That’s not splitting hairs at all. There is a huge difference between table games and poker in this respect. He didn’t say poker is more dangerous; he said you’d have to limit the game to only a few people to maintain similar distancing. That makes the poker table unprofitable.

Table games are profitable with only a couple people playing because they’re playing directly against the house. Paying a dealer and taking up the space of a whole poker table to play 3-handed, which will result in smaller pots and many hands not making it to the flop, is not going to generate much rake. There is no way they would run poker games with that as the setup.

I am not necessarily in the no-open until there is a vaccine camp.

I am in the camp that for some activities, like poker, society will be in the no-open until vaccine camp for a long time. I just don’t see them allowing strangers to congregate like that together for hours.

My other hope is that this dissipates. Burns out. I file that under my ‘hopes and dreams’.

I understand why many people would prefer that casinos be entirely smoke free. I just don’t understand how going smoke free would help make casinos more safe from coronavirus.

I don’t know, I never play table games. I only smoke while playing video poker, or in cigar lounges. Certainly I support smoking being prohibited in poker rooms, since players are forced in close proximity without very much choice about where they sit.

I’m a little surprised there hasn’t been more talk of immunity certificates in the US. Plenty of things, include all casino activities, could be completely opened to people who have already recovered from the virus and thus have immunity from reinfection.

It's not especially surprising when you consider that medical experts still aren't certain about immunity, and don't yet have a reliable test for it.

Every medical expert I’ve heard quoted believes there is immunity. No one is sure how long, but the consensus seems to be that it is likely to be at least 2 years. There’s also just the basic fact that we’ve seen over 3 million confirmed infections, and zero cases of confirmed independent reinfection.

People fake IDs to get into bars for a beer, what happens when a bunch of people fake a certificate to go to work/casino/travel and then infect an otherwise safe zone?

Plus motivating a bunch of degens to get the disease so they can play roulette in a months time isnt a good idea.

Every medical expert I’ve heard quoted believes there is immunity. No one is sure how long, but the consensus seems to be that it is likely to be at least 2 years. There’s also just the basic fact that we’ve seen over 3 million confirmed infections, and zero cases of confirmed independent reinfection.

Given that probably around 30% of NYC is now infected, this would seem like a crucial step to opening up that city at least.

Well, they could only infect another person who was also faking immunity.

There could also be a public record of who the government has issued the certificates to that could be referenced by employers, etc.

I've highlighted the important part. Also, they don't yet have a reliable test for immunity.

And just to change your "every medical expert" experience:

https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/25/us/wh...-19/index.html

I, um, wait, what?

That's only true if you contemplate a very different kind of opening than is currently being done everywhere, where only people who are immune are allowed out. That might not be much of an opening, depending on the true infection rate.

That report didn’t say anything suggesting that anyone believed immunity didn’t exist, just that no study had proven it.

This seems like a hard thing to prove directly without violating medical ethics (it has been proved in monkeys in Chinese studies that cannot be done on humans). But the inductive evidence that we have thus far seen no confirmed cases of reinfection seems overwhelming to me. If reinfection were possible, we should have seen thousands of cases of it by now.
The official NY state serology study, cited by Gov. Cuomo in his daily briefings, found that 25% of NYC residents sampled tested positive for the antibodies indicating they had already been infected.

This also seemed to be growing at a rate close to 1%/day, so it’s reasonable to think this would be close to 30% by now, even if the most recent data collection is only a few days old.

Here’s the most recent update of the study that Gov. Cuomo gave Monday:
https://newyork.cbslocal.com/2020/04...nyc-residents/

[QUOTE=NickMPK;56071398]I understand why many people would prefer that casinos be entirely smoke free. I just don’t understand how going smoke free would help make casinos more safe from coronavirus.



It would help prevent people from obtaining pre-existing conditions( emphysema ,lung cancer, heart disease) thus becoming less susceptible to the virus.

People still don’t seem to understand how much the recent case and death numbers, combined with the serology studies, indicate what a catastrophic failure that lockdowns have been in the US.

It looks like the national numbers are going down slightly. But this isn’t the story. The story is that they are declining significantly in New York and New Orleans, but increasing or staying the same almost everywhere else. This isn’t because the lockdowns have been more effective in NYC and NO; it’s because such a large portion of the population of those cities had already been infected that they are now approaching herd immunity.

The death rate in NYC and NO has been terrible because the vulnerable population was infected as basically the same rate as the healthy. Similar overall infection rates are inevitable in the near future across the rest of the nation. The only way we hold the fatality rate down is to direct those infections toward the young and healthy while more vigorously protecting the vulnerable.

Agreed. When I said "medical experts still aren't certain about immunity", I was referring to the open questions - how long is immunity good for, and how reliable is it? Sorry if I wasn't as clear as I could have been.

Agreed, with the small fix I made.

Very interesting. I hadn't heard about that, thanks.

I was under the impression that reliable serology testing was only now becoming available; I'm surprised they felt confident enough in the testing a week ago. I'd be a little hesitant to make assumptions based on those early numbers, but it's certainly promising.

Regardless, I think any kind of an immunity passport would be too late for most places. Most openings are going to come before the ability to widely test is available, and perhaps before there's confidence on whether that immunity can be relied on. Perhaps it could be useful for "higher risk" openings down the road.

Things definitely seem off here. We might be making this far worse with this half-hearted opening.

Maybe Sweden is doing this right. Yes, they have an elevated death rate, but perhaps (they think) they will achieve herd immunity and will in the long-run be safer.

We on the other hand have done a terrible job of stopping this as well as getting close to herd immunity. Bad economy and bad health for a longer period of time. Basing our hopes on a vaccine which is really a gamble.

In the meantime, there will be a population that will start going out no matter what the government says.

But that's not the whole story either; the numbers on the west coast have been fairly promising, in places where a shutdown happened quicker and more consistently.

I think it's too early to say that some kind of shutdown can't work. Even Sweden, which many point to as a place that went a very different direction, has put some measures in place that target more than just the vulnerable.

Hopefully we can learn from this, and quickly. If serology testing finds that the virus is not widespread yet, a big second wave could be coming in the fall, and one has to wonder how much tolerance there will be for any major shutdowns again so soon. We really need testing to be greatly ramped up, and shutdowns much more finely tuned, by then.

They don't even need to "do it right", they just need to get to a couple of months down the line without the entire population being able to fit into one Ikea store and it'll prove the death rate from coronaplague is, as most suspect, much much lower than the doom merchants state

Read the California Governor's 4 stage plan to reopen the state. The earliest the card rooms in Cali will be open will be months away. That's according to when Newsom will implement stage 3 which allows spas, nail salons, hair salons, gyms and other businesses with close customer contact.

With how strict Gavin Newsom is you can probably make a safe bet there won't be any gambling in the state for most of the summer if not the whole summer.

How will they handle slot machine handpays with social distancing?

don't want to argue this but this is an Internet Forum and occasionally arguing for arguments sake is one the things here. I can think of two big ones and these are not split hairs these are chainsaw through a 90 foot tree.

1) Casino will make money on a covid protected table game and lose money at a covid protected poker table.

2) Protecting customers/staff in a poker game at anything more than 3 handed is way more complex than a table game and is just not worth the hassle / risk / focus drain.

but your point about seeing more unique people hopping table games is true, so adjusted my peer reviewed scientific formula: D * DD * N) / U

To make risk of infection the same , poker would have to be 2-3 handed. never going to happen. I pre-accept your acknowledgement that you were wrong




Joe is "directionaly" correct that things will be changing but as it relates to table games, it will look a lot more like this than plexiglass enforced barriers at felted tables with one dealer serving one table.



In this form of Stadium seating you have Live dealers dealing multiple games on actual tables in the middle (blackjack, bacc, roulette or whatever). Tables have cameras, sensors etc so action can be followed on each termial. Player can bet on on one type of game or more. Some places will even have mutliple BJ or Bacc tables in the middle to select to bet on.

The terminals are VERY configurable and can be easily moved around and spaced out to accomplish any of the then prevailing distancing goals. Then moved again when those standards tighten or loosen. Areas can be set up differently as well. some close together to play with person you know / are traveling with, some farther apart if playing with total randoms. Jay Chun, ftw.

You know maybe I'm just a cynic but I don't see much of any of this being implemented. Way too time consuming and expensive and I think most casinos will just go the route for the time being of less players per table game, lots of masks and gloves and sanitizer and emphasis on social distancing. All these "new" configurations and ideas are cool to imagine and discuss but with a vaccine now perhaps(from Oxford) maybe ready at the end of the year to early next year and the amount of time and energy to have to reconfigure every casino, I don't see really any of this being implemented. But hey maybe I'm wrong.

I still believe poker will not be happening at the majority of the casinos for the forseeable future, less table games with fewer patrons, masks, gloves, sanitizer all over the place and emphasizing social distancing.

these are not new at all. Been succesful for 10+ years in many markets and after years and years of fail, started gaining traction in US several years ago.

They come in many forms from many different manufactures. IThey are already in just about every casino.

To some degree, Social norms are going to change in a permanent way, regardless of vaccine (google Covid-21 and Covid-24) Those norms play into the favor of these devices thus I suggest their existing growth trajectory will accelerate and they could become the standard for table games. That is the future of table games .... not plexiglass and felt.

Once you put up plexiglass at felted games (I think many casinos will do that in near term in attempt to open as soon as possible) you take away the one advantage felted games had... dealer and player social interaction. With that gone, players will be much more motivated to switch to stadium style.

Session fees at high stakes might still be run but anything but this will be too low a reward for a casino to run. I have seen enough mid to high stakes games running with 3 or 4 players playing in it.

[QUOTE=rbmadd;56071451] oh my goodness then we should also ban the drinking and the fatty foods in the restaurants by that logic right?

study after study is showing that smoking cigarettes actually may protect you from coronavirus too....

so you know what the way this whole thing has been handled and it being a clown world....yeah smoking i'm pretty sure will be banned now in all casinos lol

[QUOTE=cantrunworse;56071847] Yes, that study was from the Phillip Morris School of Infectious Disease. Co-Funded by RJ. Reynolds Endowment Fund. checks out.