Viewpoint by Judy Rosner
Casino gambling in California is now a $6 billion a year industry.
How casinos owned and run by Indian tribes are taxed has received attention recently due to the governor’s interest in the issue as a way to help balance California’s budget.
Poker, in particular, is hot as teenagers and seniors are playing the game in increasing numbers.
“World Poker Tour” is a hit on cable, while online gaming has surged.
The show and Internet games have helped amateur poker players learn the ropes before graduating to casinos.
The gaming industry not only is growing, it is changing in other ways.
More women are casino owners, general managers and in other positions of power in the industry. This has opened up professional opportunities for women since gambling now is legal in all states except Utah and Hawaii.
Until the 1960s, women employed in gaming were waitresses and other traditional female support staff.
If they were professionals, they were found only in human resources and marketing. One would have found few female dealers in the 1960s.
Today women are found in every area of gaming and hotel operations.
Claudine Williams was one of the first women to work as a top executive in a Las Vegas casino.
She came to Las Vegas from Texas in 1965 with her husband. As partners, they operated the Silver Slipper Casino on the Strip.
Williams is considered a trailblazer for other women, including Diana Bennett, chief executive of Nevada’s Paragon Gaming LLC, which works with Indian tribes on casinos.
Bennett’s story is similar to women in other industries who got their start by taking office work or other traditional jobs. Once their talents were recognized, they moved into middle and upper management.
Today, Bennett’s company is involved in the development and management of casinos in Nevada, the Palm Springs area and in Canada.
Casinos employ slot directors who determine how slot machines are placed on the floor. This is no small job since slots are the major source of casino revenue. Historically, slot directors were men. Today many are women.
Bennett said she believes men and women lay out floors differently. She recalled laying out slots more like one would set up a supermarket floor.
As she described it, “You place catchy machines as end caps to attract attention and put the most popular machines at the back of the floor, much like how grocers put milk at the back of the store.”
The differences also extend to how male and female casino managers decide how much and how fast machines pay off, according to Bennett. Hold percentages mandated by gaming regulators are a factor. But there are numerous types of games within these hold percentages.
Of course, the house always wins in the long run.
When Bennett became a slot director, she said she noted that the floor in the casino where she worked had 3,000 machines crammed together in a way that made it hard to move.
To her, this was an uncomfortable setting and didn’t facilitate getting up for a drink or to change money. It was natural for her to think that if players were more comfortable, they would play longer and drink more.
Bennett said she assumed her male predecessor reasoned that the more machines, the more profit. She removed a number of machines and put more space between them.
Similarly, Bennett said she tends to offer more frequent payouts than men believing that will get players to gamble longer and have more fun doing so.
Whether the gender of a slot designer is directly related to machine profits is unknown. But the difference in approach is interesting.
There probably still are too few women casino owners and managers for a comparative study to be done. Yet it would be interesting to know if casino layout and payout decisions are related to gender differences.
Equally interesting is that while there are casinos up and down the state, in Los Angeles, Riverside and San Diego counties, there are none in Orange County.
Since OCers like to play poker as well as other card games, it seems like a good opportunity for an entrepreneur,female or male,to open a large card room.
As for opening a casino, what OC needs is proof of a once-upon-a-time Indian reservation. Seems that is a necessary condition for opening one these days.
Rosener is a professor in the Graduate School of Management at UC Irvine and a noted author and speaker.
