This is for personal, noncommercial use only.
Today's Front Page
Gas Buddy
A lot rides on Atlantic City table games amid competition for gamblers
Print this Article- Font Size:
- Default font size
- Larger font size
Click here to use the database
ATLANTIC CITY - Holding a 2 of diamonds, a 3 of hearts and a 10 of spades, blackjack player Merav Brown motioned to the dealer for another card. A smile crossed her face as a 6 of spades landed on the table to give her a winning hand of 21.
Three other players sitting at the blackjack table at Harrah's Resort clapped and whistled at Brown's good luck. Her $15 haul on this hand added to the $200 in chips neatly stacked in front of her.
"I'm having fun," said Brown, a 36-year-old resident of Teaneck, Bergen County, who works for a consumer products company. "I prefer smaller betting limits because your money can last longer. You can sit here and play all day if you're winning."
However, it is the house that usually wins. Table games such as blackjack, craps and roulette generated $1.4 billion in revenue last year - about
30 percent of Atlantic City's total casino "win" of $4.5 billion. The remaining 70 percent, or $3.1 billion, came from slot machines.
Table games have become more critical to Atlantic City's 11 casinos as slot parlors have proliferated in surrounding states and sucked away business. Now, as their table games franchise is jeopardized by competition, city casino operators remain confident that the amenities they offer will keep customers coming here.
Eager for the extra revenue, Pennsylvania and Delaware are adding table games to their slot operations. Atlantic City-style dice and card games are likely to begin in Pennsylvania and Delaware early next year, once the final legislative and regulatory framework is crafted.
"It's definitely not a good situation for Atlantic City," warned Jim Wortman, gaming director at the Conrad N. Hilton College of Hotel and Restaurant Management at the University of Houston. "If Pennsylvania gets table games, one of the things that made Atlantic City unique is gone."
Wortman, a former Atlantic City casino executive, estimated Pennsylvania will cut into the city's table game revenue by 10 percent to 15 percent. Based on 2008 revenue figures, that would be a $140 million to $210 million hit.
"If you put table games here, why should I take a two-hour drive down there?" Wortman said, speculating on how Pennsylvanians would rather stay closer to home to gamble instead of making the trip to Atlantic City.
'It's the experience'
This year, the weak economy and extra competition have driven down Atlantic City's slot and table games revenue 14 percent through the first nine months.
Casino executives, while conceding there will be challenges ahead, scoff at Atlantic City's supposed demise. They say the city will attract customers by offering them an array of nongaming amenities to supplement the action on the casino floor. They believe hotel rooms, posh spas, high-end retail stores and gourmet restaurants will become just as important as the slot machines and gaming tables.
"We're really focused on the nongaming amenities now more than ever," said Don Marrandino, who, as president of the Eastern Division of Harrah's Entertainment Inc., oversees the company's Harrah's Resort, Bally's, Caesars and Showboat casinos in Atlantic City.
Kevin DeSanctis, chief executive officer of the $2 billion Revel Entertainment Group casino, characterized slot machines and table games as mere commodities. He said Atlantic City must broaden its appeal beyond gambling to become a stronger tourist destination.
"Those games are not what's bringing people here," DeSanctis said. "It's the experience built around those games."
The Revel casino, scheduled to open in 2011, will typify the resort-style casino. Its amenities will include 20 restaurants surrounding the casino floor, a retail corridor of 40 upscale shops, a 5,000-seat theater and a man-made beach reserved for hotel guests.
But for gamblers such as Bill Dugasz and Jim Ulrich, it is the table games that draw them here now and will keep them coming back for more, even if Pennsylvania and Delaware expand their gambling, they say.
"I have no interest in going to Pennsylvania," Dugasz said in between rolls of the dice at a Harrah's craps table. "I'll stay here. I like the action here."
Dugasz, a retiree from Howell Township, Monmouth County, was at Harrah's two weeks ago to celebrate his 64th birthday.
Ulrich, 72, a retired New York City police officer who lives in Wantagh, Long Island, plays roulette and three-card poker in Atlantic City. His strategy for winning at roulette includes placing bets that add up to $24. Twenty-four, he explained, is the sum of the birthdays of his two children and four grandchildren.
"I like it here. I have no desire to go anywhere else," Ulrich said at Harrah's. "The table games are the things that keep me interested."
By the numbers
Atlantic City's casinos have a total of 1,658 table games, compared to nearly 31,000 slot machines, according to the latest figures compiled by the New Jersey Casino Control Commission.
Among table games, the old standards such as blackjack, craps, roulette and baccarat are by far the biggest moneymakers for casinos. Despite the popularity of poker, fueled by nationally televised tournaments and celebrity players, the game generates relatively little revenue for casinos through the "rake," the fee or small percentage of the pot collected by the house.
"If I had an opportunity to put in blackjack or poker tables, I would choose blackjack," Wortman said. "Basically, the house has no vested interest in poker. The cut is smaller. They take a rake out for each hand and basically that's all."
Table games dominated Atlantic City when casino gambling began. Resorts International, the first casino to open in 1978, hoped to create an atmosphere that was part Las Vegas, part Monte Carlo by emphasizing table games and requiring men to wear jackets at night.
"The Las Vegas mentality came to Atlantic City," Wortman recalled. "Table games were king and the machines with bells and whistles on them were not important."
But the jacket requirement didn't last long. Neither did the table games' status as Atlantic City's main attraction. Slot machines would overtake table games as the top revenue producer in 1984 and have remained No. 1 ever since.
"Slots became more popular because of the development of video games," said Daniel Heneghan, a spokesman for the Casino Control Commission. "You had a whole new generation of folks playing Pong and new video and computer games, so playing a slot machine became a more common thing to do."
Upping the ante
While lower-denomination slot machines have been surging in popularity in recent years, the old $2 blackjack tables have disappeared and $5 tables are rare if not impossible to find. Now, $10 blackjack tables are the most common minimum bet.
When casinos first opened, there were state regulations requiring them to have a certain number of $2 and $5 tables. The regulations were changed later on, leaving it to the casinos to decide how many games they offered.
Casinos also have seen their space requirements change over the years, reflecting the shift toward more slot machines. At first, no more than 30 percent of the floor space was reserved for slot machines, then 45 percent, then 75 percent and now 90 percent, Heneghan said.
Sherrie Smith, a 60-year-old gambler from Southampton, Pa., said casinos should have more table games. As she let the dice fly at a craps table as Harrah's, she insisted it is possible to beat the casinos at their own games.
"I have to stop when I'm ahead," she said. "That's my strategy. When I do that, I win."
But on this occasion, Smith was down $60 - a small bit of revenue for for the casino industry's billion-dollar-plus table games franchise.
Contact Donald Wittkowski:
609-272-7258
Posted in Atlantic_city, Top_three on Monday, November 9, 2009 7:00 am Updated: 4:00 pm. | Tags: Games
5 comments:
Click here to report a comment as abusive.