This was an article I wrote for NewCity back in February. Some gambling expansion legislation has recently passed, so I think this holds up today, too.
Sucker Bet?
Clay Champlin assesses the stakes in Chicago’s bid for a casino
Darren was playing casino poker before it was cool. Long before ESPN
made the World Series of Poker look like an everyman’s championship, he
was playing in the seven-card-stud game in Aurora and Joliet. "There
weren't any no-limit games like there are now," he recalls. "But I'd
get into the $40-$80 or $50-$100 limit games." The popularity of
no-limit poker has now killed the limit games, but if a big-time
no-limit table were available back then, Darren would have hit it.
Instead, he played in the musty corners where the Empress and Hollywood
casinos stashed a few poker tables. TV poker has made today’s games
soft and in nearly every casino poker room there’s someone sitting down
to a live card game for the first time. But when Darren started
playing, hardened and experienced gamblers, waiting to snatch
everyone’s chips, surrounded the tables. It was a grinder’s game. The
only way to survive was to play tight, yet aggressive, mostly folding,
and raising. Limit poker is plodding and methodical, no place for a
person who feeds on the action of a casino.
An ex-athlete turned
quota-crushing salesman, he started playing because it was the only
game in the casino that hadn’t taken his money. After reading Doyle
Brunson’s "Super System" and "Harrington on Hold’em," he felt he’d
finally found a game he could beat. But for the same reason he’d lost
thousands at the blackjack and craps tables, he couldn’t win. Too
caught up in the action to make good decisions, he was pushing stacks
of chips around hoping the garbage he was holding would hit, or his
opponent would fold, but both rarely happened. Darren’s gambling life
lasted six years where the only constants in his life were racking up
debt, ruining relationships and losing.
There are thousands of
people like him around Chicago, yet it’s just a matter of time before
there’s a casino downtown. While the projected revenue from city
gambling is staggering (in a year there’d be enough money to bail out
the RTA, CTA, public schools or buy Wrigley Field), most of that cash
is coming from people like Darren. The people believing the expressway
billboards shouting they can be the next super-mega-billionaire with a
few tugs on a slot machine. Also, since the casino boom of the early
1990s, has gambling helped communities like Elgin, Aurora or Gary? If
history is any indication, a casino in Chicago may be a sucker’s move.
The proposal for a
land-based casino has already passed through the state senate and is
waiting on house approval. Rep. Lou Lang (D-Skokie) speculates that
could happen sometime this year, but the sooner the better. The
economic impact would be nearly instant. Aside from the 2,500 casino
jobs it would create, a 1,200-man construction crew can expect work for
the next two years while building Illinois’ first city-run land-based
casino.
"The last time I
played blackjack and got twenty-one I still won in land or on water,"
says Lang, chairman of the Illinois House Gaming Committee. Since the
casino gambling explosion of the 1990s, Illinois has only allowed
riverboat gambling, until last year. The Casino Queen in East St. Louis
moved its operation to dry land. The other eight casinos can’t be
called boats, and never leave shore. And if Mayor Daley as the casino’s
pit boss sounds crazy, it’s not uncommon. Many European countries have
state-run casinos, and Kansas is asking its state supreme court if the
government can open four casinos. Still, it raises some eyebrows when
City Hall deals the cards. "If the city owns it, they get more
profits," Lang explains.
"To think a state-run
casino would be less corrupt is laughable," says David Schwartz, Ph.D.,
author of "Roll The Bones: The History of Gambling." Corruption and
gambling are no strangers, even around here. In 1999 a casino project
in Rosemont was scrubbed because a few made men were investors.
Ironically, the idea of taking casino ownership out of the private
sector and moving into the city's hand is to rid the industry of
corruption.
Chicago is the third
largest casino market in the country—trailing only the Las Vegas Strip
and Atlantic City—yet has a fraction of the gambling space of either of
those dice-rolling havens. But that’s changing. A casino in New Buffalo
opened this summer, and has already been eating into the profits of the
lakefront riverboats. In Hammond, the Horseshoe is going through a $485
million makeover it could have used a decade ago. Right now, an Indian
tribe is waiting for the government’s approval to put a giant casino at
Kenosha’s greyhound track—right on Illinois’ doorstep. Chicago wants in
on the action, but the competition to get gamblers is fierce; a casino
downtown would have to rival one in Vegas.
"We’re losing
conventions to places like Orlando and Denver," Lang explains. One
thing Las Vegas and Chicago have in common is a dependency on trade
shows, and now other cities are cutting in on the turf. Lang says a
casino will give conventioneers something to do downtown, while
providing a steady stream of tourists. Of course, the proposed downtown
casino would be the state’s biggest. Currently, gambling barges in
Illinois are allowed a total of 1,200 table and machine games. The
proposed city casino would have 4,000 gaming positions. Most of that,
unfortunately, would be slot machines.
"A boat filled with
nickel slot machines wouldn't be the best use for the casino," says
Schwartz, from his office at UNLV’s Gaming Research Center. He says
many people come to gamble as a form of entertainment, and are willing
to pay for the experience. They just want a diversion from their
everyday life, and figure dumping twenty dollars into a penny slot is a
good way to spend a half hour. They may even get a free cup of coffee
out of it. Last year, Resorts in East Chicago took in more than $250
million from slot players. Table games made a measly $65 million.
Nearly every casino in the world is slot heavy, because they’re the
best employees a casino has: No sick days, no pension, no benefits and
people stuff money into them like strippers swinging from a pole.
"I'd go to bed hating
myself, and wake up hating myself," Darren admits. "All because I knew
I couldn't stop." Leading a double life took its toll, making him a man
he could no longer stand. He began gambling in his late twenties; when
he married at 31 his addiction had already taken hold. The road is an
outside salesman’s office. It seemed Darren’s road always took him to
the boat, usually with a commission check on him. He’d stand in line
with some of the workers from the steel mill trading a week’s pay for a
stack of chips, or a musty homeless person cashing in a welfare check
to play video poker. He would tell his wife the money had gone into car
repairs. Now Darren wonders why she rarely questioned why his car
needed a new set of tires every 20,000 miles. "I would have gone crazy
if I didn't stop."
"Gambling is based on
lies," proclaims Chris Anderson, executive director of the Illinois
Council on Problem and Compulsive Gambling. He’s also a therapist,
treating clients out of his home in Wilmette. He’s seen how broken
promises are part of gaming. Casinos promise fortune, governments
promise better schools and jobs and everyone promises they’ll only
gamble what they can afford. But everyone lies about gambling; just ask
someone how he or she did after a trip to Las Vegas. Anderson says
people lie about gambling because, simply, winning feels good. The
casino industry and the politicians that promote gambling lie about the
realities of gambling’s effect on a community.
"Sixty percent of
compulsive gamblers steal to feed their habit," he says. Violent crimes
are tracked around casinos, and in most cases those numbers have
dropped significantly. Other crimes, like stealing cash from work, or
running scams for a quick buck to feed a gambling addiction, aren’t
tallied. Ultimately, the casino keeps the ill-gotten cash, and the
taxpayers foot the bill for the prosecution of the
gambler-turned-criminal. Anderson says politicians, like Lang, aren’t
dealing with the truth, saying the city casino proposal is, "All a
bluff."
"When you win big,
something happens," he explains. "Gambling has an intoxicating effect.
It’s not inert." That’s why he says Illinois is addicted to
gambling—communities have been lured by the initial blast of money, but
end up not being able to function without it. If the casino dies, it
will take the town with it.
Tourism in Gary isn’t
booming, and few are going to Aurora to stroll the Fox River. People go
there to gamble, maybe get a tank of gas on the way home. Flourishing
economic development has yet to become a reality in many of the state’s
boat towns. Many other entertainment venues, like bars, bowling alleys
and clubs, have shut down.
In the late 1980s,
comedy clubs were as popular as Starbucks. Every bar had an open-mic
night, and every cable station had a late-night stand-up show. The
comedy boom made a lot of comics rich and famous, and even the ones
that didn’t get a network deal were pulling in a grand a night for
telling jokes for forty-five minutes. "It ended when the riverboats
opened," says Mike Toomey, featured on the WGN Morning News, and a
twenty-year veteran of the local stand-up circuit. The gambling boom
blew away the comedy boom, and anything else getting in its way. As the
gaming market expanded, discretionary spending was funneled into
casinos.
But Chicago isn’t Gary
or Joliet. Business won’t dry up at Frontera Grill if a casino is built
down the street. And if a century of losing doesn’t drive Cubs fans
away, a craps table shouldn’t have any effect on ticket sales.
Florists, dry cleaners and food-service providers are among the outside
resources a giant casino needs. It’s estimated these secondary jobs
could employ 8,000 people bringing in $80 million in revenue. Because
of these numbers, Schwartz says the casinos that were part of the
gaming boom aren’t lying.
"They’ve pretty much
done what they’ve said they were going to do," he says. Indeed, casinos
do create jobs and provide a steady stream of revenue for the state,
but Schwartz cautions they’re not a long-term solution, merely quick
fixes for structural problems where it’s just a matter of time before
the local government says they’re broke again. "Politicians don't have,
what the Republicans would call, fiscal discipline," he laughs.
"I'd play anything in
the casino," Darren says about his gambling days, which have ended. He
was no stranger to the craps table, and knew his way around the
high-limit room well, playing $100 minimum hands of blackjack. He says
he won "about a year’s salary" in one day. But his need for a rush just
pushed him to up the stakes, and he blew the cash a few weeks later.
"It didn’t matter if I won or lost," recalls Darren. "I just needed to
be in action."
Darren’s last bet was
November 17, 2000. A $75 blackjack bet at the Grand Victoria. "It was a
make-or-break hand," he recalls thinking, as he pushed his last three
green chips into the betting circle. If he hit it, he’d keep going.
Busting would send him to a Gambler’s Anonymous meeting first thing in
the morning. The dealer flipped up a ten, and gave Darren a lousy
fourteen. He doesn’t remember exactly how the hand played out, but he
hasn’t been tempted to go back. "If you’re working the program, it
shouldn’t matter." He attends weekly GA meetings, and volunteers a few
hours a month answering a hotline for gamblers looking to lay down the
dice. His life is a lot different now. "I'll put it to you this way,"
he says. "We just bought a $30,000 car. If I were still gambling it
would have cost us $50,000 because I would have lost twenty grand
trying to win the thirty for the car."
