I’m seeing a loophole in the recent “No Limit Texas Hold Em” poker tournaments the Delaware Legislature recently approved. A loophole that could mean a new casinos in Delaware. These “poker” events are now allowed in Delaware for charitable fundraising under very “strict” rules. One of the rules placed on sponsoring charities is:

Ҥ 1827. Limitations of Texas Hold’em Poker tournaments.
No sponsoring organization shall conduct more than 4 No Limit Texas Hold’em Poker tournaments per year with each tournament by the sponsoring organization to be held at least 75 days apart. Texas Hold’em Poker tournaments shall not commence prior to 1:30 p.m. and shall be limited to 6 consecutive hours. (75 Del. Laws, c. 117, § 1.)”

The idea of waiting 75 days was to prevent a new “casino” from opening in a town near you.

Along comes a retired doctor, and a retired pharmacist in Rehoboth Beach forming a group called the Delaware Fundraising Charity Inc. They call themselves an “umbrella” charity organization. This Sunday they will have a poker tourney for American Cancer Society, and next Sunday another tourney for Knights of Columbus. Both events held at the Atlantic Sands, downtown Rehoboth’s casino hotel apparently. This group claims they would like to produce a new tourney every week. The Delaware Gaming Board says the 75 day wait between events does not apply because the Delaware Fundraising Charity Inc. is a “third party vendor” and the applications for the event are under the name of the charities and not DFC Inc. Fifty percent of the proceeds are promised to the charity…the other 50 % will be to cover expenses. Let’s crunch some numbers:

It costs $150 to enter. 180 people can play, for a potential of $ 27,000. Maximum prize award is $8,000, leaving us with $19,000. 50% to the charity leaves $9,500 for the day to cover “expenses”, not counting drinks, food, etc. Hey, the Sands may be giving the room for free, in exchange for selling the booze.

The point is, according to the Gaming Commision this group, or any other group can do this every day, as long as a new charity is involved. Anyone want to open up a casino?

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 7th, 2006 at 10:40 am and is filed under Gambling, Rehoboth Beach. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.