Feature: Read 'Em and Weep
From October 2006
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Region's Card Room Stymied
By Randy Bechtel
Everyone plays,” says Gene Clevenger. “Lots of young people. Retired people, too. Lawyers. Judges.” Judges? Who? “Well, Rockwell Mason. He’s a retired (California) Supreme Court justice,” says Clevenger. He pauses. “Got to go. Ready to start a game.”
Poker games in Sacramento’s Metro Market wait for no one. Not even for Clevenger, the general manager of Sacramento’s Capitol Casino Card Room in Sacramento. These days, seven days a week, noon to midnight, finding an open poker chair at any of the region’s seven card rooms is akin to finding an unreserved table at Biba’s on Saturday night. The reason: the media.
First, there were internet websites that, since the late 1990s, have reaped huge profits from online poker games. Moreover, the internet taught players how to play and alerted them to poker tournaments near and far.
Then came the 1998 movie “Rounders,” with Matt Damon and Ed Norton, which did for poker playing what “Saturday Night Fever” did for disco dancing. (“Oh yes,” notes Jay Mechling, professor of American studies at UC Davis, “I had a student who wrote an entire paper on ‘Rounders.’ ”)
Uniting Red and Blue
All of which led ESPN to televise the “World Series of Poker” in 2003. Apart from “American Idol,” no cultural phenomenon has better straddled the cultural gap between red and blue states of mind. Ballyhooed as competitors in this first Texas Hold ’em tournament were Hollywood celebrities Tobey Maguire, James Woods and “Malcolm-In-The-Middle’s” Chris Masterson. The tournament’s winner was a 27-year-old unknown who parlayed a $40 entry fee into $2.5 million. His name: Chris Moneymaker.
“You gotta love it!” says Kermit Schayltz, owner of the eight-table Lucky Derby in Citrus Heights. “Hollywood couldn’t have scripted it any better.” Still, more than media is needed to sustain a craze for eight years. Something special about poker connects with the mainstream American psyche, says UC Davis’ Mechling.
“As people study games cross-culturally, there seem to be three kinds — games of skill, games of strategy and games of pure chance,” Mechling says. “Cultures have different preferences. Eastern cultures are very big on what is called ‘fortunist’ games, games of chance. Mainstream American culture has a more conflicted approach because of its avowed capitalist ethos that hard work and skill are how you accomplish things.
“Officially, if we’re successful, we’re supposed to say luck had nothing to do with it, when, in fact, there is a lot of luck involved in life. Consequently, there is a tension in American culture that makes us seek out games that re-enact that tension between skill and getting things by ‘dumb luck.’ ”
Americans’ fascination with poker could be endless. “I’ve been playing for 30 years, and it’s still hard for me to differentiate where the luck ends and the skill begins,” Schayltz says.
Of course, one thing that makes poker unique was summed up in the movie “Charade,” when one young American diplomat says to another: “If the old man can be bluffed by a pair of deuces, think what the Russians can do.”
“A basic anthropological idea is that the games preferred by a society model the attributes they need in their adult, nongaming world,” Mechling says. “Unlike most other card games, bluffing is a big part of poker. Therefore, being a good liar is important. So is being able to tell who is lying. In the business world, this is called (reading) ‘tells’ — when negotiating across the business table, reading signals that tell you, for instance, whether someone is giving his best offer or whether you can push him further.”
On the other hand, even the best bluffer and reader of people won’t succeed in poker without sound money management, Schayltz points out. “Money management is the most important skill,” he says. “You have to understand that when the luck element is not very good, the game will be there tomorrow.”
$800M v. $12B
Schayltz, president of the Golden State Gaming Association that represents most regulated card rooms in California, says the last eight years saw card-room gross profits increase from $400 million to $800 million annually, a figure he projects could double again overnight but for a 1998 state law that restricts card-room expansion to 30 percent and freezes the issuance of new licenses until 2010. Schayltz thinks the moratorium on expansion is unfair, foremost because $800 million pales against the $12 billion annually taken in by Indian casinos.
Amended on Aug. 28, the Gambling Control Act had regulated poker stakes but now allows cities and counties to set wagering limits. Card rooms can now set limits to best suit their clienteles, Schayltz says, but this will only increase demand without allowing card rooms to supply more tables to meet it.
Although Indian casinos compete for poker business, the vast majority of their profits comes from games of chance, a point underscored, judging by Mechling’s cultural analysis, by the fact that the Thunder Valley Casino in Lincoln has a website offering a choice of text in English and (no, not Spanish) Chinese. To Schayltz’s thinking, this makes card rooms virtuous in the sense that poker revenues come from a set fee charged to play in a game, not from playing itself. “Players play against themselves, not the house, which the odds always favor,” he notes.
Even so, Indian casinos are aggressively marketing and some are expanding their poker facilities, which are exempt from the state moratorium. According to Glenn Pitts, a shift manager for Jackson Rancheria, the casino hosts six poker tournaments a week and recently opened a new poker room, increasing its tables from seven to 15. “No, it’s not as profitable (as games of chance),” Pitts admits. “But poker brings people in. Where maybe two people will play poker, five others will come with them and play something else.”
Of course, the evils of gambling were not all that motivated legislators to target card rooms in 1998, Schayltz says. Equally if not more important was the perception that card room operators and their clientele were seamy characters. “In the last eight years,” he says, “I’ve gone from bandit to Hollywood celebrity.”
As for his clientele: “Times have changed. Not only do you have a lot of well-educated young players, but the majority (of the new players) are women. That adds up to a lot of respectability. We old geezers have held this game together for the last 150 years. Now you walk into a card room and you see the most diverse crowd you’ll see anywhere. All you have to do is watch TV to see the make-up of poker players.”
Even so, Schayltz is not optimistic the moratorium will be lifted before 2010. The businesses it hurts most are small card rooms — including Greater Sacramento’s seven card rooms — as opposed to the mid-sized card rooms (40 to 80 tables) in the Bay Area and large card rooms (more than 100 tables) in Los Angeles.
“It’s too bad people have to wait two hours to get into a game,” Schayltz sighs. “It’s too bad local governments are losing tax revenue. But we’ll see.” One thing he is sure of: “Poker is going to be popular for years to come.”
By Randy Bechtel
Everyone plays,” says Gene Clevenger. “Lots of young people. Retired people, too. Lawyers. Judges.” Judges? Who? “Well, Rockwell Mason. He’s a retired (California) Supreme Court justice,” says Clevenger. He pauses. “Got to go. Ready to start a game.”
Poker games in Sacramento’s Metro Market wait for no one. Not even for Clevenger, the general manager of Sacramento’s Capitol Casino Card Room in Sacramento. These days, seven days a week, noon to midnight, finding an open poker chair at any of the region’s seven card rooms is akin to finding an unreserved table at Biba’s on Saturday night. The reason: the media.
First, there were internet websites that, since the late 1990s, have reaped huge profits from online poker games. Moreover, the internet taught players how to play and alerted them to poker tournaments near and far.
Then came the 1998 movie “Rounders,” with Matt Damon and Ed Norton, which did for poker playing what “Saturday Night Fever” did for disco dancing. (“Oh yes,” notes Jay Mechling, professor of American studies at UC Davis, “I had a student who wrote an entire paper on ‘Rounders.’ ”)
Uniting Red and Blue
All of which led ESPN to televise the “World Series of Poker” in 2003. Apart from “American Idol,” no cultural phenomenon has better straddled the cultural gap between red and blue states of mind. Ballyhooed as competitors in this first Texas Hold ’em tournament were Hollywood celebrities Tobey Maguire, James Woods and “Malcolm-In-The-Middle’s” Chris Masterson. The tournament’s winner was a 27-year-old unknown who parlayed a $40 entry fee into $2.5 million. His name: Chris Moneymaker.
“You gotta love it!” says Kermit Schayltz, owner of the eight-table Lucky Derby in Citrus Heights. “Hollywood couldn’t have scripted it any better.” Still, more than media is needed to sustain a craze for eight years. Something special about poker connects with the mainstream American psyche, says UC Davis’ Mechling.
“As people study games cross-culturally, there seem to be three kinds — games of skill, games of strategy and games of pure chance,” Mechling says. “Cultures have different preferences. Eastern cultures are very big on what is called ‘fortunist’ games, games of chance. Mainstream American culture has a more conflicted approach because of its avowed capitalist ethos that hard work and skill are how you accomplish things.
“Officially, if we’re successful, we’re supposed to say luck had nothing to do with it, when, in fact, there is a lot of luck involved in life. Consequently, there is a tension in American culture that makes us seek out games that re-enact that tension between skill and getting things by ‘dumb luck.’ ”
Americans’ fascination with poker could be endless. “I’ve been playing for 30 years, and it’s still hard for me to differentiate where the luck ends and the skill begins,” Schayltz says.
Of course, one thing that makes poker unique was summed up in the movie “Charade,” when one young American diplomat says to another: “If the old man can be bluffed by a pair of deuces, think what the Russians can do.”
“A basic anthropological idea is that the games preferred by a society model the attributes they need in their adult, nongaming world,” Mechling says. “Unlike most other card games, bluffing is a big part of poker. Therefore, being a good liar is important. So is being able to tell who is lying. In the business world, this is called (reading) ‘tells’ — when negotiating across the business table, reading signals that tell you, for instance, whether someone is giving his best offer or whether you can push him further.”
On the other hand, even the best bluffer and reader of people won’t succeed in poker without sound money management, Schayltz points out. “Money management is the most important skill,” he says. “You have to understand that when the luck element is not very good, the game will be there tomorrow.”
$800M v. $12B
Schayltz, president of the Golden State Gaming Association that represents most regulated card rooms in California, says the last eight years saw card-room gross profits increase from $400 million to $800 million annually, a figure he projects could double again overnight but for a 1998 state law that restricts card-room expansion to 30 percent and freezes the issuance of new licenses until 2010. Schayltz thinks the moratorium on expansion is unfair, foremost because $800 million pales against the $12 billion annually taken in by Indian casinos.
Amended on Aug. 28, the Gambling Control Act had regulated poker stakes but now allows cities and counties to set wagering limits. Card rooms can now set limits to best suit their clienteles, Schayltz says, but this will only increase demand without allowing card rooms to supply more tables to meet it.
Although Indian casinos compete for poker business, the vast majority of their profits comes from games of chance, a point underscored, judging by Mechling’s cultural analysis, by the fact that the Thunder Valley Casino in Lincoln has a website offering a choice of text in English and (no, not Spanish) Chinese. To Schayltz’s thinking, this makes card rooms virtuous in the sense that poker revenues come from a set fee charged to play in a game, not from playing itself. “Players play against themselves, not the house, which the odds always favor,” he notes.
Even so, Indian casinos are aggressively marketing and some are expanding their poker facilities, which are exempt from the state moratorium. According to Glenn Pitts, a shift manager for Jackson Rancheria, the casino hosts six poker tournaments a week and recently opened a new poker room, increasing its tables from seven to 15. “No, it’s not as profitable (as games of chance),” Pitts admits. “But poker brings people in. Where maybe two people will play poker, five others will come with them and play something else.”
Of course, the evils of gambling were not all that motivated legislators to target card rooms in 1998, Schayltz says. Equally if not more important was the perception that card room operators and their clientele were seamy characters. “In the last eight years,” he says, “I’ve gone from bandit to Hollywood celebrity.”
As for his clientele: “Times have changed. Not only do you have a lot of well-educated young players, but the majority (of the new players) are women. That adds up to a lot of respectability. We old geezers have held this game together for the last 150 years. Now you walk into a card room and you see the most diverse crowd you’ll see anywhere. All you have to do is watch TV to see the make-up of poker players.”
Even so, Schayltz is not optimistic the moratorium will be lifted before 2010. The businesses it hurts most are small card rooms — including Greater Sacramento’s seven card rooms — as opposed to the mid-sized card rooms (40 to 80 tables) in the Bay Area and large card rooms (more than 100 tables) in Los Angeles.
“It’s too bad people have to wait two hours to get into a game,” Schayltz sighs. “It’s too bad local governments are losing tax revenue. But we’ll see.” One thing he is sure of: “Poker is going to be popular for years to come.”
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