Two Way Hard Three | Las Vegas Casino & Design Blog

I'm hanging up my dice. Putting away my stick. Calling it quits. No roll.

What does this mean? Is the site going down? What about Vegas Mate? Oh, and when is the Android version coming out?

Be calm my children... This decree only applies to the blog. Two Way Hard Three is dead.

Vegas Mate lives. The Vegas Gang podcast lives. RateVegas.com lives (sorta)... but the blog is dead.

Honestly, it's been on life support for some time. If not for Dr. Dave's posts and my occasional screed, it would have gone dark a year ago when Jeff died.

Yeah, I could have just kept it running indefinitely and never written this post but that just didn't feel right. This thing was birthed intentionally and it deserves to die with some dignity, not just fade into nothingness. There's a lot of good content buried in these topic pages: some great editorial and amazing comments.

It makes me sad to kill off the blog but it is time. My heart hasn't been in it for awhile and given the slow-down of construction in the city, it has less of a purpose to live on.

I put it off at least partially because I've sometimes felt that my identity was wrapped up in this blog. We broke stories and poked the bear. It was fun. It got me into un-opened casinos, onto designer led tours, into CEO interviews and it introduced me to countless readers and contributors, many of whom I consider friends. It was a massive success.

Thank you all for reading, commenting and participating. I can't say how much I appreciate it. Thanks for your recent Trippies nomination. I've been lucky enough to be a nominee and a winner in those awards and it's a ton of fun.

The name 'Two Way Hard Three' came from a friend of mine learning to play craps who called out a non-sensical bet during his first session at a real table. We toasted him (after laughing at him, of course). I hope you'll join me in toasting Two Way, one last time.

Practical Stuff:

- The archives will remain up for the foreseeable future. I have no plans to take them down.
- All posts will close for new comments at the end of this month.
- I'm going to remove all of the advertising so it will be a slimmed down version of what is here now.
- New Vegas Gang episodes will be announced at vegasgangpodcast.com. If you already subscribe, no need to change anything - you should be all set.
- Vegas Mate updates and information will appear at vegasmate.com and on Twitter @vegasmate.
- Don't expect any significant RateVegas.com updates anytime soon - the site is powered by the same CMS that runs Vegas Mate so the content remains up to date but when it comes to new features, my heart is in the app, not the Web site. The @ratevegas Twitter account will continue, re-tweeting interesting casino news.
- You can reach me personally both on Twitter @hunter and at ruthlessidealism.com.
- There's a 3.7.1 update for VM in the review queue now [ed: it's out and in the App Store], a big set of plans for 4.0 and I've started tinkering with a new Vegas-related app idea.

Notable Posts:

Here are a few notable posts, either because they sparked some discussion or just because I like them. You can also look back and see how intense some of the comment threads used to be.

- Wynn Dealers Suit Dismissed
- DeRuyter Butler Interview
- 119 Comments!
- Le Reve Damaged
- I'm Vegas Homeless
- Dick Whitman Doesn't Know What He Wants

What are your favorite posts? Feel free to put links in the comments...

Also, any questions? This is the best place to do it.

Episode #85 is up!

Quick Note: For some reason, our recording here went pretty off-kilter. It required a lot of editing and tweaking to make it listenable. Sorry for the worse-than-normal sound quality. We're not sure what happened.

Listen here: Vegas Gang Podcast

This time on the show:

- The Trippies
- An Important Announcement about Two Way Hard Three
- Chuck's LVH Stay
- Bill McBeath and Aria
- Bill's / Drai's Plans
- Online Poker in 2012

** Sure Bets **

Chuck - Celebration Day - Led Zeppelin
Dr. Dave - Dave Brubeck / Steve Lacy
Hunter - Paper for iPad

Feel free to leave your comments at the link below. If it's a question that you want asked on the show, please make that clear in your post. You can also send those to editor@ratevegas.com.

It's already that time of year again! The 2013 VegasTripping.com Trippies are upon us and voting closes in less than a week!

We're fortunate enough to have a few nominations this year that I'd like to make you aware of, specifically the categories for 'Best App' and 'Best Podcast'. This blog and the parent Web site are also nominated, as I am in the 'tweeter tweeter' category. I really appreciate everyone that took the time to go through the nomination process. Thank you.