Just starting to read this thread so don't know if all this has been said. East Chicago is on the border and is a city in Indiana.

Actually, Harrah's East Chicago is no longer. It is now Resorts East Chicago. I think Indiana has a limit in their gaming laws that says that one owner can't own more than 2 casinos in the state. Harrahs had bought out Horseshoe and picked up the casino in Hammond. They then had that, in addition to, at that time, their casino in East Chicago. That was fine. However, when they then bought Bally's, Caesars, Flamingo, etc, they then had a problem where they picked up a third boat, Caesars in Indiana. Therefore, they had to sell one of their properties.

Horseshoe was a very important brand and acquisition for them and, as I recall, at that time, they even had talked about rebranding (renaming) other casinos that they own to the Horseshoe brand to captialize on that. Also, a big factor in their buying out Becky in the purchase and bailout of the Horseshoe in downtown LV. They wanted to be able to use that name in Nevada which until then, they couldn't as Becky owned it. Buying out Becky Behnen (sp?) and Binions Horseshoe, would then give them ownership of the Horseshoe name nation wide.

Anyway, Hammond was big Jewel in that acquisition of Horseshoe Gaming from Jack Binion. East Chicago, which was originally acquired through Harrah's puchase of Showboat, years earlier, might have been too close to Horseshoe to be of real value to have 2 boats so close together. Caesars is in a totally different part of the state and might have been more valuable to have access to a totally different market, one that isn't as saturated as the Southern Lake Michigan market. I don't know how many there are but Blue Chip, Trump, Majestic Star, Resorts, Horseshoe... all immediately come to mind.

So, as of last December, or somwhere there abouts, Resorts purchased and started to run the casino in East Chicago.