No April Fool’s joke
A recently passed set of regulations stamped by California’s Bureau of Gambling Control (BGC) and Attorney General has banned blackjack starting April 1.
The new rules proposed by AG Rob Bonta and the BGC were passed by California’s Office of Administrative Law (OAL) on Friday, much to the dismay of the state’s licensed card rooms, including Fresno’s Club One Casino and Clovis’ 500 Club Casino.
500 Club and other California card rooms were given a May 31 deadline to submit plans for compliance.
reduce his casino’s annual average of $1m in tax contributions by 75%
The Fresno Bee cited Club One owner Kyle Kirkland as stating that the ban could hurt Fresno communities. Kirkland said the expected banning of the blackjack revenue stream will reduce his casino’s annual average of $1m in tax contributions by 75%.
Job cuts, bankrupcy
Kirkland, who is also the California Gaming Association (CGA) President, said that the ban could also lead to job cuts at Club One and 500 Club.
The casino owner said: “You’re talking about 500-600 working families in the county of Fresno immediately impacted” by the blackjack ban.
player-dealers employed by a third party for blackjack-style games”
Since the turn of the century, tribal casinos have held legal exclusivity to offer traditional player versus house blackjack games in California. Card rooms, until now, skirted the restriction via “player-dealers employed by a third party for blackjack-style games.”
According to the Merced Sun-Star, Bonta and BGC’s new rules “essentially ban card room blackjack and place stricter rules on player-dealers.”
Kirkland said blackjack accounted for around 25% of Club One’s revenue base, and player-dealer games 60%, adding that SoCal cities smaller than Fresno rely heavily on card room tax revenue and that some “will be filing for bankruptcy if this goes through.”
In the meantime, Kirkland says he has two choices. Take legal action, or identify what “parts of our business can be saved.”
Old adversaries
While card rooms are lamenting the ban, tribal casinos can now rest after years of arguing that the card venues were dodging the law by offering tweaked styles of blackjack and seeking stricter laws.
Kirkland, however, claims the new regulations stem from the tribal gaming industry’s “financial influence and political campaign contributions.”
Reports cited Kirkland as stating only tribal casinos complain about “Club One’s games causing public harm.”
