California’s $5.6 billion cardroom industry may be holding a losing hand.
A few days before Christmas, California Attorney General Rob Bonta proposed new rules that would drastically alter how casinos run blackjack, baccarat, pai gow and other card games.
The changes are so disruptive that the cardroom industry says it will be forced to close down all blackjack-style games in California, pull back on card game tables generally, and target layoffs of nearly 13,000 to its statewide workforce.
Poker is the only card game immune to Bonta’s rule changes — leading some cardroom operators to rethink their business models going forward.
Local governments where the cardrooms operate are so rattled by possible losses of tax revenue generated by the casinos in their communities that they met for an emergency video conference call Wednesday, Feb. 11, to discuss the economic impacts. Elected officials, administrators and finance staff from Hawaiian Gardens, Bell Gardens, Commerce, Compton, Gardena and elsewhere were listening in.
Those Los Angeles-area communities all have major cardroom casinos, including the Commerce Casino & Hotel, Crystal Casino, the Gardens Casino, Hustler Casino, Lucky Lady Casino and Parkwest Bicycle Casino — which together make up a bulk of the multi-billion-dollar industry in California.
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