Delaware Park hosts the Winter Poker Classic this month (Jan. 2-15), featuring 18 events, including satellites each day. A couple of tournaments to highlight are the $400 opening event with a $100K guarantee and the $1,090 main event (Jan. 12) with a $150K guaranteed prize pool.
PPC AT DOVER: The Pro Poker Championship will be Jan. 11-Feb. 11 at Dover Downs Hotel and Casino’s Crown Royal Poker Room. Events, ranging from a six-max cash game with a $100K buy-in to a $3,500 buy-in tournament, will be recorded for broadcast. Every Friday there’s a $10K guarantee, and the last Friday the guarantee is $25K.
Maryland making progress
At the offices of the Maryland Lottery and Gaming Control Agency in Baltimore, they’re hiring additional staff to help create regulations and a system to monitor gaming expansion.
“It requires a lot of planning, but I think at the end of the day it’s going to be completely transparent to the player,” director Stephen Martino said.
Rules created by the attorneys and staff will be presented to a seven-member commission for approval soon.
“A very granular level rules of the game for players if they wanted to go and know that a royal flush beats a pair or how the payouts are,” Martino said. “That will be contained in the rules.”
Then there’s the cash to consider. With slot machines, a computer chip counts the money with 100 percent accuracy. Now rules have to be created to monitor the cash exchanged at table games.
“What we’re talking about is putting in place the standards by which casino employees have to operate so they know what the regulatory standard is for handling of money, counting of money,” Martino said.
It also means new rules for security plans, surveillance and internal controls. By mid January the rules for table games should be in place. About that time the focus will shift to the bidding process regarding who will operate a new casino in Prince George’s County. That will be handled by the commission that approves casino licenses, and they’ll most likely borrow from the standards used to approve a new casino for downtown Baltimore.
“I think that they are going to be able to move expeditiously … and allow whoever is out there to step forward and put their best proposal forward for Prince George’s County,” Martino said.
— Michael Young is the Ante Up Ambassador for the Mid-Atlantic area. Email him at anteupmike@gmail.com.
