Nov. 20--The economy is creating as much of a buzz as the newest technology at the annual G2E conference in Las Vegas this week.

The four-day conference that ends today is billed as the world's largest casino trade show and conference. It has 500 exhibitors and 250 speakers and is expected to draw 30,000 attendees, including casino executives from the Coast.

"I'm very surprised," said Alan Silver, director of the casino resort studies at Tulane University's Gulf Coast campus. "The show's got a lot of people. I thought the attendance would be down."

He arrived in Las Vegas on Sunday and said the city was the quietest he's ever seen it, until people began to arrive for the conference Sunday night. He's seen several Coast executives from the IP, Palace and other casinos at the show.

The state of the industry presentation Wednesday focused on the economy and what the change of administration in Washington will mean to tribal casinos.

Silver said Gary Loveman, chairman of Harrah's Entertainment, which owns the Grand Casino Biloxi, said for years the casino industry has spent like "drunken sailors" building massive resorts. Silver said Loveman told the crowd he doesn't think it will ever again be that easy for casinos to borrow such large sums of money.

Ernie Stevens Jr., chairman of the National Indian Gaming Association, talked about changes with the Obama administration. Stevens said he is hoping for a "government to government" relationship with the new secretary of interior.Under the Bush administration, the Choctaws were prohibited from developing an off-reservation casino in Jackson County but that could change under the new administration.

A big focus of G2E is technology and Silver said one of the hottest things at the show is a video roulette table.

"It's controlled by fingerprints," he said and doesn't require chips.

"That has a lot of people standing around it," said Derek Schoen, a public relations coordinator for G2E. Other popular products at the show are dual vision slots, where a couple can play side by side with the same pool of money, 3-D slots, dealerless poker and libraries of video games that allow a casino to more easily change the slot games.

Currently, the slot machines are like separate television screens, but Silver said, "The floor of the future is going to be multi-game packages, networked to reduce the footprint," with fewer monitors.

Harris said Thomas J. Matthews, chairman of International Game Technology, said older players like the slots but younger people are interested in table games and the camaraderie and excitement of a "high five moment" when they win.

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