The next time you’re in a casino in Sin City, try taking a deep breath! Just not too deep, or you might get a head rush from all that oxygen! At least that’s the Las Vegas urban legend: That casinos pump pure oxygen onto the casino floors just to keep players awake and gambling. And many people have believed this for years, but is it true?  Well, Vegas casinos do have sophisticated ventilation systems, and they have invested heavily in what’s called scent branding. So, they are pumping in floral and citrus aromas to keep things smelling nice, but releasing pure oxygen? That is completely untrue.

First, raising the oxygen level in your average Sin City casino by just 1% would be prohibitively expensive. And second, releasing that much oxygen would create a huge fire hazard. Not only would that send insurance rates through the roof and most certainly get their policies cancelled, but can you imagine the lawsuits if, god forbid, something went wrong? So, no, Vegas casinos are not adding oxygen to their air systems. Just a few blasts of coconut spice and lemon ginger.

But that brings us to our next Las Vegas urban legend: That these same casinos are deliberately designed without windows and clocks so that you lose all track of time and hopefully play longer. And this one has some truth to it. Time flies when you’re having fun… and throughout Las Vegas history casino floors have seemed designed to keep you having fun and to lose all track of time… whether it was intentional or not. And with no clocks and no sense of daylight, that’s easy to do.

However, some say it was the players who wanted casinos without windows or clocks. And in recent years, newer resorts in Vegas have moved in a different direction. The Cosmopolitan, the Wynn, and the new Durango have all embraced more modern designs with ceiling to floor windows allowing natural light to filter in. So, if removing clocks and windows was done on purpose in the past, that does not seem to be the case moving into the future.

Finally this week, the mystery of the missing floors in certain Vegas resorts. And this urban legend is completely true, although it has less to do with anything sinister and more to do with superstition. Many hotels around Sin City seem to be missing the 13th floor due to some guests fear of the number, but the floor isn’t hidden. It’s just been renamed the 14th floor. And ironically, this can cause other problems for some Asian guests.

In Cantonese, the word “Four” sounds like the word for death. Therefore, many players from Southeast Asia consider the number four to be unlucky. So, because of this, some resorts also skip floors 40 to 49. Caesar’s Resorts says that most of their Vegas properties do have a 13th floor. now and many MGM properties do as well. So, this Las Vegas urban legend is true, but seems to be dying out over time. There are many, many more urban legends around Sin City, and we’ll get to those on future episodes.