In the face of seemingly boundless expansion, and forecasts that California may pass Nevada in annual gaming revenue in the near future, Dan Walters of the Sacramento Bee has written a commentary on Indian gaming that raises a few interesting questions.
COMMENTARY: California, Indians and gambling
Here are three newsworthy items that, on a slow news day, would merit a post of their own. But, since there’s no crying in online discussion of gaming, I’ve combined them into one.
Item: Mississippi Gulf Coast casinos were spared the worst from Hurricane Ivan, and will reopen today:
Coast casinos to reopen today following storm
If you want to help the victims of this natural disaster, donate to the Red Cross.
Item: Virginia legislator pushing to legalize card games in private clubs. This is a follow up a a previous post about police being busted for hosting a poker tournament. House minority whip Chap Petersen wants to make card games unambiguously legal in such circumstances:
�Virginia law is dealing a lousy hand to poker players who want to gather with their friends and enjoy a game,� Petersen said. The Virginia Beach tournament, organized by a city police officer, had attracted as many as 150 participants and featured a $4,500 pot. Before it was shut down, it had been held at the FOP headquarters on Birdneck Road about once a month on Sundays since December.Petersen said that poker is not outlawed by state statute and that Virginia law allows four exemptions to its prohibition on gambling: bingo games and raffles held by charitable organizations, off-track pari-mutuel betting, gambling held in private residences and the state lottery.
Legislator wants to legalize card-game gambling at private clubs
Nothing, it seems, will stand in the way of poker’s expansion. Why aren’t the presidential candidates asked for their positions on this issue? And why not settle the election by a no limit Hold em game?
Item: Labor demonstration on Atlantic City Boardwalk. From AP:
Waving signs that read “No Contract, No Peace” and “Contract Now,” an estimated 5,000 casino-hotel workers Thursday marched along the Boardwalk and onto the beach in a boisterous show of union solidarity. There were no arrests or reports of violence, police said.
It seems a remarkable coincidence that the Local 54 contract expires just before the Miss America Pageant, when national attention is focused on Atlantic City. Whoever thought that one up is a genius. Hopefully, all this will be settled without a strike.
It looks like the mainstream media is picking up a story reported on the Internet last week about BetOnSports’ David Carruthers’s campaign to bring online gaming regulation before the public. From the LVRJ:
But unless Congress abandons efforts to prohibit Internet gambling. Carruthers said, the United States stands to lose billions of dollars in potential tax revenue to the United Kingdom and other countries that allow online wagering but regulate it.BetonSports.com is headquartered in San Jose, Costa Rica. Carruthers came to the company after working 24 years for Ladbrokes Racing in the United Kingdom.
“We want to be the standard-bearer of Internet gambling regulation in the United States because a majority of our customers come from the U.S.,” Carruthers said.
Internet gambling is projected to reach $7 billion in revenue this year after producing $5.7 billion last year on more than 1,800 offshore wagering Web sites. By 2010, the Internet gambling market is expected to produce $18.4 billion.
As part of his company’s campaign for regulation, Carruthers is conducting summit meetings in New York, Washington, Chicago and Los Angeles.
The summits include discussions among Internet gambling officials, attorneys and educators about how to develop federal regulations for online wagering.
Findings will be published in a white paper that will be released shortly after the Nov. 2 election.
This is certainly a developing story. I will be attending the Los Angeles event, so expect a full report about the meeting here, maybe in real time if I can get net access. Isn’t technology great?
This tidbit intrigued me so much I had to post it. From the San Diego Herald Tribune:
In horse racing lingo, it’s called “milkshaking.” Under cover of darkness or a blanket, a handler inserts a tube into a horse’s nostril, directs it to the stomach and feeds the animal a baking-soda solution in the hope of helping it run faster.…
“There’s a lot of talk around the track and the perception that something strange is going on,” said Sherwood Chillingsworth, the executive vice president of Oak Tree. “We thought that in order to make everybody feel like they’re playing on a level playing field, that our testing should dispel any perceived or real problem. We can do that as a track because we can allocate stalls to whomever we want. We don’t need legislation to do that in order to get it in effect as soon as possible.”
Generally, in the hours before a race, only food, water and Lasix � a diuretic � can be administered to a horse. But unless horses are tested, the only way to enforce the rule is to catch someone in the act. In April 2000, an assistant trainer in California was caught with a syringe, a plastic tube and a milky substance. That trainer was suspended for 60 days, the state’s only milkshaking case in memory in which someone was caught in the act, according to state racing board spokesman Mike Marten.
…
Some believe a pre-race milkshake can allow a horse to run faster longer. The baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) is usually combined with other substances, including sugar or other drugs. It neutralizes the buildup of lactic acid, which is produced during exercise and is believed to cause fatigue.
“Hypothetically, it makes sense,” Sams said. “The administering of any alkalizing substance like sodium bicarbonate would delay the onset of fatigue.”When a milkshake is given to a horse, a trainer usually inserts a tube through a nostril into the stomach. If incorrectly administered, the tube might go into the lungs instead and the horse would drown.
So they give horses diuretics? I always wondered where the expression, “I’ve gotta piss like a racehorse” came from. Now I know.
Also, I just like the sound of “milkshaking.” It sounds wholesome, but at the same time might be some kind of sexual terminology. And no, please don’t post any comments giving vivid descriptions of what you would consider “milkshaking.”
I think Bismarck said that politics was like sausage-making…the less you know about what goes into it, the better. I get the feeling that horseracing is the same way.
I don’t have any news story about this: it’s just personal observation. There are too many speed bumps in Las Vegas. They just put three of them in the driveway that leads out of my apartment complex, probably because the hammerheads that live there were speeding around the curving road that leads to Howard Hughes Parkway and causing accidents.
In addition, there are two speed bumps on my way into the UNLV parking lot I use. So that’s five I have to drive over, at least twice a day. I’m going to get my car’s suspension checked.
Back in Atlantic City, I remember one speed bump: the one out at the Shore Mall, when you pull into the parking lot by Boscov’s. Maybe there’s more, but that’s the only one that jumps out at me.
On the scale of things that bug me, it’s relatively minor, but hey, I thought it was worth mentioning. It’s be nice to see them just put up a sign saying, “DRIVE SLOW, MORONS” instead of a speed bump, just to see if people slowed down. Probably they’d speed up. So speed bumps might be a necessary fixture of urban life, especially with self-involved hammerheads who are in such a hurry to get to where they are going that they ignore common sense laws of safety.
Sometimes, I like to step back from things and consider them in historical context. We truly live in a fantastic world of wonders. I’ll explain after this story, from KeralaNext.com:
A mathematics graduate from Belfast, Northern Ireland, who snubbed a 40,000 pound a year banking job to earn a mere 4,500 a week playing internet poker, is all set to earn 234,000 pounds a year as earnings.According to The Sun, Lee-Anne Smyth began playing at university and in the process made so much money, that she refused a banking job
“Who needs a proper job when I can make what most people earn in a month in a couple of hours?” the paper quoted her as saying.
Lee who logs on to Ladbrokespoker.com and plays for five hours against other gamblers, betting by credit card says, that her 2.2 honours degree in pure and applied mathematics helps her to calculate the odds regarding the number of cards left in the pack.
Lee whose favourite variety happens to be the Texas Hold ‘Em, where players make up their hands from dealt cards and communal ones which are left face up, has reportedly won as much as 7,600 pounds on one single day.
Maybe she plays against Nicholas Leeson, the banker who single-handedly brought down Barings bank. In a Casino [ptz] post last month, I discussed his presence at celebpoker.com.
The dubious part of this story is the idea that gambling is an easy road to quick wealth, something that, a a historian of gambling (though not a gambling historian) I have to dispute. I’m glad that Lee-Anne is proficient at “the Texas Hold Em,” but I’d hardly recommend professional poker as a career path for most graduates.
The fantastic part of this story is something I never cease to wonder at; how borders have completely collpased. A guy in Las Vegas using the Internet to quote an Indian news article about an Irish woman who plays online poker is about as much proof of this as you need.
I was a guest on KNPR 88.9 (Nevada’s Public Radio) this morning, in particular on State of Nevada, the daily public affairs show hosted by Gwen Castaldi. The subject was gaming expansion, and I think the panel gave a very good summary of where the industry is and will be going. You can read about or listen via RealAudio here.
I’m strapped for time, so I’ll just give you a few headlines with no commentary today:
Online Gambling Needs Regulation (press release on yahoo.com)
Nevada gambling regulators confiscate $26,000 in fake chips (watch this story disappear)
New, younger fans revive the old riverboat gambling game of poker (and not just because your humble correspondent is quoted towards the end of the article)
Enjoy!
That’s the irrational explanation for those who try to impose causality on random events–something that many gamblers excel at. Anyway, because of the looming threat of Hurricane Ivan, the state has closed Mississippi coast casinos. From the Sun Herald:
State regulators ordered the coast casinos shut to customers at noon Tuesday. Casino workers had until midnight to finish securing the properties and to seal the doors, said Gaming Commission spokeswoman Leigh Ann Wilkins.At 2 p.m. EDT Tuesday, Ivan was centered about 405 miles south-southeast of the mouth of the Mississippi River and about 450 miles south of Panama City Beach. It was moving north-northwest at 9 mph.
Biloxi Mayor A.J. Holloway, whose city is home to most of the glitzy gambling halls, said local officials must deal with not only some 55,000 residents but at least that number of gamblers and tourists on any given day.
Eleven of the 12 casinos are in Harrison County, the middle of the three coastal counties. Hancock County, which borders Louisiana, has one. There are no casinos in Jackson County, which borders Alabama.
Gamblers continued playing slots and table games shortly before the casinos closed.
Ed Bak of Fairfield, Ohio, dropped quarters into a slot machine at the President Casino and said he wasn’t concerned about Ivan ruining his vacation.
“I don’t worry about what’s going to happen tomorrow. We can’t control it anyway,” said Bak, who traveled to the Mississippi Gulf Coast this week on a bus tour with other Midwesterners.
“When you go somewhere, you take a chance,” Bak said. “That’s Mother Nature.”
When I worked in a casino, I used to while away the hours by imagining hypotheical scenarios, as kind of a mental game. In addition to figuring out several probably fool-proof schemes for robbing the casino (thankfully, larceny is not in my heart, and this was only a thought exercise never put into action), I used to try to imagine what magnitude event it would take to force the casino close. I know that during several bad snowstorms, we stayed open. It came down to severe earthquake (not likely in New Jersey), working fire on the casino floor (small fires elsewhere not included), or a large hurricane that forced the evacuation of Absecon Island. So I guess my voyage of the mind was vindicated because Mississippi casinos in the path of a large hurricane have been closed.
I especially liked the end of the excerpt, where gamblers didn’t want to leave. This, in my experience, is to be expected. I have seen surveillance footage of an armed robbery where a security officer is shot in the face, and people sitting a slot machines not only didn’t move, but argued when told they had to. If you can keep gambling with a gunshot victim sprawled behind you, I’m guessing that a hurricane warning isn’t going to mean much.
I think I’m going to put Ed Bak’s musings on fate into my quote index:
I don’t worry about what’s going to happen tomorrow. We can’t control it anyway.
Yeah, that’s a guy who digs the ever-spinning wheel of fortune, which man is powerless to stop. Something about that attitude annoys me, because it implies a progression from resignation to a fickle fate towards total apathy and acceptance of anything. It’s like people who repeatedly drive drunk, and when asked whether they would feel bad if they hit and killed a bunch of children, just say, “No. When it’s your time, it’s your time. I wouldn’t be my fault.” These people are truly dangerous.
While I think that a certain amount of acceptance of fortune’s caprice is a good thing, just saying, “I can’t control the future, so nothing matters” is a sure ticket to an unfulfilling life.
This story has been bouncing around for a few days, and even made the CNN Headline News ticker. According to a Yale University study, older people who gamble are actually healthier than those who don’t. From the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:
The findings are not rock-solid. They’re only based on telephone interviews, but the results are the opposite of what researchers expected. The survey showed that recreational gamblers 65 and older reported being in better health than their peers who don’t gamble. The older gamblers also reported less alcoholism, depression, bankruptcy and imprisonment than younger recreational gamblers, Yale epidemiologist Rani Desai said.Desai cautioned that more study is needed to conclude that gambling can be a healthy venture, and those who help gambling addicts are skeptical.
But the social aspects of gambling – whether it’s slot machines at a casino, poker games with friends or bingo at a church hall – may be an explanation for how the study turned out, Desai said.
“There’s this whole concept of healthy aging – that folks who continue to remain engaged in activity, especially in the community and in social activities, stay healthier longer, so I think this is a reflection of that. It’s not that gambling makes you healthy, it’s that gamblers are healthier,” Desai said.
Some psychologists question the findings.
“It may get them out, but the socialization isn’t that much because they sit in front of machines, interacting with them,” said psychologist Elizabeth Sterling of Santa Fe, N.M., who counsels gambling addicts. “I guess if you can keep it at a limit – spend $20 and go once a week – there’s no harm to it, but a benefit I can’t see.”
Desai started the study with the idea that health problems already well documented among all gamblers might be more pronounced in gamblers over 65. Any losses would presumably hit older people harder, since most are on fixed incomes.
Also, the gambling industry tries to attract older people with freebies and trips, and even provide needle disposals for diabetics in the restrooms and heart defibrillators on the casino floor.
This is a fun story from so many angles. First, allow me a word on the last line in the excerpt above: are cardiac defibrillators really a “freebie” that casinos advertise? I can just picture the thought process: “I’ve been having chest pains all day…I know, I’ll go to the casino and gamble. If I go into complete cardiac arrest, they can revive me for free!”
Second, I inwardly shudder at the thought that the people I see in casinos are healthier than those who aren’t there. Have you looked around a casino floor lately? It’s not like it’s filled with ironman triathletes in peak condition. I have actually had visitors from other countries express to me their shock and disgust at the prevalence of the pale and the flabby in Las Vegas casinos. And these are the healthy ones?
Third, an amusing personal anecdote from my days as a casino security officer. One day, while patrolling a slot zone, I came upon an elderly woman breathing from an oxygen tank. That’s no surprise–I can almost guarantee some on oxygen in any sizable casino, everyday. What gave me pause was the fact that she was smoking a cigarette. Pure oxygen does up the nose, smoke goes down the throat. Sounds good to me!
That’s the sad part–that someone who needs help breathing is so addicted to nicotine she still smokes. The amusing part came when I evinced some concern over the proximity of the cigarette to pure oxygen (or nearly pure oxygen–I don’t know what the concentration is). When I suggested to some of my colleagues that this might present a fire and safety risk, they literally said I was stupid–cigarettes can’t start fires.
“But,” I said, “Isn’t oxygen highly flammable?”
“No, it isn’t.” Was the reply. So it went no further.
Now I don’t know whether there’s conclusive evidence that someone smoking a lit cigarette while hooked up to an oxygen tank presents an elevated fire risk, but based on third-grade science, I think it’s possible that there might be something there.
Anyway, someone’ll probably do a re-study of this, but until then, science says that gambling might be good for your health. Or does it?
The NCAA has long been opposed to any kind of betting on college sports, often throwing legal and illegal bookmaking into the same pile of forbidden goods. I doubt that they would condone a college course on sports betting. The organization does, however, sponsor programs that try to limit student betting. The Diamondback reports on a presentation by a former mobster at the University of Maryland:
Michael Franzese, a former member of the notorious New York-based Columbo crime family and known as “Long Island Don,” told the Terrapin student athletes yesterday why they should stay away from gambling, more than nine years after five university athletes were exposed for betting on college sporting events.“If you’re dealing with a bookmaker, some way, somehow, you’re associated with organized crime,” said Franzese, who at his first of two speeches at the university admitted to fixing several college games. “Don’t let somebody like the guy that I was use you.”
Franzese, who has spoken for the NCAA and several professional sports leagues since 1996, shared his experiences at two mandatory presentations for student athletes yesterday at the Colony Ballroom in Stamp Student Stamp Student Union and the Gossett Team House – each team that was not playing out of town was required to attend one of the speeches.
Franzese confessed to destroying the careers of many college athletes between 1980 and 1991 when he had a successful gambling operation. He did not take bets directly, but explained that all bookies are connected to organized crime in some fashion.
He said he earned the mob more than $300 million, which included revenue from gambling and the gasoline industry. He said he would challenge a football player of any size to mess with mobsters like him.
Franzese also talked about the dangers of gambling addiction. College sport betting, it seems, is a growing problem.
It is possible that legalization and regulation of sports betting might be a way of limiting criminal influence in college athletics, but the NCAA wants to eliminate all betting on college games, even in Nevada where it is legal.
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