Perhaps it will go the other direction. More favorable games will attract more people back sooner. Lower rake, better odds, free buffet! Will casinos compete hard for the players? Naw, just wishing.

Yup. It doesn't seem as though any games are viable. Slots are feasible as social distance can be maintained and machines cleaned after patron usage.

As easily as this thing spreads, and as terrible as the sickness is to suffer through and the large number of people who end up dead, people are going to avoid this thing like the plague (evidently except for the protestors, who want to spread the disease as quickly as possible). Few fish are going to come back to lose money and risk exposure. Sure winning players might show up, but losers like me don't need much of an excuse not to come to the tables. It's not that I can't afford to lose what I lose, it's that I see no reason to risk gettting sick for entertainment. Who do you think is going to support your career now, boys? Not the fish who have lost our jobs and even the whales have taken a huge hit in the market. Without donkeys and fish like me, what are the 'professionals' going to do to make money at the tables? They already have to borrow and split shares to survive. It's going to get much worse from here on in.

yea but when u got to a business or restaurant your not constantly exchanging items that other people have been using. one chip could pass thru hundreds of diff people on a given day

This is pretty funny, especially the people being turned away. What is the accuracy of the hand test? lol

I think it's basically a bureaucracy problem, and it's happening in many countries. In the UK we have four bodies (the national branches of the NHS for England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland) keeping track of hospital deaths, and those are the numbers being tallied by Worldometers and Johns Hopkins Uni, other bodies are counting care home deaths (e.g. local authorities), and another central office counts overall fatalities including non-Covid deaths (e.g. the Office of National Statistics).
There's also the "new" way of counting in some countries and states which includes probable Covid deaths (untested people that died) along with confirmed positive cases. I believe the US CDC has asked all States to use this new method, but not all States have so far complied.
FWIW, France has had several 'random' days where it added over 1000 deaths to its stats (making its daily fatalities graph jump all over the place), Belgium's fatality numbers more or less doubled on April 10th when they started including care home deaths, and you probably saw that New York added 3,778 additional (but historical) deaths to its total on April 14th. They then retracted 145 a couple of days later. :/

When western countries "find" additional bodies to add to the numbers, they are sometimes praised for being transparent. When China revises its numbers upwards, they are accused of lying or covering up the truth. It's a curious state of affairs.

The US National Biodefense Strategy team was shut down in 2018.
https://www.baharmedia.net/2020/04/a...vid19-response

There you go, looking for "facts".

"Facts" don't vote. Besides, who knew ?

You're either a troll or a complete moron or both. Either way I'm not engaging you anymore because you suffer from the stupid. *jingles keys* that should keep you busy for a while

Brief article on las vegas reopening

https://www.tmz.com/2020/04/18/las-v...tize-covid-19/

A number of U.S. states have declared lotteries "essential" during the pandemic.

https://theintercept.com/2020/04/16/...ing-essential/

"The many critics of state lotteries find their continued operation perverse. They argue that even at the best of times, lotteries amount to a regressive tax on low-income people; that they aren’t always as lucrative for state coffers as they portray themselves as being; and that even if they were, the health of retailers, players, and lottery staff should trump all other considerations right now."

I agree with much of this, perhaps all, but it doesn't have a lot to do with my post.

I was posting about something very specific, in reply to EastCoastBalla's post immediately before mine - mid-sized gatherings happening in the next several months, like poker tournaments.

While I've never expected that health authorities would be looking to test the entire population, extensive testing or at least screening of everyone going to a particular event may allow for them to happen sooner than they otherwise would. Or even if they're permitted regardless, it might be needed to make them viable. If you hope to get 500 people into a casino to play in a poker tournament any time this year, testing everyone, or at least some good screening, is going to make it more likely that people will be willing to participate.

And it could well be that government/health officials aren't going to allow anything like that in the foreseeable future; I'm certainly not going to attempt to predict that. But testing/screening *might* be a path forward.

Yes, you're right - standards change, and mistakes happen. What I took from your earlier post was that governments were making the decision to keep deaths out of their "official count" to make things look better, which isn't good IMO. But that might have been my misinterpretation.

Heh, yes. And not surprising, I'm sure you'd agree, given China's lack of transparency over many things in the past. But an argument can be made that them adding the deaths is a sign of transparency - if they've been hiding them all along, why reveal them now? I can see it both ways.

I guess the Bacchanal Buffet will be a thing of the past? Damn that was a pretty nice buffet.

Yeah I used to think he had thoughtful posts but as I have read more and more of them I agree with you, way too much trolling. He loves to quote posts over and over and claim we're all wrong and of course only he's right. And he goes on and on in almost every long winded reply. It gets old. I gave up trying to go back and forth with him.

Yeah I have thought things through, I am just saying that there will most likely be a few poker rooms that will reopen sooner rather than later. And spacing out players at each game will most definitely happen. Another thought is that each player will have to wear thin gloves to touch their cards, decks being changed much more frequently and of course poker dealers all wearing gloves and masks. Look I am not saying any of this will be a perfect way to not catch covid19 but imo as long as these poker rooms are being perceived as doing a lot to 'protect' its players than to some that's all that matters.

But I ageee, it will be very difficult for a long while to really feel very confident about not putting yourself at risk at any poker room no matter what they claim they are doing.

IDK, unless I'm missing something (and I well might be), it seems like you were making something of a straw man argument. Didn't this all start with a Tweet that about "Several Las Vegas casinos (downtown and Strip) now telling team members plan is mid-May callback for June 1 reopening."? I don't think that says, nor is anyone else saying, that this is going to happen. It's kind of natural that businesses are going to ensure they're prepared in case they are given permission (and hopefully health experts are on board if that's the case) to open that soon. And if they're not able to, then they'll have to postpone it again. I hardly think that necessarily means "Dollars before sense everytime", or "open er up billy bob".

This is actually an interesting topic. I wonder what the general liability of companies is with regard to the health of their employees. Many of us go into work environments where there are sick people. Some people get sick as a result. And some die as a result. It would seem like this wouldn't be any different. Are there any lawyers on the thread who know the actual answer instead of just speculation by me or anyone else?

There is still no definitive knowledge about this mode of virus transmission, at least by the CDC.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019...d-spreads.html

It will be interesting to find out what the reality is compared to other respiratory diseases. For instance the CDC's flu page is pretty similar. But I don't think surface contact is ever considered a very significant transmission mode for flu.

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/disease/spread.htm

I do agree that a player actually coughing and/or sneezing at a table represents a serious risk (as they always do).

As I mentioned in the above thread post, surface contact is not likely to be a primary mode of transmission. And you're wrong, anyhow. Pretty much anything you do to exchange goods and services in public involves touching surfaces. While I agree playing poker involves this to a larger degree than some stuff, I pretty much reject the idea that at some point it will be ok to do most things. but not ok to play poker. We either get on with life with a heightened level of awareness and hygiene, or we continue to just stay at home until there's a vaccine. Lots of people are planning on option B. I wish them well, but I don't think its anywhere near the majority, and certainly not the direction governments are going in.

Having an exit strategy is good there's no doubt about that. My opinion is june is optimistic and irresponsible for a swath of casino bacteria traps to open.

I can't unpack aka's reply without getting into politics

I understand people are frustrated and losing money. I'm in a very fortunate position where my concern, after health of family, is when international flights will open up
So maybe I can play the long game, and that's where my perspective is coming from.

Speaking of flights what would people say is the O/U on international flights opening. I'm hoping sept.

I'm sure the world will keep on turning.

Yeah, it very well might be; that also depends on how they open. And even if they open with no restrictions, the danger will likely be limited by low interest at first. But of course they can't count on that, and they need to open safely whenever they do. Hopefully that's how it happens, and the casinos are simply being prepared rather than pressuring government to move quicker than health experts recommend.

Yeah, I've certainly run into that problem at times.

Me too; feeling very fortunate when I see everything going on around us,

I think for some countries it could be even sooner, but if it is that early, it'll likely be slow-going as there would be lots of screening going on. Although that might be mitigated by much smaller crowds.

This is one area where there are SO many variables, it's hard to even guess. But that won't stop us.

You came up with your own solution. And remember to report obvious political posts.

Pretty good article .... a lot of background on various States and their positions, funding, retailers dependence, etc.

Did you expect that "existing critics of State lotteries" would NOT find a new CoVid angle to play up opposition ?

Death and taxes .... no one is rooting for either to come due sooner rather than later.

Ironically, there is no lottery in Nevada.

Do you really believe the protestors objective is to spread the virus as quickly as possible? Do you not think their point is the degree of this lockdown is an overreaction for the entire population (read low risk people)? That was certainly my initial reaction but with the Italy situation I thought I'd give it time to play out before forming a more definitive position. Well, I believe enough time has now passed and I think my initial reaction wasn't far off. I know that's a blasphemous position on this thread but overreactions happen all the time in life and to remove that view from consideration because the topic is a deadly virus is living with blinders on.

We were originally told the reason for the lockdown was to flatten the curve because the hospitals could not handle the surge in serious cases. Other than NYC I don't see where that is happening. Most pundits say it's because of the radical steps we took and I'm sure there is some truth to that but I think more people have been exposed to this than we think and the majority are not needing hospitalization (this is of course speculation on my part). If that is the case there is no need for this lockdown to continue much longer. I am in favor of getting things reopened sooner rather than later. The high risk people should stay in quarantine (serious quarantine) until a vaccine is found while the rest get back to normal life. And yes, I think life after this will be much closer to the way it was than not (another blasphemous position).

I will be the first one to go to a large sporting event and back to the casino to play poker. I don't have a lot of concern over the virus and those that have a serious concern should not be anywhere near those events.