Tipping

[mickeycrimm]

When a casino opens in an area where they are the first then look for bankruptcies in the town to go up about 1500% the first year. And about a third of the women that the town sends to prison will be there for gambling related offenses like embezzlement and theft. Stories in the local newspaper along the lines of "Prominent doctor's wife gambles away their fortune" will start appearing.

What I wrote here comes from observation in the early nineties when gambling was spreading through South Dakota,, Colorado and New Mexico. I was bouncing around the mountain states playing the stud hi-lo games. It was my first professional gambling experience.

When the poker rooms first opened there was a big rush of gambling money in the town. Lots of games going. Six months later it's dwindled down to one or two games a day. The bad players got their money gobbled up by the house rake and the few good players in the house and could no longer afford to play. A lot of the rooms wound up folding. This was just a microcosm of what was going on in the gambling towns.

Take Cripple Creek, Colorado. There was a big rush of capital into the town when gambling first opened up. Everybody opened casinos. The town was going gangbusters. All the joints making money. But a couple years later when all the money from Colorado Springs was gobbled up the weaker joints started folding. Some were bought out by the stronger places just to put them out of business.

The best year Deadwood ever had was it's very first year.

When I first got to Cripple Creek the Phoenix House Poker Room was going gangbusters. Lots of dead money in the room. Six months later it was down to one table of rocks. They closed the room. At that time they had just opened the poker room at Sandia in Albuquerque. So I head down there. The room was going gangbusters. Five stud hi-lo games every day. A year later it was down to one table of rocks.

Sandia was it's own joke. The Indians didn't know anything about game protection. Security was some good ol' boys from down on the reservation. The Caribbean Stud jackpot was hijacked. The poker room manager, Larry Ringinbird, was making book with the poker players (He's dead now so I can use his name). Pit bosses and dealers were pocketing black chips. The craps tables didn't make any money until they fired the Las Vegas crews they hired to run the games. They hired a Las Vegas professional to come in and clean things up. He absconded with 250K. LOL! Experienced gamblers broke those Indians in the hard way.