By Gene Davis, DENVER DAILY NEWS
Despite several hiccups, Colorado casinos deemed their opening weekend with laxer gambling rules an overwhelming success.
The Lodge and Gilpin casinos reported a 20- to 25-percent increase in the volume of slot play, and an even larger increase in the volume of table game play, since a voter-approved amendment allowing Colorado casinos to stay open 24 hours, raise the maximum bet from $5 to $100 and offer craps and roulette went into effect last Thursday morning at 12:01 a.m. Central City mayor Ron Slinger said he expects revenues for Colorado casinos to be as much as 20-percent higher in July than in previous months.
“I absolutely think the gamble to raise limits and add games has paid off,” he said. “It’s been fantastic.”
However, as John East — vice president of Colorado operations for the Lodge and Gilpin casinos — pointed out, the media and advertising exposure that has been given to the casinos and the rule changes, coupled with the Fourth of July holiday, were favorable conditions for the casinos. East said it would likely take eight-10 months before the true impact of changing the gambling rule in Colorado becomes clear.
Hiccups
Colorado casinos added 750 jobs to keep up with the increase in hours, betting limits and games, according to the Colorado Gaming Association. Many of those jobs were for new dealers, some of whom seemed a bit overwhelmed over the weekend.
Jason Greene, a student at the University of Colorado at Boulder, said Thursday night that bets at the craps table at one Black Hawk casino were not always originally paid out properly. He said the dealers would sometimes compound the problem by paying off bets as a person was rolling the dice.
“Definitely, at times, it appeared a little more amateur than the experiences I have had in Vegas,” he said.
The Denver Daily News saw a dealer at a Black Hawk roulette table on Sunday having some troubles of her own. Within a 15-minute stretch, the dealer spun the ball outside of the wheel and was corrected by customers on several occasions on who had to be paid how much. A dealer who followed had similar troubles properly paying out bets on a consistent basis, adding with a smile, “There are too many numbers for me.”
East couldn’t speak for all Colorado casinos but said he was very pleased with the recent work by the dealers at the Gilpin and Lodge casinos. Dealers for the two casinos were sent to an in-house school to learn the skills necessary for the job and were given practice in a live environment before Wednesday, he said.
“There were occasional mistakes, but that happens in every store any time,” he said.
For his part, Greene said the mistakes he saw were only a minor inconvenience and that he looked forward to gambling again after “some of the original hiccups are dealt with.”
Impact
More than 55-percent of Colorado voters backed Amendment 50 last November. The measure allowed residents of Central City, Black Hawk and Cripple Creek to vote on whether they wanted to change the gambling rules in their town. All three cities overwhelmingly voted in favor of the changes.
Although original predictions said that the new gambling rules would pump 25 percent more revenue into the Colorado gaming industry, casino managers and spokespeople say it’s impossible to accurately predict the long-term financial impact of the change.
Under the amendment, 78 percent of the new tax revenue collected by the casinos will go to Colorado community colleges. Nancy McCallin, president of the Colorado Community College System, said projections for the amount of money the community college system will receive the first year has dropped to the $7-$10 million range.
“It’s a sizable amount of money … but it’s not like the panacea,” she said.
Colorado community colleges currently receive $117 million in federal funding. McCallin said the additional revenue source, while not as much as originally projected, would be valuable in helping replenish some of the cuts that have faced the colleges as they have seen enrollment increase more than 30 percent.
“It’s very important long term to have found an alternative revenue source that is to be in addition to state funds, not in place of state funds,” she said. “It’s key — it will grow in importance over the next five-10 years.”
Distributed by Colorado Capitol Reporters
