East coast slot competition: good or bad for poker?

[pocketpared]

With the proliferation of slot machines at racetracks in New York and Pennsylvania, coupled with tougher anti-smoking laws, A.C. profits are down the past 5 out of 6 months for the majority of casinos. They are responding with their usual knee-jerk mentality by cutting back on comps rather than meeting the increased competition head on and increasing comps to lure players in. They don’t understand smart businessmen welcome competition because it can be used to make you look good. This is what happens when corporate bean-counters manage casinos.

Poker players, per se, do not do a casino any good. The table rake and profits from food do not come close to what a bank of popular slot machines or a pit of table games produce in terms of net win for the casino. The casino offers the poker player a game hoping he loses and goes out into the main casino to that table game or slot machine and tries to get even. In the alternative, casinos hope the steadfast poker player brings with him a wife, girlfriend, or friends who may go out into the main casino and lose money while the poker player remains in the poker room. The game is offered for a reason.

The mentality of the A.C. casino executive is best illustrated by a conversation at a local gym between a card counting friend of mine who has lived in Atlantic City since before the advent of casino gambling, and a high ranking executive from the Hilton casino. When asked why the Hilton didn’t offer late surrender at blackjack while most of the other A.C. casinos did, the executive replied, “At Hilton we’re not interested in giving the player a better game. We want the player to lose his money as fast as possible, get out of our casino, and get the next one in. We don’t have to offer anything. They come anyway.” Tropicana, a number of years back, tried to convince all the other A.C. casinos to drastically reduce and even eliminate comps to players. Luckily, the other casinos saw the stupidity in this suggestion and, with the increasing competition from the Ct. casinos didn’t support it much beyond reducing incentives to the bus gaming traffic.

When a gambler walks into a casino, casino personnel look at him and consider whatever money he has in his pockets to be their money: they just haven’t got it yet. People who think of casinos in friendly terms because they go there, play only poker, and make money doing it, are just naive. They haven’t been exposed to the true nature of the A.C. casino: “screw everybody and make money, as is our God-given right, at all costs”.

With A.C. casinos hurting and due to hurt even more as slot competition builds, they will cut whatever isn’t making them money, and concentrate on that which does. Table games are their sole current advantage in the new competitive era. The casinos most likely will have to reduce the floor space now devoted to slot machines and increase the table games they offer. Will they reduce the poker rooms, too, hoping to add table games there to attract the non-slot gamblers out there? Will A.C. casinos reduce the comps to poker players too or will they strive to attract this resource? Will poker benefit or will it be hurt by the new slot competition facing A.C. casinos and draining their once monopolistic profits?

At first, I thought A.C. would hold true to form and start screwing the poker players next. But now, I’m not so sure. I understand Foxwoods just months ago upped the poker comps from 1.50/hr to 3.00/hr now that the Mohegan Sun’s poker room nears completion. Of course, true to casino form, Foxwoods had dropped comps to 1.50/hr from 2.00/hr when Mohegan Sun closed their poker room years before. Taj in A.C. has given 3.00/hr to 20/40 stud players and 4.00/hr plus a free weekday room after 4 hours of play to 40/80 stud players for quite some time. They haven’t taken this back yet. Any other opinions on what this new slot competition facing A.C. casinos and eroding their profits will do to east coast poker? Will the casinos value poker players as a source of potential revenue and fight for their business or, as has been done so many times in the past, will A.C. casinos do what they do so well: smugly alienate yet another group of customers and drive their business away?