Casino Taking Gamble With New Game

11.08.2003, Lesen Sie hier den Bericht über «Casino Taking Gamble With New Game».

Stretching legal limits to new bounds, Harrah's Rincon Casino has quietly begun running what is believed to be the state's first dice-based craps game.

Although craps is illegal in California, Harrah's says its full-size table – opened without fanfare last month – qualifies as a "card game" under its state gambling compact. Players roll dice to determine which of 12 cards are flipped over to decide wins and losses.

Other than that, the play and betting at "Rincon Craps" are the same as at any craps table in Las Vegas. The game was developed in-house and certified California-legal by Rincon's tribal gaming commission. "We are entirely within the intent of the law," said Marty Goldman, Harrah's Rincon marketing vice president. "The final outcome of the game is still determined by cards, but we've added dice as a precursor to that to give it the color, to give it the feel of real craps."

A table dealer put it more bluntly: "To get around the law in California, it's about as good as you can do." Rincon's move is the boldest in tribes' attempts to introduce variations on craps and roulette, lucrative casino games that are not sanctioned under California's Indian gaming compacts. The compacts allow reservation casinos to have slot machines, card games and lottery-style games. Under creative interpretations of those constraints, many casinos in San Diego County and elsewhere have put in craps tables with computerized images, cards or bingo-style balls as substitutes for dice.

As the first to let players handle and throw real dice, Rincon's game is attracting increasing attention from gamblers, regional casino executives and state regulators. "We've heard a great deal about some tribal and card-room gaming operations experimenting, trying to find different ways to play games that might otherwise be deemed illegal in California," said Nathan Barankin, spokesman for state Attorney General Bill Lockyer. Barankin said regulators will want to see Rincon's game to determine whether it is in fact a card game. Casino executive Goldman said Harrah's Rincon has patented the game and may lease it to other tribes. He said its popularity is prompting the Valley Center-area casino to add a second table by next month. "On a weekend, you can't get near this game," Goldman said. "Word-of-mouth has driven it on its own. We don't need to advertise."

Between dice rolls this week, Tom Pasefika, a shipping clerk from Oceanside, said he usually goes to Las Vegas at least six times a year to play craps. He said he'll be skipping some of those trips for Rincon instead. "It's almost the same. It's 99 percent," he said. "I passed two or three casinos to come here." Bobbie Rogers, a visitor from Phoenix, wasn't as enthusiastic after her first try at the game. She kept looking at the dice when what mattered were the corresponding cards being turned over. "I grew up on Vegas (craps)," Rogers said. "It's pretty close, but I like Vegas better."

I. Nelson Rose, a Costa Mesa professor specializing in gambling law, said it's no surprise that in California's growing and fiercely competitive Indian gaming industry, casinos are pushing the legal parameters as far as they can. "Every time any form of gambling is legalized in any way, it always expands beyond what the original plan was," Rose said. "Unless you prohibit everything, it is impossible to write a gambling statute that is not ambiguous, that does not leave the door cracked open for some new entrepreneur."

Link to the Harrah's

Über Harrah's Las Vegas Hotel and Casino:

Das Casino gehört zu Caesars Entertainment. Caesars Entertainment Inc. wurde 1937 als Harrah's gegründet und wurde 2010 in Caesars Entertainment umbenannt. Besitzer sind die Investment-Firmen Apollo Global Management, TPG Capital und The Blackstone Group.

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