanded, it was essential for the old-school guys to learn new tricks. Not all of them could.
After moving to open Caesars Palace in 1966, he rose from the dice pit to shift boss and soon found himself managing the entire gaming operation. He also won a battle to make slot play a larger part of the business equation at Caesars, which may seem fundamental today but in that era was a controversial move.
“He made them put slot machines in,” Gaughan recalls. “Moky learned the value of slot machines from Jackie Gaughan.”
Faccinto remained at Caesars the rest of his career as a vice president, retiring in 1985. But he never forgot his old friends, and returned to visit them often at the El Cortez.
“He was one helluva guy,” El Cortez President and Chief Executive Officer Kenny Epstein says. “He lived and breathed the casino business. Jackie Gaughan or myself, if we ever had a problem or something for him to look at, he was here in a minute. He just was a fine guy.”
As well known as Faccinto once was, even he would have acknowledged he’d never rival the celebrity of Steubenville’s favorite son, Dean Martin. The entertainment legend, it should be noted, was also intimately familiar with roulette, craps, and blackjack, and was capable of dealing them all. Gambling was a fact of life in Steubenville.
“If you don’t count Dean Martin, the No. 1 guy from Steubenville is Al Faccinto Sr.,” Gaughan says.
For decades around Las Vegas, Faccinto was like the neon itself. It’s hard to find anyone who remembered a time he wasn’t there.
Now that he’s gone, a new generation of casino men should be thankful he came this way.
John L. Smith is a longtime Las Vegas journalist and author and a recently inducted member of the Nevada Press Association Hall of Fame.
