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Nevada Casinos Want Relaxed Rules for Private Gaming

LAS VEGAS, Nevada –- Responding to feedback from casino operators, Nevada gaming regulators have steadily scaled back minimum bet requirements as they craft rules to implement a state law allowing private gambling areas for the world's biggest bettors.

Regulators dropped from $20,000 to $3,000 the proposed minimum bets required to gamble on table games in the private rooms.

Nonetheless, the reduced minimum bets aren't low enough for the casino industry, regulators learned at a Thursday Nevada Control Board meeting.

The industry wants $500 minimum wagers.

The casino industry proposed wholesale changes to a draft rule crafted to govern the private casinos, including minimum bets 95 percent less than those originally proposed by regulators.

"We initially proposed (minimum bet) limits at $20,000, then $10,000, and after that $3,000," said control board member Bobby Siller. "These were changes made at the request of (industry executives)."

Siller seemed incredulous when he asked, "Now you're asking for a $500 minimum?"

He noted that the rules were designed to attract new big bettors to the state, bettors willing to risk millions of dollars.

Jack Godfrey, lawyer for the Nevada Resort Association, the casino industry's Carson City-based lobbing arm, explained the rationale behind a $500 minimum bet.

"We're trying to get the minimum wager for table games (in the private gaming areas) as low as possible," Godfrey said. "With the downturn and the impact of the events of Sept. 11, we're in a situation where the Nevada casino industry needs additional flexibility."

The control board decided not to vote on the proposed regulation and asked the Attorney General's office to draft a range of options for the panel to consider at a later date, possibly as soon as Nov. 19.

State lawmakers passed a bill last spring authorizing a change to Nevada's 70-year-old law requiring all gambling to be open to the public.

Lawmakers, regulators and casino operators said during legislative hearings that the private gambling areas, to be called "international gaming salons," would attract international high-rolling bettors, gamblers unwilling to wager under Nevada rules requiring wide-open gambling.

Regulators testified that modern video surveillance methods would allow the control board to ensure the integrity of the private games of chance, one of the key reasons behind the state's wide-open gaming law.

The new law requires the Nevada Gaming Commission to draft rules setting minimum slot machine bets of $500 in the private gambling areas. Lawmakers left it up to regulators to determine a minimum bet amount for table games, if any.

Godfrey said private gaming is one key way Nevada casinos can compete with casinos in other jurisdictions, particularly those already offering private gambling areas in casinos.

Industry executives told the control board that casinos in London and Australia permit the casinos themselves to decide what bet sizes to allow.

They said some bettors like the flexibility to be able to dramatically drop their bet sizes, and that it makes for poor business to tell the customer they couldn't do so.

The industry's alternative regulation not only would lower the minimum bet from $3,000 to $500, it would lower the credit line required to play in a private casino area from $1 million to $50,000.

Control board Chairman Dennis Neilander said when state lawmakers passed the bill allowing private gaming areas, "the minimum wager and financial criteria (required to gamble) are two of the things legislators hung their hats on."

Siller smiled and said that, using the industry's proposed rules, he could qualify to bet in a private gaming area.

"And I've lived on a public servant's salary," he quipped

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