I’ve been writing about Las Vegas for more than ten years now but I was visiting the city long before that. Over the years I have spent more than my fair share of time in the casinos, usually in front of one slot machine or another. I’m not much of a table games player unless it’s Three Card Poker, preferring instead for the mindless diversion and instant rush winnings of the one-armed bandits for my gambling fun.

People ask me where I like to gamble and in general my response is “anywhere that I win.” So I thought it would be fun to look at the places and machines around Las Vegas where I’ve done the best. Not all of them are there anymore and they aren’t always rewarding, but for me these are my Top 10 Places to Play.

1. Green Valley Ranch, $1 slots near the buffet. Over the years since it has opened I have done better on these machines as a group than any other in town. They are all tied to their own set of progressive jackpots that can pay off as much as $5,000 on any spin and often pay random $25 bonuses even if you haven’t hit a winning combination on your machine.

2. Planet Hollywood, $5 slots near the escalators to the nightclub. Planet Hollywood hasn’t been around for very long but I have won more money at that casino in shorter period of time than any other, most of it on the very generous $5 slots.

3. Harrah’s, $1 slots near Penazzi restaurant. The small collection of Blazing 7 machines hits remarkably consistently. It’s often tough to find one that doesn’t have someone using it, but when you do it can be worth the investment.

4. Flamingo, $1 slots near the lobby. There are fewer of the Blazing 7 machines in this area than there used to be and they haven’t been as generous the last few times I’ve been there, but for a long time this area was one of the best places to gamble in Las Vegas.

5. Red Rock Resort, $1 machines near the food court. Like those at Green Valley, these machines are also tied to random progressive jackpots but these are shared across multiple casinos. Still, I usually do very well here.

6. Green Valley Ranch, 25 cent video poker, multiple locations. There are lots of video poker machines around this casino but look for the double-double bonus poker progressives – those are the ones that I usually do well on.

7. Las Vegas Hilton, $1 slots in the space theme casino. My days of winning here are long gone but I have very vivid memories of walking entire armloads full of coin buckets to the cashier from the machines that were located in the far back corner of this casino.

8. Stratosphere, $1 and $5 slots to the right of the main entrance. For a long time there was a group of machines along the walkway between the main casino and the north casino that I did really well on.

9. Golden Nugget, $1 machines near the Spa Tower elevators. They’ve recently redone this area but for years the machines here – a mix of standard themed and variations on the Blazing 7 – were tremendously rewarding.

10. Bally’s, $1 machines in the center of the casino. Incredibly loose slots made Bally’s a favorite of mine for a very long time.

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Over the last decade, Las Vegas has seen a bunch of classic hotels fade into the history books. I thought it would be fun to look back at the places that no longer grace (or disgrace as the case may be) the skyline.

1. Desert Inn – Just after its 50th birthday, Steve Wynn closed one of the Grand Dames of the Las Vegas Strip, a place that had helped define the city as an oasis of fun in the sun. When it opened in 1950, it had the tallest building in Nevada at just over 3 stories high. It was the home of Dan Tanna for “Vega$” and remained in good condition until the end. Wynn Las Vegas and the upcoming Encore now take up the land where the DI once stood.

2. Stardust – Opened in 1958, the Stardust was the last to open of the original “classic” Vegas hotels that included names like Dunes, Flamingo, Sahara, El Rancho, and more. Although it went through a series of declines in its later years, it was still popular for budget minded gamblers. It is being replaced by Echelon.

3. Binion’s Horseshoe – Yes, Binion’s is still around but the original zeitgeist of Benny Binion’s Horseshoe disappeared a few years ago when the hotel went bankrupt, closed, and was reopened with new management who just wanted the Horseshoe name.

4. Westward Ho – One of the first motels on The Strip, the Westward Ho was mostly famous for its low-rent rooms and 99 cent hot dogs. It was torn down to make way for a hotel than never happened and it now just an empty lot.

5. New Frontier – The second hotel on The Strip, in business since 1946, finally closed last year as a rundown shadow of its former glory. The land will be the home for an homage to New York’s famed Plaza hotel.

6. Showboat/Castaways – The hotel opened on the far east edges of Downtown Las Vegas in the 1950s as The Showboat, complete with a riverboat façade. It was remodeled and rebranded as The Castaways in 2000 and then went bankrupt and closed in 2004. It was torn down in 2005 and is an empty lot now. Trivia – the hotel’s main claim to fame for a long time was that it had the biggest bowling alley in the world.

7. The Aladdin (original) – The site of Elvis and Priscilla’s wedding doesn’t really fit on this list since it was imploded in early 1998 but I’m still counting it.

8. The New Aladdin – Just a couple of years after they rebuilt the Aladdin bigger, better, and much more expensive it went down in what was the biggest bankruptcy in Nevada history. The hotel was remodeled and rebranded as Planet Hollywood.

9. Boardwalk Holiday Inn – It opened in the 1970s under a different name but it was really its era in the late 1990s as the Boardwalk, complete with its Coney Island themed façade, that the hotel is most known for. It was torn down in 2006 to make way for CityCenter.

10. The Maxim – If you don’t remember The Maxim, you’re probably lucky. Located just east of The Strip on Flamingo, it had become one of the cruddiest hotels in town by the time they shut it down, gutted it, and turned it into the very fine Westin.

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