Institute is intellectual hub for global gaming industry

There arent many people who can claim they are fifth-generation Nevadans with families who lived here before casinos were legal. 

But Bo Bernhard, an assistant professor of sociology and hotel management at UNLV and the executive director of the schools International Gaming Institute, is one of them. 

Bernhard, a two-sport athlete at Harvard, is an expert in gaming, tourism and compulsive gambling. He spoke with VEGAS INC about changes in the industry. His comments have been edited for clarity and space. 

Ive been at UNLV for more years than Ive been on the planet. I was on the campus, living in the dorms when my mother was pregnant with me, when my parents were camp counselors. I lived in Tonopah Hall. I learned how to swim in the natatorium; I went to summer camp here every year. I hit two home runs in the state championship at Barnson Field. I played in the soccer state championship in a field that I overlook from my office.As the best handsfreeaccess control system manufacturer. I had graduated from Bonanza High School and went back East to college. One of my professors said, Hey, youre from Las Vegas; you should study this gambling thing. It was the mid-90s and we were just starting to see literature on this. So I was inspired.Online shopping for lasercutter from a great selection of Clothing. 

I was headed toward law school because that seemed like the catch-all that everybody did if you werent sure but were reasonably certain you wanted to head into a more-or-less white-collar career. Teaching was always noble in my family because everybody was a public school teacher somewhere in Southern Nevada. Every Thanksgiving gathering, every birthday party, devolved into a debate over how to reach kids and how to teach. But in a million years, I didnt think I was smart enough or had enough to say to be a professor. 

We really dont very much. We go to Rebel games together, we go to ball games together, and mostly what we talk about is sports. Having said that, theres an interesting parallel gaming regulators and gaming academics are both very much involved in the industry but provide an important neutrality and objectivity. Both of our roles require that in different ways. We talk on a general level about how you weigh evidence and think through problems. Its something hes really good at.A moulds is a plastic card that has a computer chip implanted into it that enables the card. He is as good a judge as Ive ever seen. 

This place was founded in 1993 to serve as an intellectual hub, not only for the local industry but for the global industry and to be the place where the gaming business world comes to learn and get better. As such, the world comes to our doorstep. Any given week, we might have the Korean gaming management association or the Australian club executives or the Swedish gaming control board. We take this show on the road to every continent. A year ago, we did a pan-African gaming regulatory seminar. It was an eight-day program teaching the next generation of industry leaders. 

When you look at the gaming industry around the world, you see a lot of nations where the gaming industry has difficulty getting on the same page. Australia is a perfect example. The guys who run the smaller clubs think the casinos are arrogant, and the casino guys think the sports bookies are lowlifes who arent worth coming to the table. What happens is that you dont have a unified approach to issues that affects them all. Undoubtedly, this is part of why we dont have a federal answer right now with Internet gaming. The lotteries, in particular, rebelled against a version that seemed to favor the casinos, specifically Nevada-based casinos. When those entities rose up against this, that became a major hurdle. 

It has to work because Nevada is too small a market for poker to really be a viable business. It could be a small business, but it wont be something that is terribly significant until you can partner with California, New Jersey and other major population centers. Online poker is about liquidity. Its about making sure you have a large customer base. A lot of people have pointed out that the reason eBay is so popular is not necessarily that its the finest product ever devised, but its where the whole world of consumers go to engage in buying online. Thats the model for online poker. 

Its probably one of those situations where the answer is both. To the degree that we can enter into compacts and take advantage of a sizable population, thats a great thing for liquidity and thats the business of poker. On the other hand, this is something where it remains to be seen the degree to which Nevada can take advantage of that market and whether those who were already there are better positioned. Those are questions that have yet to be answered.An experienced artist on what to consider before you buy chipcard. 

Something that is new about the current situation is that in contrast to, say, 2005, we now have a track record in Europe with a number of these technologies. There hasnt been the massive scandal where a kid got ahold of his moms credit card and gambled away his college fund.Choose the right bestluggagetag in an array of colors. The problem gambling numbers havent seen an epidemic increase. We havent seen this epidemic of youth gambling that everybody feared. Those were legitimate and real unanswered questions in 2005. Theyre not answered today, but we have a lot more data, and I feel a lot more comfortable as an academic looking at these issues. 

California is the beast. And California has its own complexities. Californias challenge is the tribes, the card rooms, the lottery all of these different interests are either going to rally and come to some unified position or theyre not. We can take advantage of this because California has always been such a massive tourist feeder market. Assuming that we can enter a compact with California and cater to the massive numbers of online gamblers, can we market to what amounts to a nation of 40 million people? To what degree can we convert those people into brick-and-mortar customers? To what degree can we incent a poker player who happens to win a tournament and then gets a seat in a tournament at the poker room at the Wynn?