Willy Allison's "20 Reasons" Why You (casino executives) Must Attend His 2010 World Game Protection Conference...My 1 BIG Reason Why You Must NOT!

If you're a casino executive or staffer or you subscribe to Willy Allison's Catwalk online magazine or you happen to be on Allison's associate Bill Zender's e-mailing list, you probably cannot help notice the dual bombardments to your Inbox by both Allison and Zender almost commanding your presence at this year's 2010 World Game Protection Conference. Some of you might find this a little much if not annoying.

It's no secret that attendance is going down at Allison's World Game Protection Conference, and so he and Bill Zender, who depends on Allison's audience to become his audience in turn at  his "Game Protection Seminars" and workshops as well as clients for his casino consulting business, have come up with this advertising blitz to save the ship. It appears to me that lots of you past WGPC-Attendees are starting to realize that the event is much more dazzling smoke and mirrors than real game protection nuts and bolts. The truth is it has very little value protectitng your casinos.

Allison's and Zender's frantic advertising campaign gives you 20 reasons why you must come to the conference, each reason tied to one of the so-called game protection experts or gadgets. And their strategy is to give you one reason at a time in order to prolongate the constant reminders until it's stuck in your head that you really have to go to the World Game Protection Conference.

Come on, Willy and Bill, give us a break!

Willy, your only reason that people must come should be reason number-1, which is to pad your pockets with the several hundred grand you've been making each year off this. And Bill, you get a good piece of residual action when attendees end up calling you to repeat your presentations at their casinos. Now, I am not saying that Bill Zender is not a capable instructor in his field of expertise, but I am saying that the one BIG reason for not paying that thousand bucks a head to attend is simply that there is very little REAL Game-protection expertise at that conference. Since I keynoted the 2007 edition, Allison has paraded a bunch of big-name-little-game-protection-value keynote speakers to draw his crowds, starting with Dr. Edward O. Thorp, a revered but dated founder and author of card-counting systems, and continuing with Israeli anti-terrorism experts and computer hackers who are not going to teach you a thing that saves your casino a dime.

Let's take a look at this year's program. Of course there's the usual group of repeat speakers belonging to the Allison gang. There's Zender, who hasn't missed a year speaking since the conference's inception in 2006. Then there's "Hitman" Sal Piacente, whose card tricks I've seen five years running but still fail to see his value or knowledge of cheating casinos. Next we have Darwin Ortiz, another magician who somehow converted to a game-protection consultant. I was a top-notch casino cheat for 25 years, and believe me, I can tell you that magic has nothing to do with it. I find it comical how a string of magicians have convinced casinos they know something about cheat scams.

I must admit that there is one saving  grace to the first-time speakers, but it's not keynote speaker Kevin Mitnick, who got some notoriety after appearing on CBS´ "60 Minutes" TV news magazine to tell the world how he hacked his way using cellphones into communication company computers and of course to hawk his book (and get free bus rides out of the LA mass transit system). Mitnick has absolutely NOTHING to do with game protection. The one person on the speaking list who does is George Joseph, who has knowledge of cheats and has legitimately consulted for casinos in this area. But, unfortunately, Joseph will only be speaking for one hour of the three-day long conference.

Bottom line: Stay home and save your money...or if you've already paid...at least don't go again next year.