The coronavirus has shut down casinos across the world. Even if they are allowed to open up again in a month or two, they will have sustained significant losses. Some estimates are that it will take up to two years for Nevada casinos to recover. If they stay closed for longer than two months, it will take much longer than that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This means some casinos will not reopen at all. If they were cash-strapped and struggling before the pandemic, they just might be pushed over the edge. Expect many casino bankruptcies in 2020 and 2021.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
For the casinos that do reopen, their primary goal will be to survive and get back to profitably. They will likely not rehire everybody and they will probably have smaller casino promotions — all in the name of saving money.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Many casino managers believe that tightening games is the secret to making more money. And that\u2019s what I believe will happen — whether it\u2019s the best strategy for them or not. If other casinos in their area have gone out of business, that reduces competition and with less competition comes less incentive to offer loose games.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Some players, like me, will not play games where we do not believe we have an advantage. The vast majority of players, however, do not gamble this way. Even if casinos tighten up, there will still be players. Not as many, perhaps. And certainly not a lot of players that casinos wish would stay away anyway. But simply tightening the machines a bit won\u2019t kill off the casinos.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Do I know this will be the case? No, of course not. My crystal ball fails me more than occasionally. But there has been a trend over the past 20 years of tightening machines, and this seems to be a likely impetus to speed up that trend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The relatively few good games that exist will be hammered by lots of players. It\u2019s a case of \u201cmore dogs than bones.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\tI hope I\u2019m wrong. Very much so. We\u2019ll see.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the meantime, since we\u2019re not in casinos and otherwise quarantined, some of us have time to prepare for the future. For those of you who depend on video poker for a significant part of your livelihood, I strongly recommend you spend serious time considering \u201cPlan B.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That plan will be different for each of us as we all have different skills, ambitions, and opportunities — and the choices for people in their 20s may be vastly different than people in their 70s. But waiting until the casinos re-open, being shocked at what games are offered, and then trying to figure out \u201cWhat am I going to do next?\u201d seems like a waste of the time you have now.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If I\u2019m wrong and good opportunities still abound this summer and later, there will have been no harm done planning for a dearth of good games and promotions. If I\u2019m right and you haven\u2019t done sufficient planning, you will have to scramble. And like the game of musical chairs, not everybody who is scrambling will end up in a good place.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The coronavirus has shut down casinos across the world. Even if they are allowed to open up again in a month or two, they will have sustained significant losses. Some estimates are that it will take up to two years for Nevada casinos to recover. If they stay closed for longer than two months, it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15763,"featured_media":6498,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Will Playable Video Poker Return After COVID-19? by Bob Dancer","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[558,643,557],"tags":[561,1018,585],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120682"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15763"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=120682"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120682\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=120682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=120682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}