History

49 Years of Casino Kleinwalsertal

It has been 49 years since on a cold winter’s night a gentleman in a grey suit and handcuffs got out of a car from the gendarmerie in front of Sporthotel Riezlern and disappeared into the hotel with an escort, with the handcuffs “inseparably” bound to a black case whose contents encouraged all sorts of speculation. Its actual content: several million DM in the form of chips, the first with which guests would try their luck from then on in the reopened casino. The man with the case, Dir. Prof. Gerhard Skoff, during his time the chief of marketing at Casinos Austria, brought the Paris-made DM chips from Paris via Germany to Kleinwalsertal in a “cloak and dagger” operation. On 16 December 1972 the eighth casino in Austria was punctually opened.