The Vegas Guy: Grand Casino/Tunica

TUNICA, Miss., Aug. 21 (UPI) -- The Grand Casino, splayed out on the delta here like a Disney World palace crossed with a giant multi-ethnic wedding cake, has some of the friendliest craps games in the world.

On weekends, when the crowds swarm in from Memphis and the complimentary cocktails start doing their work, you can get some of the strangest-looking tables, with comic-book geeks mixing with cool cats in fedoras joined by good-time party girls in flouncy dresses flirting with homeboys from the hood, and ALL of them will be betting on the pass line.

I'm sure they exist, but I don't think I've ever seen a "Don't Pass" party-pooper at the Grand.

The Grand is the largest casino in Tunica -- it's the largest casino between Vegas and Atlantic City, and that's a lot of cotton fields -- but it can become absolutely packed, and when that happens the little gambling pods get more and more intimate.

Nothing like rolling a few passes and feeling the whole table BREATHING with you, which is what happened to me one night recently when the action peaked around midnight.

I never have figured out why it's true, but Louisiana and Mississippi are the best places in the world to play craps, because the people just flat love the game. You've got all kinds of superstitious stuff going on -- beefy pickup-driving guys who like to spin the dice flat against the wall, black street poets in porkpie hats who bless the dice before they loop them in a lazy arc, and Prada-clad Girl Gangs casting voodoo spells and squealing every time they make a point.

Fortunately for those of us who keep extending our runs and need to crash before heading out of town, the Grand has plenty of bedrooms, too -- 1,363 of them, spread out among three hotels on a 2,200-acre estate curved around an oxbow of the Mississippi River.

Finding myself homeless at 2:30 a.m., I tried the nearest place first -- the Grand Casino Hotel, decked out in festive yellow, orange and white -- but all 188 rooms were booked. They quickly bused me over to the much roomier Veranda Hotel, a nouveau hardwood-floors kind of place built next to an artificial lake with a view of the Hale-Irwin-designed Cottonwoods Golf Course. Everything has to be created from scratch on the flat treeless delta -- the lakes are man-made, the trees and shrubs are imported -- which is what gives Tunica its air of unreality. And the Grand is the most unreal of them all.

Maybe that's what accounts for its being one of the two most popular casinos in the 10-casino market. (The Grand and the Horseshoe go head to head every month to see who's No. 1.) Plus it's just so dang large that, once you get there, you don't really wanna leave.

Lyle Berman, the founder of Grand Casinos in Biloxi, Gulfport and here, sold out a couple years back to Park Place Entertainment, but the place still bears the imprint of his personality. An avid sportsman, he created as part of the resort one of the premier skeet-shooting, clay-shooting, and trap-shooting facilities in the country.

I can't really tell you the difference between skeet, clay and trap -- I've always assumed the best use of a shotgun is on the gun rack of a police car -- but this place is a hoot. They have games for fast shooters, games for slow shooters, games where you move around through a simulated forest like you're hunting deer, and -- my personal favorite -- a game called "Duck Flush," where you sit in a simulated Mississippi duck blind with two other guys, they release 75 birds in a three-minute period, and all three of you blast away like the trigger-happy hunters in "The Palm Beach Story."

If you get tired of that, you could head over to yet a third hotel --the Terrace -- and get flogged, kneaded, and chopped into a Gumby doll at the Bellissimo Spa & Salon, which offers aromatherapy, reflexology, shiatsu, hydrotherapy, and something called a Vichy Shower (I was afraid to ask).

Tunica is not really a destination casino town in the traditional sense. Overnight stays at the Grand average 1.7 nights, with day-trippers spending under five hours -- but this place acts like it is. They're big players in the entertainment sweepstakes, for example, with a 2,500-seat Events Center that has three or four major attractions a month -- either live boxing at a national level, or touring acts like Patti LaBelle, Bill Cosby, Reba, the Commodores, Earth Wind & Fire (although I think Earth and Wind both left the band several years back), Kenny Rogers, Mickey Gilley and Lee Greenwood.

Ironically, the Grand was one of the last casinos to break into the Tunica market after Mississippi legalized gambling in 1990. It didn't open until the summer of 1996, and by that time 15 other places had opened for business and five of those had already faded into Tunica history.

What the Grand had going for it was size -- ultimately they spent $550 million on the resort, far more than any other property in the market -- and location. It's not only a great location, it's a location that can never be bettered, because they're literally right on the county line, making them the closest casino to the golden goose of Memphis.

The Grand is the first thing you see when you drive out of Memphis on Highway 61, the old "Blues Highway," and it doesn't matter what time of the day or night it is -- it makes an impression. You can turn at three different places, thinking you're driving right into the heart of the casino district, and find out you haven't even PASSED the Grand yet.

Once you get up close, you encounter a riot of pastels and primary colors shouting at you from a porte cochere leading to a bridge over a canal leading to a false-front building -- the casino itself, which sits on a barge in the oxbow -- that's part Victorian, part New Orleans, and part Wild West. They've got so many themes going on that I have no idea WHAT it's supposed to be, but you know what the first priority is when you walk through that air-conditioned canal bridge and you see the "Slots Walk of Fame," full of photos of happy winners holding up their six-figure checks.

The Grand has either 2,500 or 2,800 or 3,000 slot machines, depending on which brochure you read, but by any count it's an insane number for Tunica. Maybe that's why they have so many different themed interiors -- so your eyes won't get tired as you survey the vast Sargasso Sea of whirring machines. One area is full of lassos and cacti and cowboy-boot imagery. The next section has a pink-and-black floor, huge chandeliers, gold railings, Corinthian pillars, and a circular sports bar with golden palms all around it.

Keep walking, though, and you'll get to a sort of toy-store French Quarter, complete with gas lamps, wrought iron, eerie mannequins leaning off the fake balconies, and a carpet decorated with masks, beads and wine cups.

There are seven restaurants on the property -- I tried the buffet, which was lavish and tasty, and LB's Steakhouse, which was okay but not really Memphis level -- and, best of all, cigar-friendly. You can smoke anywhere except on the second floor, which is reserved for smoke-haters, separating the two species as God intended.

The Grand is pretty aggressive about bringing in high rollers. They have a $10,000 maximum bet, but they'll be flexible about that, and they fly people in from as far away as the Carolinas. Their VIP room is swank, with a 24-hour buffet, and every year they host the Walter Payton Celebrity Classic, with sports celebs like Bob Lilly, Moses Malone, and my ole buddy Fred "The Hammer" Williamson showing up to tee it up on the Scottish Links-style course dotted with magnolias, dogwoods, and lots of water hazards.

The published rates at the Grand are $59 weekdays and $89 weekends, but you can beat that on the Internet. Park Place owns two other much smaller properties in the market -- the Sheraton and Bally's -- so if you wanted to, you could bunk over there and use the courtesy bus. (Bally's is just $19, and the Sheraton is way underpriced even though it has all suites with Jacuzzis in every room.)

Whatever you do, though, be sure to put some mojo on the pass line. A craps game in Mississippi is one of those Americana things you have to see to believe. If you bet the Don't Pass line and screw everything up, I'll kill you. With a "Duck Flush" shotgun.

GRAND CASINO

13615 Old Highway 61 North, Tunica, Miss.

Theme: Victorian Wild West Mardi Gras

Opened: 1996

Total investment: $550 million

Known for: Only casino in America with a professional shotgun range, featuring clay, skeet, trap, and the always-popular "Duck Flush."

Marketing niche: Young Memphis weekenders, tour groups from all over the Midwest, a few high rollers.

Gambler's Intensity: High

Cocktail speed: Rapido

Dealers: Concentrated and businesslike

Bosses: Courteous

Tables: 92

Rare games: None. (Tunica is the only major gambling market with no baccarat.)

Slots: 2,545

Rooms: 1,363 in three hotels

Surrounding area: The casino sits on a 2,200-acre landscaped spread isolated at the extreme northern end of the county, with shuttle buses departing every eight minutes and circulating among the various hotels and the casino.

Web site: grandtunica.com

Overall rating: 90

Joe Bob's bankroll: Up $120 after four hours of craps: total to date +$245.

(E-mail Joe Bob Briggs, "The Vegas Guy," at [email protected] or visit Joe Bob's Web site at joebobbriggs.com. Snail-mail: P.O. Box 2002, Dallas, Texas 75221.)