- Cardrooms warn rules could cut business activity by half
- Cities fear lost tax revenue funding police and fire
- Industry vows legal pushback over blackjack-style game changes
Advocates for California cardrooms say looming restrictions on blackjack-style games will impact thousands of employees, municipal budgets, and the financial stability of dozens of small and mid-sized gambling halls across the state.
On February 6, state regulators approved a new framework of regulation that effectively bans cardrooms from offering the games in their current form.
Under the revised regulations, players will no longer “bust” if they exceed a set total. Instead, each hand must be settled by comparing the player’s cards with those of the player-dealer. An ace paired with a 10-value card will also no longer count as an automatic win.
The rules further ban cardrooms from marketing or naming any game with the number “21” or the word “blackjack.”
Economic Fallout
Kyle Kirkland, president of the California Gaming Association, told CBS Sacramento that this was a $6 billion industry that supports 20,000 working families and generates roughly $500 million annually in state and local tax revenue. He warned that the regulatory shift could result in at least a “50% reduction” in business activity.
“It’s just a dramatic, hard, 180-degree pivot in how the law is being interpreted, and that’s what we have the problem with … without any real reason, any visible harm to the public, we’re having a 180-degree change in how these games are being interpreted, and it’s devastating,” he told CBS.
Unlike tribal casinos, which operate under separate state compacts, California’s cardrooms are licensed commercial establishments that contribute directly to municipal general funds.
In cities such as San Jose, Hawaiian Gardens, Commerce, and Gardena, gambling revenue supports police and fire departments, road maintenance, and general fund services. San Jose alone receives about $30 million a year tied to cardroom operations, per city officials.
Industry advocates like Kirkland argue that if table counts drop or popular games are reconfigured into less familiar formats, customer traffic could decline sharply, which will squeeze revenues, reduce employee hours, and strain the local tax streams that many cities rely on to fund essential services.
Tribes’ Spat with Cardrooms
For years, California’s influential tribal casino operators have pushed back against cardrooms’ so-called “California games” — modified versions of table staples such as blackjack and pai gow poker — arguing that they infringe on tribes’ exclusive rights to operate house-banked casino games.
Tribal operators are finally getting their way, but the economic fallout will be borne by cardroom workers and the cities that depend on them, according to Kirkland.
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