Transferring money to a Vegas casino

[HalfSugar]

This may be a dumb question but is there anything to stop me from sending a few thousand $$$ to some casino in Vegas and then turning up there and asking to cash it out as bills?

Basically a few months ago when I saw that the GBP:USD exchange rate beginning to take its inevitable nose dive, I changed up a few thousand GBP into USD which are currently held in a UK bank account I have. The options for getting currency ready for the WSOP this year are:

1) Take some GBP to the post office and ask for USD - this is dumb because I'll have to take whatever exchange rate they are offering which could be like 1.25:1 or something come June (I got ~1.75:1 on the inter-account transfer back in Sept)
2) Ask my bank which holds the USD account to arrange for me to get at some of it as bills. They charge a 2% fee for so that would be at least $60
3) If it works, wire some money to a casino cage and then collect when I arrive, presumably with no fees other than the wire which is probably about $30 I'd guess.

Has anyone done option 3? Am I right to assume that you can just use the casino as a temporary (nil interest) bank account and get your money out without any hassle?

[Muck]

Interesting conundrum. I’m sure there must be some imaginative banking mechanism for avoid as much commission as possible.

I assume the only reason there’s commission on a withdraw in USD here is because that currency is foreign, if you can access the account directly somehow when you’re in the US I assume this cost shouldn’t be incurred. But I’m just guessing.

[zinn0]

I think I would call the casino direct. You might be surprised at your options.

[HalfSugar]

Interesting conundrum. I’m sure there must be some imaginative banking mechanism for avoid as much commission as possible.

I assume the only reason there’s commission on a withdraw in USD here is because that currency is foreign, if you can access the account directly somehow when you’re in the US I assume this cost shouldn’t be incurred. But I’m just guessing.

While I doubt that I can access the Barclays USD account from the States (it's not linked to my ATM card), I think you are right that if I can keep everything in the right currency, fees will be minimal.

I think I will just call whichever casino I decide to stay in direct and see what they say. I really see no reason why it should not be cool - I transferred $1,500 to the Rio last year along with my WSOP entry form and because it ended up $20 short due to the idiotic banking system not taking a fee on top of the transfer but as part of it (f*ck!), the money was sat in the Rio system waiting for me to present a $20 bill to complete my registration. Because of that, I figure they have some rudimentary 'banking' system in place at every cage. High rollers must keep accounts at these places right?

[groton]

Interesting conundrum. I’m sure there must be some imaginative banking mechanism for avoid as much commission as possible.

I assume the only reason there’s commission on a withdraw in USD here is because that currency is foreign, if you can access the account directly somehow when you’re in the US I assume this cost shouldn’t be incurred. But I’m just guessing.

While I doubt that I can access the Barclays USD account from the States (it's not linked to my ATM card), I think you are right that if I can keep everything in the right currency, fees will be minimal.

I think I will just call whichever casino I decide to stay in direct and see what they say. I really see no reason why it should not be cool - I transferred $1,500 to the Rio last year along with my WSOP entry form and because it ended up $20 short due to the idiotic banking system not taking a fee on top of the transfer but as part of it (f*ck!), the money was sat in the Rio system waiting for me to present a $20 bill to complete my registration. Because of that, I figure they have some rudimentary 'banking' system in place at every cage. High rollers must keep accounts at these places right?

yeah High Rollers take out Markers all the time.
it should be pretty simple.
by the way when you flying into the states?

[HalfSugar]

I'm doing 17-24 June, possibly staying at Caesar's but I haven't decided yet.

[raisebot]

I guess this could be related somewhat (since I have no experience other than casino safe deposit boxes), but when I worked the WSOP last year, I saw Lindgren walk up to the cage in the Amazon Room at about 9am and they were handing him wad of cash after wad of cash. They must have gave him 90k+ when all was said and done, which he stuffed into just about every pocket in his cargo pants. My guess was he wired money into the casino. Any big Strip Casino should let you wire money to them to be picked up later relatively easily (since they want you to gamble it up with that money). But from out of country, no idea.

[Muck]

I saw Lindgren walk up to the cage in the Amazon Room at about 9am and they were handing him wad of cash after wad of cash. They must have gave him 90k+ when all was said and done, which he stuffed into just about every pocket in his cargo pants. My guess was he wired money into the casino.

...or was committing a robbery, which would also have been cool.