Harrah

S EAN "DIDDY" Combs never made it inside a July Fourth party at The Pool at Harrah's in Atlantic City because Harrah's ended the event early due a "larger than anticipated" turnout, the hotel said. The popularity of the Pool After Dark "well-surpassed our expectations," according to a statement from Jay Snowden , senior veep and GM of Harrah's. Snowden said the turnout also caused cancellation of the nightlife activities planned for yesterday. About 3 a.m. yesterday, Diddy told Twitter followers that "The party was so crazy I couldn't even get in!

The bus-and-buffet crowd is still welcome in this 12-casino town, but a back-to-back ribbon cutting for a luxury hotel tower and groundbreaking for an upscale shopping center yesterday may signal that the Queen of Resorts is looking elsewhere for her attentions. Officials snipped a blue ribbon to open Harrah's 25-story Atlantic City Bayview Tower, a $200 million edifice touted as the first Las Vegas-style casino-hotel experience to hit Atlantic City. Its 452 sumptuous rooms and suites are geared to Harrah's slot-machine high rollers.

The 75th annual Maxwell Football Club awards ceremony is scheduled for Friday at 7 p.m. at Harrah's resort in Atlantic City, and 12 awards will be presented. Here is the list: Maxwell Award for college player of the year: Andrew Luck, Stanford Bert Bell Award for professional player of the year: Aaron Rodgers, Green Bay Packers Jim Henry Award for area high school player of the year: Brendan Nosovitch, Allentown Central Catholic Earle "Greasy" Neale Award for professional coach of the year: Mike McCarthy, Green Bay Packers College coach of the year: Brady Hoke, Michigan Francis "Reds" Bagnell Award for contributions to the game of football: Archie Manning, National Football Foundation Chuck Bednarik Award for college defensive player of the year: Tyrann Mathieu, LSU Tri-State coach of the year: Jim Clements, Delaware Valley Brian Westbrook tri-state player of the year: Mohamed Sanu, Rutgers Harrah's broadcast award: Mike Tirico, ESPN Monday Night Football National high school player of the year: Noah Spence, Bishop McDevitt Harrisburg The Brookshier Spirit Award for leadership, dedication and inspiration: Eddie Delaney, Albany

The New Jersey Casino Control Commission unanimously approved Harrah's Entertainment Inc.'s $9.4 billion acquisition of Caesars Entertainment Inc. yesterday. Also, the five-member commission that regulates Atlantic City casinos did not impose any restrictions on future expansion by Harrah's on the four casinos it will control once the purchase of Caesars is completed next month. An expert who testified at a public hearing Monday in Atlantic City had recommended that the commission impose "boundary conditions" to prevent Harrah's from expanding on land around Caesars, Bally's and the Showboat Casino Hotel.

Peggy Selvaggio's mother died, and Donald Burris saw opportunity. The woman who never liked him was gone, and he was going to marry her daughter. That's what Burris, a prominent South Jersey contractor, told David Selvaggio at his mother's funeral less than a month ago in North Miami, Fla. In the subsequent weeks, David Selvaggio recalled Friday, his sister rebuffed Burris' proposal, moved out of the house she and Burris shared in Voorhees, and received at least one telephone threat from Burris.

"May I say to you that we have quite a good chance to survive. " "Our own view is that the labor-market recovery will be a grudging one, that consumers will enjoy only modest gains in wages and salaries for some time, and that consumer-spending growth will therefore prove disappointing. " - economist Joshua Shapiro "You won't lose votes bashing banks or big oil. There are real concerns about the impact of the spill on the economy and environment in the gulf, but politicians haven't worked out that BP is probably capable of making a 100 percent effort on the spill and also maintaining the dividend.

There is an aphorism in the antiques trade that "it's worth what it brings at a good auction. " It is generally applied to those items on which it is hard to put a price - such items as a hand-drawn fire engine, a stagecoach and a life-size, zither-playing mechanical woman. An auction at Butterfield & Butterfield in San Francisco proved that a steam-powered, hand-drawn fire engine was worth more than a Rolls-Royce, that a fully loaded Jaguar cost less than a classic stagecoach and that one could hire a good five-piece band to play five hours a month for a year for the price of a mechanical zither-player.

Not every case of missing money ends in an arrest. One has led to an unlikely friendship between two Cherry Hill women. Edna "Dani" Annise, 83, went to Harrah's on March 9 with friends. Since the jacket of her hot new jean outfit had pockets, she decided to forgo her purse and carry $800 in a silk eyeglass case in one, she said. But as Annise was winding down her visit to Harrah's, she realized that she had lost her eyeglass case, and the money within. She retraced her steps and after having no luck, she went up to a guy and girl who were restocking a money machine and asked who she could talk with about losing money.

SEAN "DIDDY" COMBS played some blackjack at the Pool After Dark at Harrah's, where he co-hosted a party Saturday night with "Mob Wives" star Drita D'Avanzo . The last time the music mogul was scheduled to appear at the Harrah's hotspot, a near-riot broke out because of an unruly, overpacked crowd. On Friday night Dustin Diamond , known to a generation as Screech from "Saved by the Bell," celebrated his 35th birthday with a party at the Pool. OUT AND ABOUT Phillies shortstop Jimmy Rollins and wife Johari stopped into Ruth's Chris Steak House (260 S. Broad)

When night comes to the Inlet, darkness is laced by cones of light from street lamps and the soft crimson glow of the gigantic casino letters - H-A-R-R-A-H'S. The distant red lights loom high above a beachside neighborhood of rowhouses and gray land littered with empty Black Label beer bottles and the dust of broken dreams and brick houses that crumbled and vanished one by one into an urban desert. By night, the lights are a steady reminder of the northeast Inlet's new future, which depends on Harrah's pledge to spark a fairy-godmother transformation in an urban war zone where no bomb ever burst but the damage and decay have been just as profound.

Put On A Show brings a four-race win streak to Sunday afternoon's $100,000 Betsy Ross Invitational for pacing mares at Harrah's Philadelphia. In her only previous appearance at the track, Put On A Show won the 2010 Valley Forge in a stakes-record 1:50.1. She was named the sport's best 3-year-old pacing filly that season. "She's doing well," trainer Chris Ryder said about Put On A Show, who has won four of seven races this year after missing all of 2011 because of knee surgery.

In an effort to expand its reach as regional casino competition intensifies, Harrah's Chester Casino and Racetrack becomes Harrah's Philadelphia Saturday. The name change, part of a rebranding that includes nongambling offerings, has everything to do with the casino's reaching a broader audience, and nothing to do with distancing it from its host city, said Harrah's general manager Ron Baumann. "It's all about how you define the market. Philly is the market we are after," he said during a tour of the casino this week.

WHAT'S IN a name? Plenty, if you're a casino looking to expand your business. On Friday, what has been Harrah's Chester Casino and Racetrack since its 2006 opening will officially be rebranded Harrah's Philadelphia. (Its website already was calling it that on Tuesday.) "The [new name] is to complement the changes and evolution we're bringing to the property," said Ron Baumann, the gambling den's senior vice president and general manager, in reference to in-the-works upgrades of amenities including dining and entertainment.

Caesars Entertainment Inc. announced Wednesday that its Harrah's Chester Casino and Racetrack property in Delaware County will be renamed Harrah's Philadelphia, effective May 12. The new name coincides with the unveiling of the casino's most recent expansion that includes several new restaurants and 200 new slot machines to bring its total inventory to about 3,000 slots. Last month, the casino reported the largest decrease in slots revenue — minus 7.6 percent — among Pennsylvania's 11 gambling halls.

In some ways, you could almost say that harness racing driver Tim Tetrick owns the racetrack at Harrah's Chester. A resident of nearby Runnemede, N.J., the 30-year-old Tetrick is the all-time leading driver in wins and purses at the track since it opened in September 2006. Tetrick's 1,537 victories are 425 more than second-place George Napolitano Jr., and his $25.28 million tops runner-up Napolitano by $10.21 million. Racing returns Friday to Chester, with a special 6:30 p.m. post time.

The 75th annual Maxwell Football Club awards ceremony is scheduled for Friday at 7 p.m. at Harrah's resort in Atlantic City, and 12 awards will be presented. Here is the list: Maxwell Award for college player of the year: Andrew Luck, Stanford Bert Bell Award for professional player of the year: Aaron Rodgers, Green Bay Packers Jim Henry Award for area high school player of the year: Brendan Nosovitch, Allentown Central Catholic Earle "Greasy" Neale Award for professional coach of the year: Mike McCarthy, Green Bay Packers College coach of the year: Brady Hoke, Michigan Francis "Reds" Bagnell Award for contributions to the game of football: Archie Manning, National Football Foundation Chuck Bednarik Award for college defensive player of the year: Tyrann Mathieu, LSU Tri-State coach of the year: Jim Clements, Delaware Valley Brian Westbrook tri-state player of the year: Mohamed Sanu, Rutgers Harrah's broadcast award: Mike Tirico, ESPN Monday Night Football National high school player of the year: Noah Spence, Bishop McDevitt Harrisburg The Brookshier Spirit Award for leadership, dedication and inspiration: Eddie Delaney, Albany

There's plenty of money down in Chester. Sure, the schools are broke, the factories are shut, and family income is half Pennsylvania's average. But the outside investors who control Caesars Entertainment Corp. were able to pocket $92.5 million in gambling income from their neon-lit Harrah's Chester Casino on Feb. 3, five days before they began selling shares in their company on the Nasdaq stock market. They needed the commonwealth's blessing to take home those millions.

WILMINGTON - Gov. Jack Markell's focus on expanding gambling in Delaware with new casinos has shifted to protecting the existing casinos. A year ago, Markell and a handful of legislators were still placing bets that building new casinos would create jobs in Delaware. Now, they are growing worried about existing jobs at the three racetrack casinos, which are struggling to attract out-of-state gamblers who can now play slot machines closer to home. Markell, who is up for reelection this year, has dropped his push to add casinos in New Castle and Sussex Counties.

SEAN "DIDDY" COMBS played some blackjack at the Pool After Dark at Harrah's, where he co-hosted a party Saturday night with "Mob Wives" star Drita D'Avanzo . The last time the music mogul was scheduled to appear at the Harrah's hotspot, a near-riot broke out because of an unruly, overpacked crowd. On Friday night Dustin Diamond , known to a generation as Screech from "Saved by the Bell," celebrated his 35th birthday with a party at the Pool. OUT AND ABOUT Phillies shortstop Jimmy Rollins and wife Johari stopped into Ruth's Chris Steak House (260 S. Broad)

IT'S ONLY BEEN a few weeks since Germany's Pius Heinz won the Main Event at the 2011 World Series of Poker in Las Vegas, but Harrah's Resort Atlantic City is already looking ahead to the 2012 tourney. Tomorrow, the bayside gambling den kicks off its annual WSOP Circuit event, which offers pros and novices alike a chance to play their way into a seat at the world's richest, most prestigious poker contest. A dozen "Ring Events" are scheduled, including Omaha High/Low 8 or better, and No Limit Hold'em matches.