Dusk Till Dawn wins casino license

Word is out that Dusk Till Dawn have finally been granted their casino license this afternoon.

There’s such excitement that the Blonde Poker forum has effectively crashed right now – it just took a good five minutes to load this thread with the announcement, which already contains about 300 pages of awesome MySpace-style graphics or armies of clever dancing smilies congratulating them, with other wittily appropriate comments like "ship it".

The Nottingham card room should now open in November.  Good luck to them – they’ll need it.

The delay to the opening, originally planned for April, is thanks to objections from three major casino chains (two of which did not even have a casino in Nottingham when they protested) and has already cost an estimated £100,000 a month.  Building the club before being given permission to operate was a fantastic business decision.

They’re also still adamant that no house-banked casino games will take place on the property, even though the full casino license that has been granted would allow them to do this.  It is to be a poker-only venue, and poker – particularly low-cost, well structured, dealer-dealt tournaments that the majority of their pre-registration members will be expecting – is just about the least profitable game that a casino can offer.

Winning a license to print money but choosing to produce only a handful of fivers is another fantastic business decision.  The club will have all the overheads of a casino, but without any of the cash cows.  We’ll just have to wait and see just how soon blackjack and roulette are introduced "due to popular demand".

Meantime, they could use the the "session fee" loophole to charge whatever they need to do to survive, but thanking members for their support in showing that there is indeed enough demand to warrant a casino license by stinging them with a 30% or higher rake just doesn’t seem right.

So they’ll probably have to rely on live action for revenue.  Since September 1st, cash games can be raked or charged hourly – and how.  I picked up a copy of the new charge schedule at the Vic at the weekend, where they’re more than happy to lighten the wallets of rich Londoners by up to £15 per hour – and that’s without a dealer!  If people in the East Midlands are desparate for a game of cards, then maybe they’ll pay that too.