I am Charlie Brown to The Rat’s Lucy van Pelt. When The Rat guest-blogged that the re-opening of casinos could bring a uniquely juicy opportunity for APs, I was skeptical. I told Anthony Curtis, “So surveillance has a little more work, but that doesn’t turn a sweatshop into a candy store.” I made a verbose blog post saying the same thing, dismissing masked avengers as a fantasy, based on my decades battling casinos as a real-world AP on the front lines (I’m not expecting APs to be called “heroes” anytime soon). Despite the bombast, there was a tiny piece of me—maybe 1%—that thought: “Maybe I’m wrong this time [winking-with-tongue-out emoji here, ok?]. Could past experience be irrelevant in this bizarre, coronavirus world?”
Nah. (And yes, I adjectivized “coronavirus”—that just happened.) To be fair, the casino conditions are changing, and will affect APs in different ways. From my point of view, scouting has now confirmed that overall conditions are garbage compared to the pre-lockdown world, and I feel like a gullible fool for hoping I could kick the football (https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/charlie-brown-lucy-and-the-football-50-years-of-funny/). While my previous blog post was speculative, I can now reiterate using actual observations, consolidated from scouts in diverse locales in the US.
At the beginning of the pandemic, the discussion was international: How is the US response different from South Korea’s? Are we beating the Russians? Once it became clear that the US wasn’t about to win any gold medal, the discussion was re-framed: Are the Blue states beating the Gray/Red states? With casinos, you can’t even look at things on a state level. One thing we’ve seen is that even within a state, there is significant variety in the new gambling and health procedures. Some casinos require masks, but most don’t. Some casinos check IDs. Some casinos have plexiglass partitions. Some casinos have re-opened the poker room. You should call or check the website for the specific casino you intend to visit.
You will almost certainly face temperature checks at casinos, airports, and even some restaurants. I believe that these checks are mostly security theater. Suspiciously, casino temperature readings have been consistently low, generally 97 degrees or less. One teammate had a reading below 95 degrees! Either these devices are ridiculously inaccurate, or the casinos have intentionally calibrated them on the low side.
The security theater extends beyond temperature checks. Some casinos check IDs or take pictures at the entrance. This is a transparent power/data grab. Ostensibly, a list of names from the entrance or the table could allow sophisticated contact tracing, but the South Point GM admitted on a recent GWAE podcast that such tracing simply isn’t pragmatic. The reality is that a casino is never going to want to submit any data to state authorities, and there isn’t any sophisticated contact tracing going on right now anyway. Suppose a dealer tests positive for coronavirus. Which scenario is most likely: (1) The casino tracks down exposed players to warn them of their heightened health risk, and in so doing, the casino possibly exposes itself to a lawsuit; (2) To defend itself from a lawsuit, the casino uses the player list to determine whether any player has tested positive, and then blames that player for infecting the dealer and everyone else; (3) When a coronavirus-related need for the data arises, the casino says that it doesn’t have the data, or that it is not available in a format allowing it to be used for that purpose.
The casino industry’s fake concern for player health is belied by the degens blowing clouds of smoke (and thus coronavirus?) fifteen feet into the air. Though these smokers pose a greater health risk to others than non-smokers do, the casinos are applying more stringent rules to the non-smokers. At casinos that require masks, a non-smoker who removes his mask will be reprimanded, while a smoker is allowed to have his mask dangling around his neck, cuz hey, how can we expect him to wear a mask while he’s smoking? Casino logic! The South Point GM stated that banning smoking is a non-starter, because so many of their customers are smokers. Now that there is a limit of three players per table, a casino could ban smoking on table games and easily fill the tables with non-smokers. Let the smokers play slots. (And put the slots out in the parking lot.)
Even in casinos that do not require gamblers to wear masks, dealers and APs will wear masks. An unexpected consequence: it’s hard to hear what mask-wearers are saying. Verbal signaling is noticeably more difficult, as is eavesdropping on pit conversations. Wearing a mask is annoying at first, but you get used to it. (So quit being such a snowflake and wear the damn thing! And suck on breath mints if you have to.)
As expected, personnel schedules are completely out of whack. The operating hours for some casino pits have changed. Dealers have been furloughed. Dealers have changed their work hours. For APs who have favorite dealers, it’s a major chore to re-scout every shift, every day, at every casino. Many Walmarts are no longer operating 24 hours per day! That’s the seventh sign.
If part of your AP routine involves killing time in the poker room while waiting for favorable conditions in the pit, you might have a problem. The poker room is probably not open yet. If it is, you will have to learn how to play 5-max or 4-max poker, since casinos are not offering full 9-handed games. Daily tournaments are probably curtailed.
If you are a play-all counter, the mask can bring some benefit, but I wouldn’t make too much of it. I think it would work best at a place where you’ve never played. Starting with a clean slate, perhaps you can accumulate many hours of play under your mask. If you combine the mask with dyed hair, you won’t dirty the slate, and when you return next year with your natural hair color sans mask, they’ll never know you’ve even played there before. However, all of this presumes a casino where you have not previously played. But if such a casino near your home had a good game, you’d probably have played there already! I’d enjoy a mask to scout a casino that I’ve never visited before. But that’s a very short list, and a casino where I need a mask to feel safe scouting is probably a sweatshop.
Some hole-card players have encountered annoying mechanical disruptions to the game—changes in chair positions, glare and dirt on plexiglass partitions, and … dealers wearing gloves! Prior to this pandemic, the strangest way that I ever saw a game die was when a poolside game became too windy. Even though the dealer put coins on top of the cards, they kept blowing away. Our desperate pleas did not stop the boss from shutting down the table. Now we have a worldwide pandemic causing some casino staff to wear gloves, killing the game by changing the dealing mechanics. It could have worked the other way, with gloves opening up a game, but none of us are eager to scout for that unicorn right now.
I’ve saved the worst for last. With only three or four players allowed per table, and fewer tables and fewer casinos even open, it’s impossible to get a seat! Forget about Wonging. Hole-carding is incredibly difficult. Of course, we hoped that we could lock down a table with one spotter, one BP, and one civilian, and that bosses would push back the annoying spectators. The opposite has happened—instead of locking down a game, we’ve mostly been locked out of games. Getting two critical seats (one for the playcaller, one for a BP) is often impossible. If you are fortunate enough to play your favorite game, you can expect to have a spectator breathing down your neck, possibly for hours. The bosses are not keeping the spectators back, and the casinos have not implemented a waiting-list system, which is sorely needed for some games.
Oh, one more thing: it’s a pandemic! Vegas does look like a Petri dish, and the numbers will understate how bad it is. If it takes a few days for symptoms to appear, then many Vegas visitors will be back at home by the time they test positive. These infected gamblers will hurt the numbers and sicken the communities of California and the other places around the country where they live. It’s disappointing to me that casinos have already re-opened, but not professional sports like NBA basketball, which uses a small number of quarantined participants to entertain a large audience. Why did casinos reopen before movie theaters, where people can sit apart, wear masks, and not touch shared surfaces at all? But I digress.
The bottom line: for me, the casino conditions are horrendous. That doesn’t mean we can’t make a few bucks, but I’d rather do other things right now.
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Here in Illinois smoking is illegal in casinos. It’s just as crowded as any property in Vegas. The square footage is the only limiting factor. There are smoking rooms set up for smokers. The best definition of smoke I’ve found is a collection of solid, liquid and gas particles. I haven’t read any articles about c19 adhering to cigarette smoke but it seems to me that it should have some sort of multiplying factor. Fifteen years ago I had a chest X-ray. The doctor asked me when I quit smoking. I responded that I never smoked anything in my life. He said my lungs looked like I quit smoking fifteen years ago. It was all second hand smoke.I was fifty five at the time. Smoking in bars and restaurants was probably banned five to ten years previous. I really don’t think banning smoking in casinos would affect business if it were banned state wide.
Even before the pandemic, some European casinos use smoking booths set up on the casino floor. Pit bosses routinely (and falsely) claim “It’s state law” to justify every nonsensical procedure they impose on you (like why you can’t have a cell phone, why you supposedly need ID, why you can’t play two hands, why you can’t stand up, why you can’t wear a hoodie, etc.). Now, when it would actually make extreme sense to have such a state law, or even just the state-law excuse, we hear crickets. And a federal law or Executive Order? You’ll have to hold your breath.
We all know why there are and aren’t laws for the things you listed – it is all about the money.
There are no state laws against any of those things. I’m saying that casinos routinely LIE and say “it’s state law.” They could do that now, but choose not to, because of the $$, as you say. I’m not particularly blaming casinos for the overall health risk they pose. Casinos are a reflection of the nation’s mindset. Casinos are a for-profit business, states want businesses to re-open, and many Americans are fine with a “shoot-for-herd-immunity” approach. NOT gambling would just be, well, too great a sacrifice. Brick-and-mortar casinos can be open during a pandemic, but online poker is a felony in the state of Washington. Casino logic! You got it: It’s all about the money, and who paid that money to whom.
Online poker – do states generate any funds from this activity? I am guessing they do not. If this is true, online poker will not be legalized, across the board, until states figure out how to take “their” cut.
They could at least do something like what Nevada and NJ and a few other states are doing (in-state online gambling). In Washington State, the tribes paid off the local politicians to ban online gambling, thus protecting the monopoly that the tribes currently enjoy.
My biggest poker nightmare would be playing in games against people who play like I do, I want to play against gamblers and chasers, not players who play the game long… Pandemic rules cut down on action, so non-action players like myself are going to have to adjust or wait it out… It may never come all the way back, it certainly wont come back to television driven heydays like we had around 15 years ago… Lets hope the rumors of Park MGM coming back smoke free are true…
Ahh, the fourth wave of coronavirus verbiage from JG, including a new adjective (perhaps coronovirusated, soon to be the OED word of the year). Predictably, there is a spike in Nevada cases. Word is, the Nevada Gaming Control Board has noticed a steady decline in masks and may clamp down. May well be the first useful action they’ve taken in their 65 years. Just came back from the post office. Nearly everyone here is wearing a mask, even outdoors, despite cases here at a three month low. Exceptions were Con-Ed guys drilling a ten-foot trench, forgivable in heat going to 90 degrees, and bicyclists, who, in Manhattan, are suicidal anyhow. Smoking is barred virtually everywhere, making smokers rarer than elevator buttons labelled 13 in casino hotels. (Well, excluding Macau and S. Korea.) As for temperature checks, Covid-19 infectees sport a wide range of temperatures, including below 98. (And, salamanders register between 2 and 60 degrees F.) But then “real gamblers”, living for that Dostoyevskian orgasm, would rather lose than break even. Now, they have yet another reason to visit casinos. As Iago counseled Roderigo: “How poor are they that have not patience! What wound did ever heal but by degrees?”
In the State of CA, the Tribal casinos have been fairly strict on their health standards (Masks required by BOTH customers and employees, temperature checks before being allowed to enter their businesses). I’ve only visited during daytime (less busy) times. For the most part, it seems to be relatively safe (similar to eating in a reopened restaurant, for example). Table games very limited (3 max players per table). Poker is variable (I think due to being in a ‘sovereign’ nation). Some rooms haven’t reopened at all, others are trying. I was surprised one morning to see full (8-9 players) in some games or it may have been a tournament. All had masks, but personally I would not have felt comfortable playing in that manner (everyone still touching chips, cards, etc). Machines and other areas were much cleaner (similar to when they first opened! – as there are constant staff assigned to the ‘Clean Team’ in one place I visit). Plenty of available cleansing wipes (even like when you enter a grocery store- those disposable 5″ x 5″ or larger to use near kiosks (swipe for pts/promotions), and hand sanitizer pumps throughout the casino.
Barona is probably the safest: masks, distancing, no smoking, no touching. Players don’t even touch their own chips. You tell the dealer how much you want to bet, and the dealer places the bet for you. This is hearsay, since I don’t actually play at Barona. The situation is fluid. I think in five weeks, we’ll see all casinos nationwide requiring masks. But we’ll see if the tribal casinos use their sovereignty to resist that.
I happened to be spending the night at Caesars AC in 2008 then their short-lived smoking ban went into effect at midnight, one fateful night. I awoke the following morning, went down to the casino, and the difference in air quality was amazing. Most of the stench was gone and it had only been 8 hours!
Unfortunately, AC city council put their casino smoking band into effect just a few weeks before the economy hit the fan. Casinos, of course, blamed the smoking ban on their loss of business. City council relented and reinstated smoking 3 weeks later. Business didn’t improve. Surprise!
Same thing with the Silver City in Vegas. Its failure was blamed on its non-smoking experiment, but maybe the place failed because it was just a dump on a part of the Strip without much walkthrough traffic. The Riviera died there, too. Some European casinos have smoking booths on the casino floor. You wanna smoke, go inside the booth.
Recently, I became concerned with low temperature readings. I started taking my family’s temperature using an old mercury based thermometer and it was showing 97. I ordered a new no touch infrared thermometer and it also gives reading around from a low around 97.1 and fortunately none of us has gone above 98.2.
It runs out the 98.6 is based on a very old standard and temperatures vary a lot (like gambling results). See
https://www.webmd.com/first-aid/normal-body-temperature for more info.
Yeah, but one of my readings entering the casino was under 95 degrees–come on, man! Drop me an email [email protected]–I owe you money for an adjustment on a chop from 1999.
Recently, I became concerned with low temperature readings. I started taking my family’s temperature using an old mercury based thermometer and it was showing 97. I ordered a new no touch infrared thermometer and it also gives reading around from a low around 97.1 to a high near 98.2. (Fortunately, we have not had a high temperature.)
It turns out the 98.6 is based on a very old standard and temperatures vary a lot (like gambling results). See
https://www.webmd.com/first-aid/normal-body-temperature for more info.
In Vegas, I like the new rule where you have to step away from the table to smoke. I enjoy cannabis smoke sometimes, but cig smoke stinks.
I’m primarily a counter, as well as promos under a few different names. Most of my favorite DD games/shifts are back, and I’ve been able to get headsup quarter games or with one other person on weekdays. The minimums have generally gone up 1-2 units, so I can’t go $5-2x$300 anymore in some stores lol.
Heat seems about the same as before. Although the Spaniard backed me off in 30 minutes when I generally last an hour or two. Biggest bet was 2x$50, didn’t even go over $100 for ‘checks play’!
I’ve never played outside Nevada- If you had to recommend one new area to check out, what would it be?
Considering Mississippi and Louisiana area.
Most casinos have seas of tables they rarely use. If only opening 3 or 4 spots per table, it would seem reasonable for a casino to call in more dealers and open more tables–but of course they can’t bring themselves to spend the money to do that, they’d rather make people wait, ration the available seats. There’s likely a perverse motivation to make customers think the casino’s doing them a big favor by letting them play–a bigger motivation than actually accommodating the amount of profitable action they could have, just human nature. I’m getting reports that at least one of my favorite places simply hasn’t reopened the pit, keeping it a slots-only operation for the time being. How long before formerly employed dealers drift away?
I haven’t received a single casino offer that I’d call any real effort to entice me back. Offers at a number of places have gone DOWN for no discernible reason. Possibly just the logical continuation of trends that were in action before March, but they certainly haven’t reversed course.