Me neither! Not in TCR or C/W that I could see. Anyhoo, I was reading Dwayne Kling's excellent oral interview history of Harrah's, Every Light Was On" when I ran across a reference to what would be a killer chip find. The interviewee was a Grade A Hotshot named Lee Delauer who worked for Harrah's a couple of times, auditing, office managment, public relations. Delauer also was invlolved in other properties in managment and ownership capacities and brought a lot of ideas into Harrah's from these experiences. One idea was how to exploit a gaming pit near the hotel front desk. the time is late 1969 when Harrah's opened their hotel (musta been Reno, not real clear in the book). I'm going to transcribe what is in the book, legal or whatever...we're just chip wonks here!

...I explained what I had done for Harvey's and how I worked the front desk into the pit. I had learned this from Bernie Einstoss and the old gamblers - you know, the front desk is very important to the pit. There was a little pit, about eight games, by the front desk at Harrah's. I wanted to be able to raise the minimum bet from one dollar to three dollars and then go right up. Rome (Andreotti) and Mert Smith wanted to go from one dollar to five dollars, and I said, "No, there's certain times you should go from one to three."

So Rome and Mert said, "Well, we have to have a unit bet." It took six weeks to get the three-dollar chips. We used them one day and they were a bust. We took them out and started using tokens on those six or eight games. In one day we made $18,000 more. It was a great location, by the front desk. Guys waiting to get int the hotel would make a bet, and it was great.

We neeeeeeeed these chips!

BTW, this book is great for anyone interested in Reno/Tahoe/Bill Harrah/ and any aspect of what makes a hotel & casino tick.