It’s Thursday, which means another edition of the Green Felt Journal in Vegas Seven magazine. This week, as whether the “little guy” still has a chance on the Strip:P

Last year at around this time, “deconsolidation” was the buzzword along the Strip. MGM Mirage had just announced its sale of Treasure Island to Phil Ruffin, formerly of the New Frontier. Investment bankers and industry analysts announced that, just as the previous 10 years had seen Strip casinos swept into progressively larger corporate empires, the next era would see them splinter into smaller fiefdoms fortified by hedge-fund and private equity investment.A year later, it’s now clear that the pundits couldn’t have been more wrong. Rumors of an MGM Mirage fire sale proved immature. Harrah’s Entertainment has actually added a casino to its portfolio, having taken over the management of Planet Hollywood after acquiring a substantial stake via debt purchases.

via Does the little guy still have a shot on the Strip? | Vegas Seven.

As I promised before, this column also has my first overt Star Trek reference.

Also, only in Vegas would a multi-million dollar company with thousands of employees be considered “the little guy.”

Some other highlights from the issue:
- Nicole Lucht talks to Tony Marnell about the M Resort’s first year
–Mericia Gonzalez looks into the future of Vegas nightclubs
–Jeff Haney, formerly of the Sun, writes about HORSE at Aria. He’s a great poker writer, and hopefully this is the first of a regular series of column.
–and if you didn’t catch it last week, check out Jessica Prois’s talk about statistics with author Jeffery Rosenthal (Struck by Lightning: The Curious World of Probabilities)

Tons of other great reading in there–these are just the ones that have the biggest gambling/Strip connection.