The Last Wager
AT THE HEIGHT of his addiction, when Stephen Hays desperately needed a dopamine hit, he’d open up his laptop and start a new Excel spreadsheet.
The Dallas-based venture capitalist would spend days meticulously planning a Las Vegas binge weekend in color-coded 24-hour blocks and 30-minute increments. It was a business plan of debauchery, unspooling at speed …
Noon: Land at McCarran. 1 p.m.: VIP suite at the Wynn. 1:10: Craps (three and a half hours, $500 a roll; up $15,000—hot!). 4:45: 90 minutes at the Cosmo (Jane: blond, implants, girl-next-doorsy). 6:15: Shower. 6:30: Craps at the Cosmo (75 bets an hour: roll, roll, Red Bull and vodka, roll; drop $22,000). 10:30: Wynn steakhouse bar (filet, bloody; potatoes, gratinéed). 11:30: Upstairs for dessert (three lines of coke). Midnight: Eight-top with bottle service at the XS Lounge (tab: $4,000). 4 a.m.: Craps at the Aria (bump up bets to a thousand a pop; claw back five grand). Sunup: Wynn, room service (eggs Benedict pizza … cheesecake topped with mixed-berry compote). 10 a.m.: Sleep. 3:30 p.m.: Pool. 4:30: Back to room (Lisa: brunette, older, has friends with drugs). 6:30: Shower. 6:45: Craps (drop 20 grand—crap out … ).
When you’re the kind of person who goes to Las Vegas 30 times a year—who needs to go to Vegas 30 times a year—you leave no detail unplanned. Trips to meet up with California startup founders provided an easy, and geographically convenient, cover; he could tack a binge weekend onto the tail end of a business trip. By the time the Vegas jaunts took over his life in 2018, he’d begun going twice a week.
Hays was a good enough client that the four or five casinos he frequented comped everything but the gambling. Over time, he learned that a four-hour gambling shift with an average bet of $500 resulted in free hotel rooms, drinks, food, golf rounds. Make it $1,000 per bet and sometimes they’d throw in airfare and a penthouse suite. Markers, or revolving lines of credit from the hotels, let him wager more than $150,000 in a weekend, up to $500,000 when he was winning. When he was running cold, which happened more and more often, he could easily lose $50,000
