Gaming briefs for November 12, 2004

Friday, Nov. 12, 2004 | 11:05 a.m.

Hotel occupancy rises

Macau, a casino-operating city in the midst of a tourism boom, had an average hotel occupancy rate of 71.2 percent in September, up 3 percentage points from a year earlier, the city's Statistics and Census Service said.

About 297,195 guests stayed in Macau's hotels in the month, an increase of 11.8 percent from a year ago, the agency said. The city had 9,105 hotel rooms at the end of September, 2.2 percent more than the same month in 2003, it said.

In the first nine months of 2004, the former Portuguese enclave had 2.9 million hotel guests, up 38.3 percent from a year earlier, the agency said.

County approves rule restricting casino boats

GEORGETOWN, S.C. -- Georgetown County Council has approved an ordinance that would bar casino boats within 1,000 feet of schools, day care centers or churches.

The measure, given final approval Tuesday, would keep Palmetto Princess LLC from docking at Voyager's View Marina and Capt. Dick's Marina in Murrells Inlet.

County Attorney John "Mac" Tolar has not decided whether to appeal Circuit Court Judge Jackson Gregory's order allowing casino boats to operate. Gregory said Georgetown County cannot ban the boats because the state has not banned them.

Attorney general calls for tighter rules on bingo

PINEDALE, Wyo. -- Attorney General Pat Crank says bingo has gotten out of control in Wyoming because of large loopholes in the state's gambling laws.

Crank told state lawmakers Tuesday that electronic bingo, in particular, needs much better oversight. "I can't sit here and tell you these are fair games," he said to the Joint Travel, Recreation, Wildlife and Cultural Resources Committee.

Most forms of gambling are illegal in Wyoming. In the 1970s, however, lawmakers exempted several activities from the definition of gambling, including raffles, bingo and pull-tab games that are sold or held solely in Wyoming by charitable or nonprofit organizations.

Crank suggested that the committee consider sponsoring a bill that would tighten the exemptions in the gambling law. He also advocated the establishment of some sort of gaming commission to better regulate bingo and its cousin, pull-tabs.

Statewide sting nets dozens of illegal gambling machines

GARDEN CITY, Idaho -- Idaho State Police investigators said they seized about 50 illegal gambling machines in a raid of 13 bars across the state, most of them in the Boise region.

The search warrants and seizures came after a yearlong investigation. Officials said they were tipped off by family members of gamblers who allegedly frequented the bars.

The machines were not casino-style slot machines, officials said. Instead, players could rack up credits or points, and bar employees allegedly would pay them money based on the number of credits accrued.

"In several cases we found extensive records which indicated who had been playing the machines, how much was being taken in and how much paid out," Lt. Bob Clements of the Idaho State Patrol's Alcohol Beverage Control Bureau said in a prepared statement. "Suffice it to say the take for these establishments was considerable and, of course, all of it was tax-free income for the operators of the machines."

Clements said each machine brought in as much as $2,000 a week -- quickly paying for the per-machine cost of between $2,000 and $5,000.

None of the bar owners were arrested in the raids, but Idaho State Police officials said several people face misdemeanor or felony charges.