Midwest Gaming Journal

Smoke Are Cheaper in Indiana

Here's some more depressing news from the G2E:

"In the Land of Lincoln, gaming revenue has trended downward all year, including a 25.6 percent drop year over year in October, said Wes Ehrecke, president of the Iowa Gaming Association.

Illinois' decline has happened even as gaming revenue in neighboring Iowa, where there's no smoking ban in casinos, rose or stayed steady from January to October, Ehrecke said."

Why are we listening to this guy from Iowa (I don't trust people from Iowa in general), doesn't the Illinois Gaming Association have anything to say about getting crushed since the smoking ban? Either gamblers really like to smoke, or the tobacco tax is too high in Chicago and its making the nicotine freaks chose between buying a pack or hitting the boats. 

Yes Kansas You Will Have Gambling...Maybe

Despite gloomy casino forecasts coming out of the Global Gaming Expo is Las Vegas this week, and the announcement that two of the four developers for Kansas' state controlled casino have backed out sighting the cash crunch, there's still hope for those casinos to get up and running sooner than later.

Bad Deal for Harrah's in Kansas

Citing a bad economy, Harrah's is pulling out of a deal to run a casino in Kansas. Recently, a vote passed to allow a few government run casinos in the state. This slip up by one of the world's largest casino operators has prompted veteran casino scribe Rick Alm to once again question the effectiveness of state run gambling halls.

Wisconsin: Good Blackjack - Bad Poker

I've been traveling in Wisconsin over the past month and stopped by some of the state's biggest, and smallest casinos. Overall I found most casinos offer double-deck blackjack games that pay the critical 3:2 on a natural 21. I've also played cards at some grubby so-called card rooms. Here's a list of the best and worst for card games.

BEST BLACKJACK

1. Menominee Casino & Bingo - Keshena This game is identical to downtown Las Vegas tables with one exception: Great penetration. Up to 66%. $10 min with at least one table going at all time. Yummy.
2. Ho Chunk Casino - Baraboo $10 minimum tables on the main floor. No doubles after splits seems to be the biggest drawback. Very nice and new floor. 
3. Oneida Casino - Green Bay The double deck games are green chippers and are located in the high limit area. Sightly better than Potowatomi, only because of the penetration (55%-65%)
4. Potowatomi Bingo Casino - Milwaukee A handful of games on the main casino floor. Penetration sucks at barely over a deck. If there's more than one person sitting with you it's almost pointless.

         BEST POKER

1. Potowatomi Bingo Casino - Milwaukee The 20+ table room is brand-new. Spacious and friendly, albeit busy. Games that are spread are a little weird: No $1/$2 no-limit, just a $3/$5 no-limit $600 max. Usually the only limit games run are $2/$4 and $4/$8.
2. Menominee Casino & Bingo - Keshena A dozen of the most underused poker tables in Wisconsin. Not a bad room for the area, but cash games are lame - mostly low stakes limit games with an Omaha game on Thursday. Frequent tournaments look appealing.
3. Oneida Casino (Mason Street) - Green Bay This grubby room has a handful of tables and a friendly staff. $3/$6 limit and $1/$2 no-limit seem to run perpetually. There are a few weekly tournaments.
4. Ho Chunk Casino - Baraboo The poker room is just a section of the horse book (I think so all of the degenerate gamblers can be kept in one area). It's smoky, dingy, oddly-lit, and you have to play cards next to those damned horse-bettors. One point of note: There was a $6/$12 limit mixed game of Hold'em and Omaha Hi/Low (sometimes referred to as a HO game, but be careful how and with whom you use that terminology.)   

I was only able to sample a handful of the 27 casinos in the great state of Wisconsin. Many of the gambling joints are slots only, the ones I hit are the larger ones with tables. While none seemed overly crowded, they were far from dead.

Voting on Loss Limits

Gambling in Missouri can be a pain in the ass because of their screwy loss-limit rule which attempts to prevent gamblers from losing $500 in a 2-hour period. Yes, "attempts" because crafty gamblers can easily skirt this silly and ineffective rule.

Coming up on the Missouri ballot in the upcoming election voters can repeal the law, but not if Illinois has anything to say about it.

The dichotomy the casino industry presents - supporting their own gaming interests while aligning with anti-gambling groups squash competitors - is confusing. This attitude has also crossed the tribal lines. The Milwaukee Potowatomi casino is lobbying against a Kenosha casino that would apparently really help the Wisconsin tribe. The Menomonees have even started their own blog about the issue.

Mistakes On the Lake

The casino industry has fought for years to assuage those that think gambling halls are run by thugs and crooks. Then stuff like this pops up.

The Indiana Supreme Court has been called in to find out if $16-million that the Ameristar casino in East Chicago, IN paid to a private business is legit.

Millions of dollars intended goes missing in corporations all the time because of nefarious activities. But the casino industry has been in a long battle to prove it is a legitimate business. It's funny though: Getting rid of the mob and gangster run casinos from the Vegas olden days and turning them into tightly run corporate organizations that now blanket the country has made them more suspicious. Gone are the days of back room beatings and tables that can't be beat, replaced with  6-5 blackjack and $150 tickets to see mega-douche Chriss Angel. Which is worse?

Get Out To Vote

Among the important issues to be decided this November, Ohio residents will vote on whether or not to allow the Midwest's biggest casino to set up shop near Cincinnati.

There's a lot of stuff out there to help you make your mind...or just find out more about the sometimes thorny issue:

Cincinnati.com says, among other things, analysts may be off in projecting how much a casino in Southwest Ohio will make with competition from Indiana.

Vindy.com does a nice job laying out the players in the pro-/con- casino movement.

The Akron Beacon Journal shows how the politics of the region are playing into the battle for the state's first casino.

Setting The Line For the 10th License

 It's a little strange because gaming companies - especially the big ones - are not doing well on Wall Street right now. I know, everyone's suffering, but casino stocks have been among the biggest losers. But rumors of the Green Giant entering the Chicago market have been circling for a while. There was a lot of speculation MGM would buy Don Barden's barges in Gary, hopefully resurrecting the no-longer majestic Majestic Star boats to what they once were. Now they've offered the state $435 million to build a casino in Illinois.

MGM outbid 6 other groups, the next highest offer was $225 million coming from a group lead by the former owner of Sportsman's Park. Even that bid is higher than expected.

MGM's Kirk Kekoiran and his right-hand man Alex Yemenidjian are no dummies. Even as their company's value has plummeted, they've done a good job staying out of debt. Their most masterful move was selling off part of their City Center project to investors from Dubai long before the market showed weakness.

Apparently they feel the Chicago market is largely untapped. Most of the  area casinos are still making money, albeit at a slower pace than last year. The more dilapidated boats aren't doing so well (read: Ameristar), while the newer joints are making lots of cash (Horseshoe/Four Winds). Putting a fancy casino near the Indiana border should keep a lot of Chicagoans off the Skyway.

With a big corporation willing to dump this much cash into a new venture, is this a sign our economy is on an up-swing? Or do people in Chicago just like to gamble a lot?

Tourney Time

The battle for lakeside tournament poker players has begun, and it looks like the Horseshoe has the early advantage.

At the end of the month the Horseshoe will hold the area's first World Series of Poker Circuit event. Starting tomorrow the Majestic Star will fire up their Deep Stack Challenge, running through the 26th.

The main event for at the MS conflicts with the WSOPC. Obviously, the newer Horseshoe has a huge advantage - especially with the World Series of Poker branding, but the standards for success at each poker room is different. It will be interesting to see who wins this round in the battle between the two biggest poker rooms in the Chicago area.

Ohio Not Ready For Gambling?

The people in the Midwest are a only a few hours drive from a casino - unless they live in Ohio.

That could change in a November vote that allows a casino in Clinton County (myohionow.com calls the location in the middle of Columbus, Dayton and Cincinnati the “Golden Triangle". It's just down the road from the Cleveland Steamer.) Yet commissioners have given the plan the thumbs down. Their reasoning sounds more naive than informed.

"Somebody's lying," [commissioner] Olson said, reporting he collected an inch-high stack of information from both sides of the proposed amendment..."I think this whole thing is a sham."

These "commissioners" need to stop reading propaganda and start looking at facts. Paraphernalia from the pro and anti gaming groups will make you think gambling is the savior or the devil, when it's clearly neither. Instead, the commission should talk to city officials from towns like Gary, IN, the Quad Cities, and Council Bluffs, IA. Communities that have experienced both the the good and the bad - or the reality - of casino gambling.

Don't Bet On PokerTek

PokerTekhas expanded in the Midwest. After having a dealer-less and chip-less poker room at the Four Winds Casino, the new Horseshoe has put in a pair of tables.

The electronic poker tables are located just outside the new poker room in the Horseshoe. They seem to be there as a novelty, to get passers-by interested in cards. Most poker novices are less intimidated by the e-tables because there's no chance of acting out of turn or making the wrong bet. With the reception the new poker room has gotten I'd be surprised to see the PokerTek tables expand beyond the entrance.

They may not be around that much longer, anyway. A year ago their stock prices was three times what it is today.

It's Just a Pepsi

The only thing I remember about my last visit to the Horseshoe casino in Hammond, IN was the passed out guy who had wet himself. He was slumped on a bench by the parking garage escalators.  I'm pretty sure I lost some money, and the casino was as dumpy (or dumpier) as its Gary counterparts, but the 60 year old mill worker that had pissed through his work jeans stuck with me more than anything else. That was 10 years ago, and I vowed never to return. That changed today.

When the top of my Pepsi came off as I went for sip, soaking my lap, I thought of that pee drenched fellow from a decade ago. I hoped my assumed accident wouldn't turn future gamblers away. But today I could have smeared a melted Hershey bar on the rear of my trousers and people would have had no problems sidling up to me if it meant getting into the new $550 million casino.

The Horseshoe's website says the opening of the new and improved casino is slated for August 8th (8-8-08). Today was their "soft" opening. I've never understood this "soft" terminology. These things are always more rough. The past few days have been no exception. This opening was supposed to have been this weekend, a minor construction accident pushed it back to Monday. More gaffes pushed it back to today. I'd heard the opening would be noon, but when I arrived at 12:30 a security guard told me gambling wouldn't start until 3. The inspectors were running late.

Talk amongst the people waiting for the elevator was when was this thing opening? Noon? Three? Today? Tomorrow? 8-8-08? A yellow helmeted construction worker shrugged, "I don't know why they're not letting you on."

There are four restaurants on the second floor, just the grill was open. I got a cheeseburger and the infamous lose-lid soda. Watching the throngs of people flow from the parking garage, and waiting for my cargo pants to dry, I wondered if our economy is really that bad. Hundreds of people have enough disposable income and time to wait around for three hours so they can dump a few bucks into a Top Gun slot machine.

If you don't like the design of the pavilion you can blame Steve Wynn. There are hints of the Bellagio and Wynn. A lot of mellow toned wood and funky light fixtures.Yet there's also a striking similarity to the Forum Shops at Caesars Palace - makes sense since that's a Harrah's property.  The Jack Binion Steak House is on the third floor and shares the same view as the buffet a floor below: Overlooking a beach, that was packed on this 90-degree July day. Despite the gray steel mills looming behind, it looked inviting.

The friendly Horseshoe staff gave out water, cookies, and updates on when cards would be in the air. The crowd grew exponentially larger as three o'clock approached. It never got unruly or unpleasant, but I felt uncomfortable. Nothing could be worth this wait.

I left around 2:15. I didn't feel like standing shoulder to shoulder with people who were more concerned with tossing dice than if I had pissed myself. Besides the beach looked a lot more fun.

Finally!

The first time I called the Gamblers Anonymous hotline it rang for 3 minutes. I'm glad I wasn't on the verge of dropping my family's life savings on a Jacks or Better machine. A nice guy named Gary answered. He sounded like he smoked Lucky Strikes since he was 10, and after telling me he's a former horse player, I bet he's been smoking for 50 years. The track isn't a place for a young man. The action junkies at the dice table or in the blackjack pit can't deal with the 12 minutes between races. But for guys like Gary, who grew up going to places like Hawthorne and Arlington Park, the pace of the track suited him just fine. Until he went into debt to his son-in-law and started carrying a pistol to the track. There was only one bullet in Gary's gun, for him to use on himself.

Fortunately for Gary, his son-in-law wanted him to get help rather than collect on a debt. "Gambling was the best thing for me," Gary says. "It made me realize that I was an asshole." I told him I was doing research for an article, and he told me where I could find a GA meeting in Chicago. He also said part of his recovery is answering the GA hotline. Unfortunately, there's not many people like Gary.

Joseph Ryan of the Daily Herald wrote a brilliant three part article on the lack of state funding provided to GA, and the urgent need for it. Chicago is the third largest gambling market in the country, yet programs for problem gamblers get little state funding.

The windows on the 4th floor of the 1st United Methodist Church look across Daley Plaza. People of every shape, size, and color scurry around the Plaza doing their downtown thing. About 15 of them have crammed into the small confrence room for the Monday GA meeting. A red haired lady in a business suit said she'd finally gotten her life back after almost losing it to the slots. She was going to a job interview. A married man in his thirties tried to compare quitting gambling to quitting smoking, before finally conceding that the two were nothing alike. He's been clean from gambling for 5 years. A 22 year old guy broke down because he'd been to the boats in Gary, IN the previous night. The group leader politely told him that GA wasn't meant to control a person's gambling, but to stop it. Everyone in that tiny room four floors above a noon church service said they are the only one responsible for their actions. To me, it just seemed silly that, as earnest as these people are, a weekly get together would keep all of these people out of action.

The Herald article points out that Illinois has never done a study on the impact of gambling on communities. However, there have been many done in other parts of the country, and I surmise their conclusions wouldn't be much different than if Illinois were to complete a study tomorrow. My favorite is one from 1976 which began: "Gambling is inevitable." Gambling has been going on for thousands of years, and there's no reason to think it will stop soon. While politicians are tied up with who'll get the states 10th gaming license people like Gary and the ones at the Monday GA meeting are an afterthought. They have to get better all on their own.

In a follow-up article, Mr. Ryan writes about what the impact his series had on lawmakers. It's quite astonishing what he was able to accomplish by writing about something most were too afraid to cover.

Uh Oh

A pedestrian walkway at the soon-to-be-opened Horseshoe in Hammond, IN collapsed. A couple of workers were tossed into the lake. The good news is it was a pleasant morning for a swim, and, most importantly, on one was seriously hurt. On the downside, those guys thrown into the waters off the shores of the Gary, IN steel mills now have blood counts with such high levels of magnesium and mercury they'll be confused for the Silver Surfer.

Let's just hope this doesn't delays this weekend's re-opening.

I went to the Majestic Star boats yesterday - located 5 minutes from the Horseshoe - and these places just get worse and worse. The poker room has taken a big hit in dealers and floor staff fleeing for the 'Shoe, and trying to run qualifiers and satellites for this weekend's Heartland Poker Tour tournament slows the room down even more so. There were 21 people waiting to play a sit-n-go to satellite into the qualifier and most waited an hour to get a seat. To be fair, at last year's WSOP I waited for three hours for a satellite that never started. Then again, the Amazon room at the Rio was packed with a few thousand people, and there were less than a hundred in the poker room. But the rest of the place is such a dump.

I dry heave whenever I have to take a leak at the MS. The bathroom at the Western is better than the pissers here. Also, the low ceilings and non-stop smoking would make Dennis Leary bitch about the air quality.

I can't wait to see how the Horseshoe improves the Gary gambling.

Betting On Chicago Not Much of a Gamble

The state gaming board is sending out applications to those interested in buying Illinois 10th gaming license. This is the same license revoked from Rosemont's ill-fated Emerald Casino that got 86'ed because of those pesky ties to organized crime. But Rosemont is still getting an application. In fact, according to the IGB's website,  all you have to do is call them and they'll send you an application. Just like getting a job at the post office.

The decision on who'll get the up-for-grabs license to print money....I mean license for a casino...will be awarded in the fall. They better hurry, the state has missed out on $1 billion in tax revenue. There is little suspense here though. Hizzonner has made it clear he wants downtown gambling. If the Mirage was booking who gets this license Chicago would be a 4-5 favorite, and every other city in the state would be the field, running a distant 1000-1. Don't bet against Daley.