Colorado’s Gilpin County, one of two that allows casino gaming, has received permission from state health authorities to allow casino table games to reopen. Gilpin county includes two of the three casino towns: Black Hawk and Central City. It has been waiting for six months.
Teller County, the home of Cripple Creek, has not let been allowed to reopen table games.
Casinos in the Centennial state closed for three months beginning in March, and then began cautiously reopening in June. But they were only able to open with slot machines. That caused a major financial hit on the casinos that rely on card games, roulette and other games.
Gilpin County casinos have now adopted the “Protect Our Neighbors” protocols whose purpose is to stop the spread of the virus.
David Farahi, chief operating officer of the Monarch Casino and Resort in Black Hawk told Westword, “Playing a slot machine is basically the most socially isolating thing you can do. It’s one human with an inanimate object.” He continued, “With table games, at a minimum, you have a dealer and a player. Because it’s more challenging to make it safe, I think that’s the reason why the state didn’t allow table games at the onset.”
Allowing casinos to operate at full capacity is of particularly interest to Gilpin County since it gets 85 percent of its operating budget from casino taxes.
Gilpin County Commissioner Ron Engels said it was particularly frustrating dealing with the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment over the issue because they would say things like “ ’In two weeks, we’ll revisit opening table games,’ ” and then say something similar two weeks later. This stretched out for two months.
Because of this the Gilpin county budget has lost $4.5 million. “There will be absolutely no capital projects in next year’s budget,” Engels told the Denver Post last week.
The county’s unemployment rate, which reached 20 percent in April, is still around 12 percent.
Finally on September 8 the health officials allowed casinos to reopen their table games. But they will be considerably different than they were prior to
Covid-19. According to Farahi: “Since Colorado is the only state that allowed casinos to open with slot machines only and not table games, there are some best practices that have been developed across the country that we’re going to deploy here in Colorado.”
These include “touch-free on cards,” so that, for instance, in blackjack, only the dealer will touch the cards. Each table will include hand sanitizer and chips will be sanitized regularly.
Games that require players to touch cards, such as pai gow poker, won’t be returning right away. Craps will return, but only with players sanitizing their hands before shooting, and dice sanitized when players change.
At the Monarch, a big proportion of guests ae couples and often one will like slots while the other likes tables. “If there are no table games, neither comes,” observed Farahi.
Last week Teller County officials once more requested the state to allow Cripple Creek’s 12 casinos to offer table games. Marc Dettenrieder, chairman of the Teller County Board of Commissioners told Out There Colorado he expects the state to act on their request “in a week or so.”
The request is actually an amendment to the variance to statewide restrictions that allowed the casinos to reopen in June. It includes such things as limiting players to three to a table for blackjack, and six for poker and craps.
Dettenrieder added, “We worked very closely with the casino industry on this variance. We feel like we are in a good position to go back to this with new Covid cases trending down. While table games are on percentage basis relatively small, they are an important part of casinos getting back to normal with their revenue. This variance is really important to the City of Cripple Creek, which struggled when the casinos were closed.”
Meanwhile, another ray of hope for Colorado’s casinos has been the return of the NFL and the resulting sports betting. The state’s sports betting kicked off May 1 with a variety of esoteric sports to bet on, like table tennis but gradually pro basketball, hockey and baseball have joined them.
However, all the casinos were on tenterhooks waiting for pro football. About 33 million Americans plan to bet on an NFL game this year, according to the American Gaming Association.
DraftKings offers retails sportsbook at the Mardi Gras Casino in Black Hawk and online sports wagering all over the state. Its co-founder Matt Kalish says the state is one of its best markets.
Kalish told the Denver Post, “The NFL has the biggest national audience following the sport, and I think it’s also the weekend cadence. The NFL has just carved off Sunday. Everybody is just paying attention and dropping what they’re doing to pay attention.”
The Wildwood Casino in Cripple Creek’s Director of Marketing Andy Jones says slots revenue is actually better than last year and only somewhat less overall. The casino is building a 102-room hotel and building business with its biggest ever promotion, a nightly drawing with a $2 million jackpot.
