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Sunday 16th January 2005
What is the difference between “and” and “or?”
If the answer is nothing, then tribal cardrooms have a legitimate advantage over privately owned cardclubs.
If, in fact, the words “and” and “or” are not synonymous, then Gov. Gray Davis illegally let tribes take too much from every pot.
On March 7, 2000, the voters of California approved Proposition 1A, amending the State Constitution to allow federally recognized tribes to offer some specified forms of gambling, including banking card games.
Although this tribal monopoly on casino-style games is being challenged in court as violating federal statutes and the United State Constitution, there is no doubt that, at the moment, tribal casinos may offer games like house-banked blackjack, which privately owned cardclubs may not.
Tribes may also spread poker, because tribes may offer any game permitted in the state.
Cardclubs may spread poker because it is a non-banking or round game. But they are prohibited from raking the pot, taking a percentage for themselves. May tribes rake the pot?
Cardclubs make their money by renting seats. Courts in the 1980s and ‘90s ruled that cardclubs may only charge per hand or per half-hour. Taking a percentage of the amounts bet or won was outlawed as a forbidden “percentage game.”
Operators would rather rake the pot than charge per hand, because they can take out more money. As a player, you notice when you have to give the house a chip every time the cards are dealt. Raking the pot is less annoying. Losers have already lost, so they do not care if part of the pot goes to the operator. Winners do not mind sharing a small percentage. The same player psychology explains why winners, but not losers, tip dealers.
Here is the legal problem: Prop. 1A amended the State Constitution to allow tribes to conduct “slot machines, lottery games, and banking and percentage card games.” The Constitution and federal law require that the state and tribes sign detailed compacts to spell out exactly how the casinos will be run. In the compacts Gov. Davis has signed – 62 so far, with 35 more to go – tribes may offer “Any banking or percentage card games.”
So, the Constitution tells the Governor to sign compacts permitting “banking AND percentage card games.” What he actually signed permits “banking OR percentage card games.”
Under the compact, tribes may operate banking games, like blackjack, OR may operate percentage games, meaning round games like poker with a raked pot. Is that permitted by the Constitution, which says tribes may operate “banking AND percentage games?”
It is possible the Constitution means that a game has to be both a banking game and a percentage game, like traditional casino games, where the house participates and has a percentage advantage. No percentage games allowed unless it is also a banking game.
On the other hand, perhaps the Constitution means that tribes may conduct all banking card games, meaning any game where the house takes on all other players, and all percentage games, meaning round games with a raked pot.
Which interpretation is correct?
I don’t know. And no one else does, either.
Perhaps it does not matter, because poker and other round games are such a small part of a tribal casino. But there is another conflict.
The Constitution says tribes may only have “slot machines.” But the words the compacts use is “gaming devices.”
It is only a matter of time before someone challenges some of the more inventive gaming devices being introduced into tribal casinos as not being “slot machines.”
Professor I Nelson Rose is recognized as one of the world’s leading authorities on gambling law. His website is www.GamblingandtheLaw.com
Source: OnlineCasinoNews
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