“Lunar New Year is a time for rebirth and considered a lucky time for Asian gamblers,” says Rhiannon Bach, director of casino marketing at Horseshoe Hammond Casino within the Caesars Entertainment Corporation. Horseshoe hosted a special New Year’s concert featuring a half-dozen pop stars from Vietnam’s popular Paris by Night musical variety show-that culture’s answer to America’s Got Talent-which drew a crowd of 2,000. Last month, Horseshoe celebrated the year of the dragon, which is believed to be the best year for everything: weddings, births-and making money. Translation services, noodle shops, high-end restaurants with top Asian chefs, even special gaming rooms are features of local casinos such as Hammond’s Horseshoe, whose luxurious Le Cheng gaming room featuring multiple baccarat tables and pai gow tiles was installed as a part of the casino’s $500 million expansion in 2008. The shuttles whisk away Chinese-Chicagoans (and anyone else who boards) to a half-dozen massive casinos on the hour every hour, through the night every night. Any given Saturday night, you can shuffle onto a comfortable, heated bus with a dozen or so others-mostof them traveling solo, a few in pairs talking low about the night’s goals-and your driver will joke, “Anything you make tonight, I get half,” and smile as he pulls awayfrom the mud-streaked snowbanks of Archer and Wentworth Avenues.
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