Casino Connection Nevada

Prophetic Vision

Jake Vanderlei knew to bet on gaming

by Dave Bontempo

Meatloaf parlayed “Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad” into musical stardom. Jake Vanderlei turned the phrase into a prosperous gaming career.

The personable California native, now the vice president of gaming for Beau Rivage in Biloxi, Mississippi, experienced three Vegas eras. He thrived here as a dealer at Main Street Station and Four Queens operations director several years apart. In between, he tried and disliked sales. The ability to adjust and marshal his strengths propelled Vanderlei to a high place.

“The moves turned out to be the right ones, which is great because I love this business,” Vanderlei says. “The best of friends have developed from this, people I stay in contact with today. These are friends who will be with me for the rest of my life, all because of gaming.”

Vanderlei’s journey emerged from practicality. Newly married with a pregnant wife, Vanderlei needed to roll the dice on himself. Gaming offered a vision of success to the University of California-Santa Barbara graduate. It wasn’t a view shared by his parents.

“They absolutely forbade me to go,” he recalls, laughing. “They figured it was a waste of my education, but we had to do this. We literally packed up our car with everything we had and came to Las Vegas.”

It became the best road he ever traveled. It did not hurt that Vanderlei’s uncle was Dual Cooper, a Bally’s executive who helped place him. Once here, however, Vanderlei made his own way. He enrolled in Main Street Station’s dealing school in the early 1990s, learned the mechanics and brought a substantial intangible to the job.

“As a dealer, I was always an extrovert, enjoying people on the game, talking to them,” Vanderlei says. “The interaction on the game was second-to-none. I did not even realize at the time that I was making the casino a lot of money. I wish all the dealers had good communications skills. They can make or break properties.”

Vanderlei smelled advancement’s aroma in Indian gaming. That produced a Minnesota stint, in which he became a slot shift manager for Grand Casino in Hinkley. Vanderlei became so adept with slots that he changed course. He moved back to Las Vegas to sell computerized video slot machines for Silicon Gaming. It seemed like a logical step, but reality fired him a curve ball.

“I was trying to sell the slot machines to the slot directors and I hated it,” Vanderlei says. “The worst part was not having the daily grind. In sales you work, work, work, work and maybe nothing happens. When you are in sales, you see a lot about management styles and how differently every property operates, but it wasn’t what I enjoyed most.”

Vanderlei found the process stifling. Nothing saps one’s energy more than pitching semi-decision makers. The process often must be repeated. Once key people are reached, decisions can come slowly or fall apart quickly. All told, sales did not provide Vanderlei enough action.

That changed when he joined the Four Queens and became director of casino operations. The job offered more decisions amid the heartbeat of the Fremont Street Experience.

“At the Four Queens, you get involved in every single decision,” Vanderlei says. “Whether or not you put up a table is important. Whether putting the slot machine in is the right move. Whatever you do, it affects things immediately. You can’t afford to make a mistake. It’s an interesting situation because on the one hand there is a coalition of the downtown casinos trying to bring customers to that area. But once people are there, it is cutthroat!

“What was great was the old school Las Vegas feeling. Here I was, 26, 27 years old, running a Downtown casino and I had 30-year employees of the business. We would sit down at a dead blackjack game and talk about the day we had; it was fascinating. It wasn’t corporate. It was pure old-school Las Vegas gambling.”

Vanderlei knows what drives the gaming bus. It’s the same dynamic that keeps him energized.

“Gambling has not changed since inception,” he says. “It’s instinct. It’s that feeling you get when the dice are in the air, there is all that money on the layout and you need that point. Or it’s that feeling you experience when you pull the handle and see a seven, then another. Now the wheel is spinning and you are waiting for a third.

“The core reason why people gamble remains the same. No other industry can boast that. People love to make decisions. We gamble on things every day. Whether we take a short cut or pass this car, we’re making a decision. We thrive on those decisions. That’s the heart of gambling. That’s also what makes gaming exciting.”

No wonder he’s excited.

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