http://www.theunion.com/article/20051220/OPINION/112200091&SearchID=7323105
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Thomas Elias: Lack of control keeps Indian gaming suspect

By Thomas D. Elias
December 20, 2005

The feel is strictly Las Vegas, Reno or South Lake Tahoe. But the results,
gamblers often complain, can be very different.

Walk into many of California's modern Indian casinos, run by tribes from
the Pala to the Morongo to the Rumsey and many more, and if you'd been
blindfolded on the approach to the building, you could barely tell the
difference between these glitzy new gaming palaces and the storied ones
across the border in Nevada.

Until you look at the details of some games and - many players say - the
results.

The Indian casinos have thousands of slot machines, just like in Nevada.
They feature card tables and even craps - with a slight difference. It's
craps with cards and not dice in many Indian facilities. Rather than have
players rolling dice (which have to be checked periodically to make sure
they're not weighted to favor either the house or a player), dealers pull
cards from two large decks stacked in card shoes just behind the come line.
These decks only have cards from one to six, just like the faces of dice.

And the Indian casinos are not hurting a bit for popularity. Their parking
lots are full, even on most weekdays. They operate day spas, luxury hotels,
steak houses and celebrity showrooms, creating ever more opportunities for
the formerly famous.

The players keep coming, armed with quarters, silver dollars and much more.
But many claim their chances of winning are far less in Indian casinos than
across the state line.

There is no way to confirm or deny those claims with certainty. For while
Nevada has a well-funded gaming commission that oversees casinos, card
rooms and even airport and drugstore slot machines, California does not. In
Nevada, dice and cards and slots are subject to random checks and cheaters
are severely punished. Investigators for the Nevada Gaming Commission are
among the most feared and respected law enforcement officers in that state.

But in California, the state Gambling Control Commission is a toothless
wonder, unable even to keep track of profits reaped by the 55 tribes
operating casinos under compacts with the state.

Nominally, the California commission has the same responsibilities as its
Nevada counterpart, and more. Besides inspecting the 55 casinos and 100
cardrooms operating legally in this state, commission agents are supposed
to "control, collect and account for all license fees" and make sure that
no tribe installs more slot machines than allowed under its compact.

But this agency has just 48 employees, with no reinforcements coming for at
least another year. In his original budget request, Gov. Arnold
Schwarzenegger asked to double the commission staff, but later cut that
request in half - keeping staff at current levels - because of opposition
from legislators in both major parties.

This was no surprise, with scores of lawmakers in both parties on the
campaign-donation take from casino Indian tribes.

As it stands, there aren't enough inspectors today even to determine how
much money the Indian gaming industry makes in California. The usual figure
reported is $6 billion a year, but that's just an educated guess.

If they can't even tell how much money a tribe is making, how are the
state's small corps of investigators going to police the honesty of slot
machines, card games and, yes, craps with cards?

The answer, of course, is that they can't. What's more, even if it had
enough money to hire more investigators, the state commission still might
have problems. For it's important to find impartial testing firms to check
whether slot machines pay off to their advertised levels. But almost all
companies equipped to do such testing now work for the casino tribes.

That's a good argument for an independent state testing laboratory, but
there's been little interest in this from legislators. Meanwhile, some
gaming commissioners claim they are not equipped to assess technical
reports prepared for the tribes by private slot-machine testing outfits.

In short, no one knows if Indian gaming in California is honest or crooked.
And no one will for the foreseeable future.

By contrast, the odds at craps in Nevada are well known to many players.
Same for the odds of winning at blackjack. And gamblers can pretty much
trust that even if they lose, they at least haven't been cheated.

No one knows that about casinos in California. Which makes plunking down
money in this state's gaming palaces different than gambling across the
state line, no matter how similar things may look on the surface.

Thomas D. Elias is a syndicated columnist whose work appears Tuesdays and
Fridays in The Union. Contact him at tdelias@... via e-mail.