Topic: House always wins? The case of Trump Plaza. - page 2. (Read 419 times)

According to the article the decline of the stated casino is due to the establishment of its sister company, the Trump Taj Mahal. It is more likely cannibalism since its sister company possibly won the interest of the Trump Plaza players leading to the decline of the Trump Plaza.  This is more on the management than the player winning over the house.

The not wisely planned purchase of properties around the casino also help in the bankruptcy of Trump Plaza, I think the management bites more than they can chew since they keep on spending money to acquire new properties while their currently acquired properties do not give them a good profit.

It is a rhetoric question I believe  ,I played all day up until night today and in different casinos I never felt the joy of winning,the only feeling I felt was the bitter feeling of losing deposit after deposit in all the so called reputable casinos which I think are changing the RTP as there is absolutely no way to be like that unless I am the most unlucky person in the world,it looks like that for sure and I feel very sad today yet I am very strong and I did this test on purpose to verify my way of getting out of gambling which appears to be the right thing to do nowadays.

My conclusion is that nowadays because of the bad economy also the casinos are suffering this from lower profits generated and thus making all people lose money,simply put don't gamble guys or if you do stfu and accept any outcome of your games.

Thanks all for your replies. Actually, I had not done much research on this specific case about the Trump Casino and simply thought it was fascinating to see a casino and resort being demolished after so much time of operation, because how we all are accustomed to hear the house does not lose money, specially in the long term.
At first I thought this casino was not directly under the management of Trump and his organization, though, it seems there was indeed some involvement beyond the usage of the name of Donald Trump. 

You know, within his political career, it has been said Trump has had baducknim any business he had tried, besides of Real state; he has tried to get into the business of alcohol beverages, He tried to found his own University, he also had his own brand of water and ice and of course gambling.
It seems he does not have much of luck for anything beyond politics and real state. Some could argue he does not have much of luck with women either, because of the rumors on his marriage.

Anyways. This house could have indeed lost for other different reasons beyond the profits of their gambling volume. 

The house never fails to maintain its advantage in the games. This advantage is determined by the rules of the game, the odds and how the game operates. One such game is blackjack, which gives the house an advantage of about 1% over the player.

Furthermore, it should be noted that players can often make mistakes that will eventually cause them losses. These errors can stem from a lack of understanding of the game's principles, an excessive desire to win money at any cost, or for example, wrong strategy.

Although casinos have many expenses in the form of rent, staff salaries, security, and equipment maintenance, this can be a significant factor on which a casino's profitability depends heavily, especially if Number of customers is not enough. Besides, they also have to compete if there are other casinos in the area

I also think that because of the other outlets of businesses under it could be a reason it failed.

Another is that at the time casino business may not have been a very big business as it is now with the growth in the game including the use of cryptocurrency and Blockchain that gave the players may freedom and privacy . So I'm sure if it were this time around, whoever is managing it won't allow the casino part to go down. Of course the house always wins and that means with the rate of patronage more capital will be generated to run the casino.

However, there are more to this story like I wonder why Trump would file a case to remove his name from business or is he being impersonated or he had a time limit to use his name on the contract that has expired 

I can imagine that to be true. I mean, yeah it seems kinda weird more regular casinos haven't jumped on the online bandwagon.  Running an actual building has gotta cost a freaking fortune - rent, staff, security guards.  It's a real headache.  The online thing just seems easier and  and you can get people all over playing not just whoever can make it into the casino that day.   

But I guess some of the old school casinos are probably kinda freaked out about competing with the resto of the online platforms.  Still seems short-sighted if you ask me.  Seems like itd be smart to let people play the same games online if they can't make it out to their favorite slots or table games.  Win-win, right? 

Anyway, online casinos are probably the future whether the big guys like it or not.  More convenient for everyone.  The physical places will still get the die hards and tourists and stuff.

There could be many reasons for the closedown of a gambling casino, some people may see it as a non profitable business anymore and thereby close down the casino for other thing, some may consider their reputation and what others may say concerning what they have as an establishment in other not to make such tarnish their reputation s well as been a source of weak point for their opponents to strike at them, so i will not like to adopt the fact that it was the loss on house edge that caused this closedown.

From what I know so far, the factors that cause land-based casinos to go bankrupt are usually management that is no longer in line and also when management changes, there is a lot of disagreement. The case of Trump Plaza is not much different because during the process Trump may need more funds to develop this casino in addition to his need to spend on political costs.


you might be missing something : Owner Trump Entertainment Resorts

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_Plaza_Hotel_and_Casino

and this : Trump Entertainment : Donald Trump (founder)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_Entertainment_Resorts

I can't say anything about this case in particular, but it's not impossible for a casino of this height to bankrupt. Keep in mind the more you have, and the more sophisticated your businesses become, more expensive are going to be the maintenance costs to keep it working. There are a lot of recurrent expenses to pay in order to keep a casino like that operating: employees, taxes, repairs...

I'm sure it has something to do with external factors.

Yes, there are other casinos on the same situation as well. After COVID pandemic, many businesses struggled to continue operating and decided to shut down their services. I believe to run a land based casino is much more challenging than managing an online platform.

Three Las Vegas-Area Casinos to Be Demolished for Land Sales

Well, it doesn't seem strange to me, Donald Trump has always been lying like hell, his hotel chain, his casino, maybe he preferred to leave the casino business because they needed a lot more money to get into politics, he is an investor and you can't deny that he has a high Financial education, he is one of those businessmen who always gives his lectures with very good financial advice, for me in that sense he is very good, he still has many things to do, in fact he Caught my Attention Because Trump in his life He didn't want to be a politician or anything like that, it just occurred to him and he managed to be president, so what I can learn the most from him is his way of focusing on things to achieve them.

Only he knows why he declared Bankruptcy, Trump has many Mysteries and he is also a very impulsive person, Trump's change of plans is just that he and God know , what I Know is that if he Decided to do Without the casino it is Because he had Something much bigger in mind.

As I understand the real intention of OP. He is questioning the saying "the house always wins" due to this Trump Plaza was previously a casino that shut down and took over so he is questioning if the house always wins then why the previous casino shut down and why did the new owner doesn't bother to save the casino instead it rebuilt for another purpose.



Yes, No doubt about this, Casinos always win against players but casinos real opponent in their business is their operational cost which is too costly while their income is decreasing due to few players.

This is pretty typical of businesses that Donald Trump runs.  I haven't really made it a secret that I absolutely despise the "man" that is Donny T, but this isn't a political post, this is about gambling and that's one thing that I never understood.  How the heck can you bankrupt a business where you're guaranteed to come out on top.  I have no idea how popular the casinos was however, so assuming that played a role in it.

a casino is also a business and in all businesses it has operational costs, in the case of casinos although they always win when it comes to games of chance, they still have many operational costs like for example in a physical casino and the owner of the physical casino pays electricity and if you look, you will notice that inside the casinos they have a lot of lights, they have a lot of machines, electricity consumption is very high in physical casinos, in physical casinos they pay for water. They pay a construction company to maintain the casino building. in the physical casino they pay taxes to the governments every month, in the physical casinos they pay salaries to the employees, which are many employees in the physical casinos. We probably won't see news of casinos being demolished

Because in most cases of bankrupt physical casinos, they are sold and the future owner modifies the building and runs another business, unlike this Trump case. So the fact that the house always wins is not something that would prevent a casino from going bankrupt. With many casinos that exist today, running the casino business involves many challenges, customers may be few and the casino may have little profit and at the end of the day it may go bankrupt. This applies to physical casinos and online casinos, and that's why the owners of physical casinos now have hotels and inside their hotels they have casinos because that way they can make a profit from tourism.

In my opinion, the problem is not with the casinos, but with Trump, who did not know how to conduct his business well, as the President of the United States has a long history of failures on his resume. Six of his companies have already filed for bankruptcy. His Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City declared bankruptcy in 1991. Two other Trump casinos also went bankrupt, along with the Plaza Hotel in New York. Trump Hotels and Casinos Resorts declared bankruptcy in 2004, with a debt of US$1.8 billion, in addition to Trump Entertainment Resorts, which went bankrupt in 2009.
Is it a coincidence? I don't think so!

Remembering that Trump used dishonest practices from the beginning, because to attract an entertainment company to invest in the construction of his casino, he invited executives from the company Harrah's, owner of the Holiday Inn hotel chain, to visit land already acquired and He ordered that, during the visit, his employees pretend that the land was an active construction site. Workers dug holes in the ground and pushed wheelbarrows back and forth for no reason as Harrah’s executives watched.

We can't see that the house loses and the casino goes bankrupt or that the house never loses and the casino can't go bankrupt, there are many factors that can cause a casino to go bankrupt like what you said, maybe on tea managerial issues, losing competitiveness and many more factors that can make the casino go out of business. The house not losing is not a guarantee that they will not go bankrupt.

The business world is not that simple, there are many things that can cause a business to go bankrupt. The house never loses does not guarantee that a casino will never go bankrupt, a simple enough sentence but we don't look at just one aspect that makes it strong so we forget that the big line lies on the other side.

I am in the same side with you on this because casinos are designed to favor the owners(I do not have any evidence to support this, just my observation). I find it strange that casino will be bankrupt, not even a big casino like the one being described and with big names involved, names that will put confidence in the heart of rich people to use the casinos. Maybe it is possible there could be sabotage from the inside, a case of leaking of insider information to cripple the casino.

This should be the biggest threat casinos are facing now. The number of people visiting physical casinos have reduced and the people visiting are mostly low income owners. I am speaking with respect to my location. The growth of online casinos he is fast and most casinos are now paying more attention to their online platforms. This could possibly be part of the reason for the collapse of this casino.

Donald Trump is well known for business malpractices and tax invasions. He has been accused of inflating the worth of his companies to deceive investors or increase his debt in some cases to invade tax. There were reports that he put in little of his money but collected millions as bonuses and salaries while he shifted debts to investors. He was just a smart man who used the casino as an avenue to invade tax and cheat investors. I don't think he was passionate about the casino business which might be why the it failed.

Donald Trump was the owner of The Trump Plaza Casino and Hotel which was founded in 1985 until the company went bankrupt. It was in August 2014 that Donald Trump got a court judgment that removed his name from the company's casinos. Before the judgment, he was fully involved in the casino business.

There's likely more to the story - there always is.  But an over-eagerness to line ones own pockets while neglecting the product is a tale as old as time in business.  And for casinos especially, greed can become an addiction in itself.  In the case of Trump Plaza, that addiction clearly exacted a heavy cost.


From wikipedia article:


No, I havn't. But I bet this isn't the first time something like this has happened, and it probably won't be the last.

The OP has a point but could have gone ahead to build on it . Are there casinos that have gone out of business? I think so. He should have highlighted it and gone ahead to state the cause for this. In the case of the above, it was more about ownership tussle like you have said. There are other things that could destroy a casino that has nothing to do with gambling but operational issues.

This is not even directly related to casinos, cause the plaza was offering a lot more services which were the main focus at the time, the casino was not fully operational at any point in time.

There are also too many legal cases and switch in ownership that I cannot find the moral of the story anymore or how it relates to the house not winning all the time.

- Jay -