Poker News

United States of Poker

As we have seen in past articles, many of the northern states in the U.S. play host to various forms of poker all the way from the Great Lakes west to the Pacific, and among these states which has offered poker for several years is South Dakota.

Poker, along with blackjack and slot machines, was legalized in Deadwood, South Dakota in 1989 after a constitutional amendment to allow gaming in the small town passed a statewide referendum the year before, according to Larry Eliason, executive secretary of the South Dakota Commission on Gaming. Native American gaming began soon after in other areas of the state, and today several of the state’s casinos offer poker rooms to their clientele. Gaming is only allowed in Deadwood and on native American reservations in South Dakota.

According to Eliason, one thing that has changed over the years is the maximum wager limit, which was originally $5 per wager. The limit was moved up to $100 per wager after another successful ballot initiative in 2000.

Today, South Dakota’s poker rooms range in size from three to six tables each, with Texas hold’em, Omaha and stud played almost everywhere. Pineapple and various dealer’s choice games are also played in many rooms, and most offer various limit and spread limit options in wagering.

Deadwood plays host to several of South Dakota’s poker rooms, one of which is located in the Gold Dust Casino. Poker room manager Keith Rice, a five-year veteran of the poker industry in Deadwood, said while the majority of their business consists of local players, that changes in the summer. “This a major tourist area from mid-June all the way through August,” Rice said. “We have the Sturgis bike rally every August, so that’s a huge deal here. We see a major influx of bikes most of the way through August, but there’s two weeks where it’s nothing to have 300- to 400,000 bikers in Sturgis, and that overflow comes right into Deadwood.”

As the boom in poker has occurred over the past few years, Rice said his players have been getting younger, but the older players continue to play as well.

“Actually, a lot of the mainstay, older players have stayed in, but we do see a big influx of younger players, ranging anywhere from 21 to 25 years old,” Rice said. “New players have seen it on TV, are playing online and want to get their feet wet playing lower-limit live games to learn basically how to play somebody that’s sitting right across from them, instead of in front of a computer screen.”

Rice said other players who play in his room are “regional” players, and all three types of players - local, regional and tourists - combine to keep his room busy, even with the state’s $100 maximum bet limit, which Rice said doesn’t affect live play.

“We get a lot of regional action, like Colorado,” Rice said. “They have a maximum $5 bet limit (in Colorado), and a lot of those players like to come up here just to stretch it out a little bit and be able to play a little higher limits.”

“We’ll play anything, even up to $5-$50 and higher,” Rice said. “We get some of those players in here on a regular basis. It’s nothing to run a $10-$20 or $5-$50 game on a Friday or Saturday night.”

Tournaments were another matter where the $100 limit was concerned, but according to Rice, the rules concerning buy-ins changed at the beginning of 2005.

“(The $100 limit) didn’t apply to tournaments until the first of the year,” Rice said. “We were trying to set up a city-wide tournament, basically a Deadwood shootout, and some of the legislators in the state got windthat the buy-in would be more than our regular $100 bet limit, and there’s some question about the wording in there. We’ve been having $250 and $500 buy-ins basically since day one, but with this new legislature in there, they’ve decided to put everything over $100 as far as a buy-in for a tournament, which is not a bet, on hold, so the maximum we can have right now is a $100 buy-in tournament.”

However, Rice was optimistic the $100 buyin limit for tournaments would change soon.

“I think we will probably be able to go back to what it was before,” Rice said. “The tournament directors have gotten together and basically we’re sending representatives to discuss the difference between a buy-in and a bet. Just because you’re buying in for a tournaments doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re going to bet that much, unless you go all in on the first hand. It’s just a question of wording. I think we will be able to go back to what we’ve been doing in the past, which is a lot of the bigger tournaments.”

As for the future, Rice thought business would continue to grow industry-wide.

“I don’t think it’s going to go anywhere but up,” Rice said. “As long as the kids don’t get burned out on it,don’t spend their bankroll unwisely, those players continue to return, and we’ll have new players coming in as they hit 21 and want to try their luck at some live action poker.”

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