Place your bets!

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Get ready, get set, gamble! After a lot of foot-dragging, stumbling and bumbling, gambling expansion will be a slots-playing reality in Pennsylvania later this year. As a result of Wednesday's licensing approval by the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board, folks in eastern Pennsylvania will be able later this year to wager on machines at "racinos" -- a half-racetrack, half-casino hybrid.

Because the proprietors of Mohegan Sun at Pocono Downs and Philadelphia Park can't wait to get going, they've already started building temporary slots parlors they plan to open before year's end. The new owners of The Meadows in Washington County, and the under-construction Presque Isle Downs in Erie County, expect to host slots players in the first half of 2007. The Downtown or South Side or North Shore slots parlor will follow sometime later.

Voters in Ohio, meanwhile, have a ballot initiative in November to consider allowing slots in their state, and West Virginia lawmakers next year will weigh once more whether to let their racinos add blackjack, poker and other table games.

For people who enjoy mindless gambling -- slot machines involve only luck, no skill, except for video poker -- the expansion is a godsend by eliminating their need for lengthy trips to indulge themselves. Critics raise plenty of objections, however, about the potential for personal financial devastation, increased crime, harm to other entertainment businesses, and more. You could call it a big crap shoot.

The great American pastime

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To help put things into perspective, The Morning File turns today to "State of the States," a survey of U.S. casino visitors put out each year by the American Gaming Association. (The people who run casinos prefer that you call their trade "gaming" instead of "gambling," just like the people who bury you prefer that you do so in a "casket" instead of a "coffin." Ahhhh, American marketing, ain't it grand?)

The annual industry report comes from people with a vested interest in putting gambling in the most favorable light, but it mostly sticks to the facts. It noted that Mississippi, hard hit by Hurricane Katrina, was the only state in which commercial casino revenues declined in 2005. Overall, commercial gaming revenue increased by nearly 5 percent, to more than $30 billion. (Indian tribal casinos count their revenue separately, and they show even more growth, up an estimated 15 percent to nearly $23 billion last year.)

"A full quarter of the total U.S. population visited a casino in 2005, according to Harrah's Entertainment/TNS NFO polling data. The 52.8 million casino visitors made a total of 322 million trips -- 3 million more trips than were made in 2004," the AGA report said, while indicating a separate poll had higher estimates, suggesting as many as 35 percent of Americans visited a casino within the past year.

Not to be hypocritical

The report said the poker boom increased in 2005 from 2004, with nearly one in five Americans playing the game in some form.

"According to polling results, young adults (21-39 years old) continue to play poker more than any other age group, with more than one-third indicating they played in the past year. And nearly twice as many men as women reported playing poker in 2005 (25 percent vs. 13 percent)."

Pennsylvania will have no legalized poker or other forms of table games, although some pro-gambling lawmakers think it is inevitable. They said it was hard enough to get the slots permitted, and opponents would have had an easier time defeating any version that enabled Pennsylvania gambling halls to resemble a bona fide casino. It's an interesting distinction, as though playing the slots is somehow more acceptable than playing roulette.

Then again, it's an even more interesting distinction that the Pennsylvania Lottery is on pace to do $2.6 billion in sales this year, with barely a trace of public criticism. For the players, by the way, the lottery returns far less to them in winnings than any other form of legalized gambling. The lottery participants are also far more often low-income than for other types of gambling. But as Groundhog Gus would say, don't let that stop anyone.

How we compare

Pennsylvania will be the 37th state with legal wagering available in some form beyond a state lottery or racetracks. Utah and Hawaii are the only states with no form of legalized gambling. The tally in the AGA report shows Pennsylvania will be the 11th state permitting racinos, and the 12th with some form of commercial casino operations separate from racetracks.

Twenty-eight states have tribal casinos, though none operate in Pennsylvania. (The Mohegan Sun at Pocono Downs will operate as a state-regulated racino, rather than the type of federally sanctioned casino the Mohegans run in Connecticut.) Five states permit card rooms, separate from casinos. Six allow video lottery terminals resembling slot machines to operate at various outlets.

Quotes from gamblers:

Courtesy of www.quotegarden.com:

"The urge to gamble is so universal and its practice is so pleasurable, that I assume it must be evil." -- Heywood Broun

"The safest way to double your money is to fold it over once and put in your pocket." -- Kin Hubbard

"Money won is twice as sweet as money earned." -- from the film, "The Color of Money"

"There is a very easy way to return from a casino with a small fortune: go there with a large one." -- Jack Yelton

"A number of moralists condemn lotteries and refuse to see anything noble in the passion of the ordinary gambler. They judge gambling as some atheists judge religion, by its excesses." -- Charles Lamb