Rising Samurai

About Rising Samurai

With the latest construction now around the halfway mark, the southwest Las Vegas property is preparing for another significant increase in gaming, dining, and entertainment space when the project is completed next year.

In the meantime, Durango Casino & Resort continues to reward players with huge jackpots from popular games like Panda Magic, one of the Dragon Link slot machines available at the High Limit slot room.

One such event occurred in April 2026 when a particularly lucky guest claimed the Grand Jackpot prize of $1,159,768.43 after placing an initial wager of $25 at the off-Strip casino resort.

About Rising Samurai

Looking back on my 11+ years with CalvinAyre.com, I’ve made life-long friendships, attended countless industry events, interviewed hundreds of leaders, made thousands of contacts, built deep relationships with organizers, even had the honor of delivering a DAF award or two back in the day (who remembers???!!) but best of all, had the pleasure of working with some of the most incredible colleagues along the way, many of which who I classify now as dear friends.

When I joined CalvinAyre.com in August of 2009, there was an enormous gap in the industry for an honest, transparent news site with regular, fresh video content. Over time, we grew from a tiny team of a handful of people to dozens, providing the industry with the juiciest breaking news and cutting-edge video coverage. 

Today we pass on the torch to our event organizing and media production friends who have more recently developed outstanding news coverage and video teams dedicated to the gaming space, hopefully who I’ll be seeing at CoinGeek Conferences in the future.

How to play Rising Samurai

Frank Fantini, founder and publisher emeritus of Eilers-Fantini, thinks the change began before Covid. “There is a tendency to look at the world as pre-Covid and post-Covid,” he says. “But the decline in gaming began earlier than that with the slowdown in new jurisdictions and new projects.”

The US land-based casino market had begun to mature and the number of obvious new markets and projects was shrinking. Online gambling offered a new source of growth, particularly through the expansion of legal sports betting. That opportunity was quickly reflected in share prices.

The problem is that legalisation has not happened as quickly as expected, while taxes and competition have increased. “Online gaming has been affected by the broader re-rating of growth-oriented internet and software stocks,” says Chad Beynon, managing director and head of US research at Macquarie Capital. “But there has also been a genuine deterioration in expectations for parts of the sector.”