A thousand people waiting to get into a casino on opening day would be nothing at all in Las Vegas. But at Maryland‘s penultimate casino, Rocky Gap Resort, it’s a positive omen, especially since the mini-sino has but 10 tables and 558 slots. Rocky Gap was a public-sector development that bombed. It was sold, at a loss, to Lakes Entertainment, which is trying to turn the property around. (The punitive 50% rate is still easily the Free State’s lowest.)
Shame on those Rocky Gap competitors who charge patrons for soft drinks and coffee, as reported by patrons. Customers like freebies and Rocky Gap’s marketing — which includes a variety of free-play incentives — will definitely appeal.
Toronto having axed the prospect of casino development, attention now turns to a couple of suburbs. The city council of nearby Markham is already having second thoughts about its previous rebuff of gambling, which might now be tied into development of an NHL arena. If Markham hesitates, Vaughan city councilors might still come off the fence. And the list of potential Toronto suburbs that want to woo American casino companies doesn’t end there. Just imagine “Horseshoe Ajax,” “Sands Pickering,” “Wynn Whitby” or “MGM Mississauga.”
It only took former Nevada congressman Jon Porter, now a lobbyist, a little over five years to realize what I’ve been saying the whole time: That the casino industry blew it by — pardon my French — dicking around while 
the prospect of federally sanctioned Internet poker slipped through its fingers. (Sheldon Adelson, for one, continues to sulk and obstruct.) Porter added that Big Gaming blew it again by not including Native American tribes and state lotteries in subsequent pushes. Porter is more hopeful than I of something getting through the present Congress. And good luck to whoever has to try and craft a set of regulations that apply with consistency to the very different online-gambling regimes in Delaware, New Jersey and Nevada.
Speaking of Adelson, he and rival Genting Group will want to take heed of a policy newly promulgated in Singapore. Officials are trying to further curtail visitation by their citizenry. The impact on the casinos, to their undoubted relief, is projected as “nominal.”
