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“All the physicists were much more interested in discussing their work than in anything else the hotel had to offer, and I remember the disconsolate faces of the girls hanging around at night, expecting to take drink orders, while small groups of physicists at the tables were deep in conversation, with pencils and paper,” says Judith Ashcroft, whose husband, Neil Ashcroft, in 1986 was the chair of the society’s Division of Condensed Matter Physics.

The casino’s take that weekend was so low that the group was allegedly asked never to return to the MGM Grand, or to the city of Las Vegas—or so says the legend the APS has repeated for the last 32 years. The most effective way to take the house, it seems, is to simply refuse to play its games.