Table Gaming Rejected in Jefferson County!

Greetings from Wild, Wonderful, West Virginia.

Here is your WV Table Games update. Two counties held elections this past Saturday (June 9th). Ohio County - in the northern panhandle of WV passed the referendum and will allow table gaming at their racetrack. Unfortunately, Jefferson County (the county next door to me) voted down table gaming. The other two counties with racetracks will be voting later this month.

All told the vote so far, though disappointing, is not too surprising. The bill was written by Delegates from the two northern panhandle counties with tracks and did not have much input from Jefferson County Delegates. As a result, a disproportionate amount of the Table Gaming revenue would have benefited the northern panhandle counties and short-changed Jefferson County.

It's too bad, because they were projecting that Charles Town Races and Slots would have produced 50 percent of the Table Gaming revenue. Part of the Jefferson County voters thoughts were that if they vote it down this time, the Legislature will sweeten the pot for Jefferson County in the next session because Legislators will not be able to resist the amount of money they could get from Table Gaming in Jefferson County. In a future post, I will list some of the things the Legislature should look at and consider to make Table Gaming more palatable to Jefferson County voters.


On a side note, I went into Charles Town Races and Slots for the first time last Friday. I have no interest in playing slots. But was is a bit overwhelming to see around 5000 slot machines in one building. I had no idea there were so many different kinds of slot machines. There was a glorified version of a food court, a restaurant, a very nice buffet, and at least 5 bars.

I guess I will have to wait a while longer to play live poker.


Enjoy the (live) Pokery Goodness (even though I can't).