Bellagio is also the only room that opened up 6-handed from the start.

How did they manage to do that when the other rooms are still 5-handed max, per gaming regulations?

Each room could submit their re-opening plans for poker and other to gaming. They were the First and only to put up the plexiglass, so they requested 6 max and got approved.

I don't know the rules after that, there might be a waiting period between new requests. Maybe they have to wait until next month for new request. In any case I am sure within a few weeks you will see the other poker rooms playing 6 max also.

I have been tracking 11 states and the US and my 7 day rolling avg data are close to yours in some cases, but I do see lags.

"+rate" below stands for the positive test rate %. This is averaged out for the past 7 days (i.e., total positive cases/total tests)

US 11 day lag: Cases peaked 4/10 (+rate=19.7%), deaths peaked 4/21

NY 4 day lag: Cases peaked 4/10 (+rate=43%), deaths peaked 4/14
MI 10 day lag: Cases peaked 4/3 (+rate =27.7%), deaths peaked 4/13
NJ 10 day lag: Cases peaked 4/7 (+rate=39%), deaths peaked 4/17 then again 5/3
CT 4 day lag: Cases peaked 4/22 (+rate=39%) deaths peaked 4/26
PA 24 day lag: Cases peaked 4/11 (+rate=23.2%), deaths peaked 5/5

AZ 30 day lag: cases peaked 4/9 (+rate=9.8%), deaths peaked 5/8
AZ ??? lag: cases are at all time highs (+rate=17.4%), deaths going up since 6/11
CA 14 day lag: Cases peaked 4/9 (+rate=8.8%), deaths peaked 4/23
CA ??? lag: cases are at all time highs now (+rate=4.6%), deaths are near lows since peak.
FL 30 day lag: cases peaked 4/8 (+rate=11.1%), deaths peaked 5/8
FL ??? lag: cases are at all time highs now (+rate=8.2%), deaths at all time lows since peak
GA 10 day lag: cases peaked 4/13 (+rate=23.3%), deaths peaked 4/23
GA ??? lag: cases are at all time highs (+rate=7.6%), deaths are going up since 6/7
NV 9 day lag: cases peaked 4/4 (+rate=14.7%), deaths peaked 4/13
NV ??? lag: cases are at all time highs now (+rate=4.5%), deaths are at lows since peak
RI 11 day lag: cases peaked 4/26 (+rate=14.4%), deaths peaked 5/7
RI 7 day lag: cases peaked again 5/21 (+rate=12.6), deaths peaked again 5/28

I'm seeing an average of a little less than 13 day lags between case peaks and death peaks.

Of the states that I am looking at that have all time highs in cases recently, 2 of the 5 are experiencing significant increases in deaths. Though both AZ and GA still have fairly low death rates per capita at this point.

I'm also thinking that the European countries you mentioned had alarming death rate %'s early on which is an indicator that their testing capacity was very low. So they may not have come close to capturing their actual peak in cases at the time. edit: you can see this is true for NY and CT which had very high positive test rate %'s at their case peaks.

In looking at this I think we have to consider that deaths are certain statistically and positive cases are somewhat random in that the positive test rates at the time of the peaks may have been abnormally high. I realize that some states may be intentionally under counting their deaths but as long as they are doing it consistently, it shouldn't affect the death peaks.

The Nevada Gaming Regulations expressly permit an operator to propose alternative plans for reopening, which Gaming will review and may approve.


Looks like that is what Bellagio did.

Wild Horse Pass casino in Arizona opened, masks were optional and social distancing was "encouraged" and then a bunch of employees got sick with COVID, one died and they shut the place down for 2 weeks.

There is another casino in AZ, Talking Stick Resort, that has more stringent COVID measures, like masks required, plexiglass on poker tables, temperature checks upon entry and they seem to be faring better. Though the whole state is a giant COVID hotspot so who knows right now.

https://www.azcentral.com/story/news...ise/3214335001

Gila River casinos temporarily close again after employee death, Arizona's rising COVID-19 cases

But don't you know that's the price of freedom! I keep thinking of that scene of The Bridge on the River Kwai when the camp doctor looks over the final scene and says, "Madness! Madness!"

How many people have to die before commonsense takes hold?

It's breaking some kind of record for obfuscating its data.
In the first week of June, Florida announced fewer than 250 Covid deaths (241 recorded by Worldometers), but somehow the state issued 1200 more death certificates than usual in the week up to June 6th.

I understand Florida is basically doing the same thing as Russia and some other countries: recording most of its excess deaths as "pneumonia", apparently so that they don't show up in the daily Covid stats. The short story is that a lot more people have been dying there with Covid than most people think.
CDC Excess Deaths page: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/c...ess_deaths.htm

In other news, Arizona announced 3000+ new cases today. Mercifully, I think the fatality rate of the confirmed cases will be much lower than in the past, as it's been reported that the average age of confirmed cases has been tumbling. I assume this is partly because many old/vulnerable people continue to shield themselves, while the younger parts of the herd bring society closer to immunity.

Someone explain why casinos haven't dusted off the old PokerPro tables? It seems that those would make more sense to use: even with the cashier plexiglass they've installed, you're still touching chips and cards that others have recently.

.... because players did not like to play on them, compared to playing live.

Players are willing to play live with or without plexiglass.

No one says dust off those old machines or even buy new ones.

Just a matter of time. People will use them when it's the only game in town. As much fun as chips and felt? No. But reality will win in the end. The day of the live dealer is drawing to a close. Just my opinion.

Fact check....

look at the post right before yours. That's at least one.


I guess they don't teach math in law school

1 > 0

Nah, he was asking why it has not been done.

objection. argumentative.

I strenuously object

A truly under-appreciated moment in Rhe Book of Lawyers on Film..... thanks.

If you are talking about whether or not there will be poker tables with dealers/traditional chips inside a casino 10 or 20 years from now... that I can't say. The economics of live poker are not great and casinos don't need a ton of incentive to reduce or eliminate live poker from their offerings.

But these venues have toyed with getting rid of dealers in many of their table games. It hasn't stuck because most table-game customers aren't there to play video machines. They want the social and personal experience of playing at a table. Without it, the game becomes some sort of glorified slot machine, and in that case, why offer table games at all?

I could foresee technology playing a larger role and the increased quality and decreased cost of VR could make the live gaming experience a fair bit different than it is today. This may be inevitable, but I certainly don't see it happening any time real soon.

We’ve had that conversation a couple of times. One group of players says they wouldn’t mind playing electronic tables even if there are regular tables as long as there’s some benefit like lower rake. The second group says they’ll play electronic tables if that’s the only game in town. The last group says they would rather not play live poker at all than sitting at an e-table.

Article in the score app about online poker "booming" during covid. Don't remember ever seeing a poker story in this sports app.

https://www.thescore.com/news/1976915

I'd imagine the number of cases will continue to rise and rise. The combination of increased testing, businesses reopening, and people getting on with their lives makes this pretty much a certainty. Throw in a lot of people becoming very lax with social distancing and mask wearing and thew should be going up just about everywhere except maybe the places that were hit the hardest in the beginning. The media continues to try to scare people with these increased numbers which is pretty ridiculous. Most with a clue have learned to take the media with a grain of salt..

The numbers to keep an eye on are deaths and hospitalizations. So far that is still looking good. Thats what matters. Without a vaccine. Just about everyone will be getting Covid-19 sooner or later. Just like everyone gets the flu sooner or later. And we still get the flu sooner of later even with a vaccine. Whether we get on we get on with our lives tommorrow, six months from now, or two months ago chances are the same things are going to take place. So why wait?

Just like with other illnesses, if you think someone has it, or it looks like they have something. Stay the hell away from them. Businesses by all means should not allow sick people in, which is a big change from pre-covid. You could sit sniffling and coughing at a poker table and nobody would say much, those days are over for now.

Personal notes and observations:

After being locked down in PA thanks to our way overcautious governor for three months, decided to plan a trip with the family to Florida to get away for a week.

*flights-
- flight down was probably 75% capacity most middle seat empty unless in groups
- return flight was booked solid, not an empty seek, they had to shuffle people around to accommadate everyone.
-masks required, though not super strict, people still brought there own food and drinks which obviously masks were removed for that.
-airports were noticably quiet, maybe 50% of normal traffic if not much less.

-restaurants
-it was great to be able to eat out again, seemed like old times. things spaced out more but nothing seemed weird. no masks except some of the employees
-people didn't seem uncomfortable or worried at all (which is how it should be, if you are concerned just don't eat out)

Spent three days at a beach resort on the west coast of south florida. Very little signs of the pendemic. Few worse masks, not much social distancing. You could tell the people visiting were there to get way from all that. Not insanity like the riots, of the Ozarks pool party but people just acted NORMAL.

Then headed north for a few days to visit family in Jacksonville. Not quite as loose and relaxes as down south. Then again it's more like real life there with more news which wasn't great with some outbreaks at Jax beach. A bunch of bars or closing for a few days to clean and test their employees just a week after reopening. Which is exactly what should happen when outbreaks occur. But still better then PA as far as more options of things to do and less paranoia.

Everything worked out great. Wanted to do something for my kids especially. They are kind of the silent victims in all this. Not having school, camp, being able to do fun things. It's a real shame for them. Especially the ones who miss proms, graduations, and other things that can't be made up.

I don't think that's the case. Depending on the level of presure from above, the mood of the people releasing the data that day, who called in sick, the reporting will vary quite a bit.

FYP

What took you so long? Since when has anyone trusted the media? I remember when lefties used to point out how biased the media was and how we should not allow certain combinations of tv, radio, and newspaper ownership in the same media markets by the same company, and how we should stop these massive media consolidations, between Disney, Sony, AOL, Time, Warner, blah blah blah the GOP was like, we trust corporations; liberals hate America and think corporations are evil! Corporations can be trusted and do not need regulation.

Now liberals get blamed for bias in the media? GTFO Ah, back on topic. We wait so we can flatten the curve. It's working. We'll see soon if we opened up too quickly or not. I hope the nay sayers (myself included) are wrong, but for now, no live poker for me!

Treatments have already been found that reduce deaths in serious cases by large numbers.

Those of us who say, stay closed, realize that to open up is not giving all people 'choices'. It is taking away from many people the choice to be safe and stay home from work as the extra unemployment and other support will go away and they will be forced to choose between feeding their kids and working. Not a great 'choice'.

Which is not to say forcing people to close businesses is a great idea either. It just seems to be the better of two choices.

Frankly I think that the chance exists to start Trump's infrastructure projects (outdoor work mostly) and provide jobs for people with appropriate precautions on a WPA model. Why this isn't being pushed by Trump (it's a winner) demonstrates he is an idiot. obv I'm a genius

And the idea that we can open up and handle the resulting increase in spread is, ... ... untested at best.

That's why wait.

There's an intermediate ground between continuing to widen reopening rules and locking down for a second time.
We now have strong evidence that the virus spreads most readily in closed spaces with social crowding of people not wearing masks. Some simple adherence to space capacity rules and making masks and proper social distancing both mandatory would go a long way toward achieving what could certainly be accomplished with more draconian lockdowns that further damage the already crushed economy.
And no, the choice of whether to wear a mask is not a protected right in our federal or any state constitution (freedom to infect).

Six hands is hands down better

"The Bellagio poker room upped the ante Thursday when it reopened with the approval to host six-handed games.

The installation of plexiglass dividers between the players gave the Bellagio an edge over the other poker rooms open in Las Vegas, which have been hosting five-handed games, per guidelines from the state Gaming Control Board. The dividers also mean that players at the Bellagio are only encouraged to wear masks, while the other rooms are now required to have players wear them."

"The Orleans, which reopened June 4, is prepared to match the Bellagio’s plexiglass. Poker room manager Garrett Okahara said in an email that the room had already ordered dividers and hoped to have them installed and ready for six-handed play by Thursday or Friday."

"Caesars Palace, which reopened Thursday, is standing pat. Ryan Bishop, an executive who is running the room, said he saw no need to install the dividers. We’re getting plenty of business without it,” he said. “The players are happy.”

"The South Point, which reopened June 4, wants to get to six-handed but without dividers. Poker room manager Jason Sanborn said in an email that the casino has put in a request to go to six-handed, saying that the new requirement of masks — which were only encouraged before —negates the need for plexiglass.

“Gaming indicated that masks equal plexiglass by the way they worded the new guidelines, so we feel like we have agood case to go six without them,” he said."

"The Venetian became the first room to bring back multitable tournaments when it offered $250 buy-in 80-person shootout events Friday and Saturday. In that format, the 80 players were spread at 16 five-handed tables. Each table played down to one winner, then those 16 winners were placed at four four-handed tables. Those four winners then advanced to the final table.

The 80 seats were sold out before the tournament started both days. The Venetian said on Twitter that it would offer the same format next Friday and Saturday with the buy-in raised to $300 (still a maximum of 80 players)."

http://digital.olivesoftware.com/Oli...04&sk=642652F6

That's pretty subjective though. Some people might think 600 daily deaths is a good number, others might compare it to a different country (e.g. Germany: 13) and think it's not so good.

Personally, I hope the number of new infections in the US starts dropping significantly ASAP so I can travel to Europe without having to go into a 2 week quarantine upon arriving there.

Hollywood Casino at Kansas Speedway recently started to offer table games again and people asked on their Facebook page when poker would be back. When they answered "we don't have an anticipated date yet", somebody responded that the casino had laid off all poker staff and didn't intend on bringing it back. But I have no idea if that's true.

Just looking over the FB comments and checking profiles of people who ask about poker, makes me realize why live poker is still so profitable..