Sat, 07 Mar 2026 06:40:38 -0800WeeblyThu, 06 Nov 2025 00:51:17 GMThttps://www.keywestresortcasino.com/from-the-casino-owner/updates-to-our-site-for-november-2025This month, we've updated our website a bit to include a new section called the Gift Shop. 

Here, you can find a curated collection of luxury items available through our affiliation with Amazon. We've used each of these items and recommend them for you here. You can buy with confidence from Amazon and even receive free shipping if you have an Amazon Prime account. We earn from your qualified purchase. 

We've been looking for a way to widen the selection of great items available on our site. We'll continue to add items and features to make your visit more enjoyable.

Thank you for stopping, and enjoy your stay!
]]>Wed, 10 Aug 2016 03:19:11 GMThttps://www.keywestresortcasino.com/from-the-casino-owner/key-west-site-updated-for-summer-2016This evening, I made the latest changes to the Key West home page. Only a few minor tweaks remain, and our website will be updated for the Summer of 2016.

The design concept had several goals. I wanted to create a cleaner, more updated home page banner that showed our Key West casino chips as our anchor product. The rest of the page strives to keep offering our great products on a site that has a cleaner, brighter look with less heavy reading on the home page. Instead, we've posted a bit about our product categories, and offer the "read more" and "shop and buy" buttons to our potential customers looking for table game supplies.

Next, we've added some fun graphic elements. We replaced a black information screen with a retro postcard from the early 1960s, and even included a 4-cent stamp on the card, the postcard mailing rate from 1961. We use the card as the background "screen" to display information about the casino and its chips. Soon, we'll post comments from site visitors on the cards, as if they are postcards sent home by visitors to a real Key West Resort & Casino.

We also created a new, enlarged graphic entrance to the Key West's free online casino game section. The "casino doors" are digital, of course, and open to reveal a beautiful casino floor inside. Click on the images, and you jump to the casino games page, where  you can play free slots, blackjack or roulette, without entering any personal information.

We've also brought back an old feature -- news and announcements -- to keep customers updated on new developments, and to reassure visitors that we remain the same family-owned company we've been since opening in 2012.

This work will continue for some time, as new ideas come up to improve the look, feel and overall experience of the site. I hope you like it, and enjoy visiting regularly to read, buy, or just spend time playing and enjoying this online casino.


]]>Fri, 09 May 2014 01:54:39 GMThttps://www.keywestresortcasino.com/from-the-casino-owner/our-roulette-table-launch-marks-a-milestone-for-the-key-westThis evening, we reached a milestone at the Key West.

At 9 p.m., our Key West custom virtual roulette table went "live" on the Key West site, joining our other custom games -- a Key West slot machine and a virtual blackjack table that just might be the nicest blackjack game available on the web. All of our virtual casino games are original, and use virtual versions of our real Key West casino chips and playing cards.

These three games were the casino staples I originally envisioned for the site, and now they're all here, and all have moved from idea to working online game in about seven months.

Creating each game has been both a thrill and a challenge. In each case, the game has begun with a pair of e-mails to two very talented people -- Jerry Drescher of Jetacer Interactive and John Faulhaber of J5 Design.

Jerry specializes in creating amazing computer games from scratch, and his talent and enthusiasm for his craft are unmatched. Likewise, John was the artist who created the original artwork for the Key West, and brought his talent and creativity to the other Key West projects like playing cards, dealer buttons and, now, virtual casino games. 

To create each game, I've reached out to these men, who've worked both independently and collaboratively. Whenever we ran up against a problem, their talents and abilities have solved it or simply worked around it. 

For our blackjack game, we were assisted by Heather Ferris of Vegas-Aces.com, a real-life Las Vegas dealer who answered our game rules questions for those unusual circumstances that sometimes come up at the blackjack table. Because of her help, our blackjack table deals and responds to every situation exactly like a real casino dealer would.

On a particular evening in December, as we worked on the blackjack game together, I was privileged to be in my office in Delaware and have open communications online with John, Jerry and Heather, discussing the art, chip images, layout, and blackjack rules. I watched as the game came together before my eyes from the work of a a computer programmer in Wisconsin, an artist in Canada, and a casino dealer in Las Vegas.  The results speak for themselves.

We've placed our casino games online for free for your entertainment, and because I believe it's important to have these games at our "casino." After all, what would a "fantasy casino" be without some fantasy slots, blackjack and roulette?

I hope you enjoy the games, and appreciate the great, talented people who created them. I surely do.






]]>Sun, 29 Sep 2013 07:36:28 GMThttps://www.keywestresortcasino.com/from-the-casino-owner/our-vision-for-the-key-westOur business and this site are relatively new. As I write this, there are fewer than a dozen registered members of the Forum section of our site. I'd like to offer you a picture of where I'd like the site and forum to go -- someday.

You already know we sell real clay casino chips made by an old American company called American Standard Molding -- the original chip maker of Las Vegas. And we have lots of other casino stuff here, too. I hope someday (soon) we'll be offering a lower-cost cousin of our beautiful Key West Resort & Casino chips, alongside our original clay Key West chips.

I'd like to see the content on both the website and forum build over time to be very useful to everyone who visits -- whether you buy Key West items or not. We'll have new items or packages coming out every month, and I'd like to see our prizes increase in frequency and value.

I hope we can enlist the help of a good programmer to create a virtual blackjack and roulette tables and a row of slot machines using the Key West logos and playing card images, so you can visit the Key West online and play some very realistic casino games with our own playing cards and chips at virtual tables that bear our great Key West logo. I'd like those visits remain free, and to be the closest thing possible to walking in to a real "Key West Resort & Casino," all for fun with no risk.

When you travel to Key West or Las Vegas, I hope -- someday -- that those destinations will offer special deals and discounts to you because you are a member here.

I hope we see at least 300 registered members of the forum in 2014, and that we can host regular weekly chats, show our drawings on video on the site, and plan some real gatherings in Las Vegas, Atlantic City or even Key West. I'd love to someday visit this site and take part in a live poker game, among members from all over the world.

All of this is really not very far off. But we're just starting. If you can help us make this a reality, please let me know. I'm glad you're reading this, and hope you decide to become part of it today.]]>Sun, 14 Apr 2013 17:37:04 GMThttps://www.keywestresortcasino.com/from-the-casino-owner/welcome-to-vegas-acescomOn April 6, 2013, The Key West posted a new page of videos on how to play and how to deal Blackjack. These amazing videos are from Heather at Vegas-Aces.com. Heather deals table games in Las Vegas, and provides all the videos and information on her site for free.

The videos are amazing. They're filled with great information, whether you are a beginner or a seasoned veteran player. The "How to Play Blackjack" video is a fast-moving tutorial on the basic rules and what is expected of you if you play Blackjack at a casino table. The "How to Deal Blackjack" video is comprehensive and professional, and is worth the 1 hour 17 minutes. It covers everything from proper procedures to how to get a job in the casino industry.

I recommend that you watch these videos, and that you join and support vegas-aces.com with a donation. They're a friend of the Key West Resort & Casino.

To visit Vegas-Aces.com, click the link: http://www.vegas-aces.com/




]]>Sat, 23 Mar 2013 03:23:58 GMThttps://www.keywestresortcasino.com/from-the-casino-owner/springtime-changes-at-the-key-westThis week, we're welcoming new visitors from homepokertourney.com, a great, information-rich site about playing Texas Hold 'em and hosting a poker event at home. Homepokertourney.

We've added some pages and new features to our site, and given our home page a new look. Please feel free to explore using the navigation bar at the top of each page.

I'd like to invite our visitors to post a comment or suggestion in our guestbook. You'll need to enter your name and e-mail address, but it isn't published. We'll use any screen name you use to sign your comment in the comment box. This will be a very rudimentary forum-style page, where visitors are essentially e-mailing their comments to us using the comment form, and we'll post the comments on the page. If there is enough interest, we'll seek to upgrade our active forum pages.

Our upcoming projects include new Key West roulette chips. We've asked ASM to allow us to use their special "roulette" mold to create new brightly colored solid roulette chips with a new Key West logo drawn by J5 Design.

We're adding some rules pages under the navigation title, "Play cards!" (We'll also have roulette rules.) We were fortunate to receive permission directly from Robert Ciaffone to reprint "Robert's Rules of Poker," and will begin selling Bob's books on our site next week. 

I'd love to hear from visitors interested in writing a monthly article on our site about casino chips, playing cards, the casino gaming industry, home poker, and other topics.

It's my sincere hope that you'll join me to build a great new site here.

As always, good luck in all things.

Dennis

]]>Thu, 01 Nov 2012 06:42:40 GMThttps://www.keywestresortcasino.com/from-the-casino-owner/our-november-vip-club-contestIt's November 1, and time for our first VIP Club contest. If you're a club member, you can enter the contest by sending your response to our contest question to me at dennis@keywestresortcasino.com.

My favorite movie is Casablanca, the classic tale of lost love, intrigue and loyalty at Rick's Cafe during World War II. Our contest question comes from the film. And if you haven't seen it, it's worth buying or renting.

In Casablanca, Humphrey Bogart's character, Rick Blaine, decides to "help out" a down-on-his-luck patron at Rick's roulette table, suggesting he play a specific number ... twice. What number (and color) does Rick tell the man to play?

The contest winner will be drawn at random on December 1, 2012, from among all correct answers e-mailed to dennis@keywestresortcasino.com. Your winnings will be the number that is the correct answer to the question, in U.S. dollars, on account at the Key West Resort & Casino.


]]>Mon, 29 Oct 2012 02:46:05 GMThttps://www.keywestresortcasino.com/from-the-casino-owner/the-key-west-dream-realizedMy name is Dennis Sandusky. About a year ago, I became the owner of a "fantasy" casino.

You're here now, at the Key West Resort & Casino. As your host, I should explain how this all happened. Like all good stories, it has romance, risk, some luck, and a happy ending.

Eight years ago, my wife and I spent our honeymoon in Key West, and fell in love with the beautiful island town. A few years later, it was a nod to romance that led me to buy a small set of nice casino chips called "Key West Resort & Casino." They're the real thing -- clay casino chips made by the old American company ASM, maker of casino chips since the early days of Las Vegas. They look and feel like table chips from the 1950s or 60s, with a great "retro" look to them, and my wife liked them, too.

In the high-end world of casino chip collecting, the Key West chips are classified as "fantasy," because the casino never existed anywhere. Key West was a name, made up to make chips that looked real. The chips are popular, and well-known among collectors worldwide.

Soon, I wanted to add some chips to my home game table, and called the retailer, Apache Poker chips in Las Vegas. I learned the chips would be discontinued. I asked about making a special order with the manufacturer. After some negotiation, Apache agreed to sell me the line of chips and the artwork used to make them, and ASM agreed to make the chips for me, as the new "casino" owner.

Suddenly, I was the "owner" of the Key West Resort & Casino. And since owning a casino has always been on my list of dream jobs, I decided to have some fun with it and see what we could accomplish.

I worked with John Faulhaber, the artist who designed the inlay of the original Key West chips, and with Jim Blanchard of ASM, a legend in the casino business. We added denominations to the set and sold thousands of the chips to collectors worldwide. (They'd have a face value of $5 million, if they were only real.)

Dealer buttons and, of course, playing cards came next, with one simple requirement -- whatever we're making, it has to look and feel like it came from a real casino. 

As more people became involved, it was clear that this hobby was becoming a business. Just a few weeks ago, I formed the Continental Card & Game Company in Delaware to sell our Key West items.

So why not just call the business, "The Key West Resort & Casino?"

People in government offices have quite a reaction if you try to open a business with "casino" in the name, and it soon became clear we should name the company something else, and operate the "casino" as a part of the business. And in case you're wondering, no -- we don't operate any real gaming operations, on the web or anywhere else.

The company's mission is simple: connect with casino industry manufacturers to make  high-quality gaming supplies that look and feel like they came from a real Key West Resort & Casino, and promote the casino as if it really existed. This website is the place you can come to buy those items, much as you could buy chips at a casino and walk out with them. (And we don't charge face value for most of our chips.)

You can find our chips, cards and dealer buttons at the "Cashier's Cage --" our casino store -- and we have a VIP Club page, where members can buy products not available to the public, see specials, earn discounts and see what's coming to our "casino floor" in the months to come.

I'd like to use this blog to discuss the site, what's available, what's next, and what you would like to see here, as well as the casino chip and playing card industries, casino gaming and other things. And just  like a real resort or casino, I sincerely hope you enjoy your visit, and plan to return again soon.

Dennis

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