Page 75 - 2015 Travel Guide to California

HARVEYS LAKE TAHOE, below.
features a lazy river and weekend parties
with live deejays.
Closer to Los Angeles, the name of the
game is card rooms. Two facilities are
worth visiting for their grandeur alone:
The Commerce Casino (Commerce) and
the Bicycle Club (Bell Gardens). Both
venues have expansive poker rooms and
host some of the most popular tourna-
ments in the area.
The Desert
Package deals abound for stay-and-play
vacations at casino resorts in and around
the Coachella Valley and Palm Springs. At
Morongo Casino Resort & Spa in Cabazon,
for instance, $179 per night gets guests a
room plus a $25 food credit and a 50-
minute massage. Similar deals are available
at the Agua Caliente Casino Resort Spa
(Rancho Mirage). Most area casinos have
their own golf courses, but locals rave about
Eagle Falls, the course at Fantasy Springs
Resort Casino in Indio. The 18-hole course
was designed by architect Clive Clark.
Lake Tahoe
Okay, okay, so the casinos that ring Lake
Tahoe are on the Nevada side of the state
line. Still, they’re close enough to most
other destinations in California that they
deserve a mention here.
Excluding those in Reno, the most
accessible venues are located in South Lake
Tahoe. Here, the Montbleu (formerly a Cae-
sars property) is by far the swankiest, with
ultra-modern lounges and a steakhouse
that makes Ruth’s Chris seem like
McDonald’s. The new Hard Rock Hotel &
Casino Lake Tahoe, with 500 hotel rooms
and a 25,000-square-foot casino, opened
in January in the old Horizon Casino
Resort space located down the street.
Of course the best thing about casinos
around Lake Tahoe is that because they’re
in Nevada, they play by Nevada rules (see
sidebar). Since sports books and dice
games are illegal in the state of California,
this means Tahoe is the place to place
those kinds of bets.
Big spenders, consider yourselves
warned. And good luck.
» KNOW
THE RULES
Just because California has casinos
doesn’t mean games there play the
same way they’d play in Las Vegas or
Atlantic City. Perhaps the biggest dif-
ferences: craps and roulette. State
gaming laws expressly prohibit
the outcome of a game to be deter-
mined by dice or a ball. While the
games incorporate traditional ele-
ments of dice and a ball, the games
themselves hinge on overturning dif-
ferent types of cards.
For novices (or those just looking
for a good time), these differences
are minimal. For hard-core craps and
roulette players, however, they make
the games so foreign that adjusting
becomes tough. Ask the croupier to
review the rules before buying-in. If
a game seems confusing, don’t
bother; there are dozens of other
options throughout the casino.
2015 T R AV E L G U I D E TO C A L I F O R N I A 73