Suburban Chicago, in the US, will have scattered islands of gambling later this year when the state rolls out the first legal video poker machines to offer payouts to customers.
According to national trade press, this is because at least 60 per cent of the 269 cities and villages in suburban Cook, DuPage, Kane, Lake, McHenry and Will counties have local policies banning video poker.
Those bans don't include Chicago, which has an anti-gambling ordinance that prevents the games - leaving far more people living in areas where video poker will be illegal when it finally gets the green light, possibly as soon as September.
In many cases, suburban leaders have chosen to opt out of the 2009 Video Gaming Act that allows establishments with liquor licences to carry up to five video poker machines. In others, state gambling officials found suburbs have old anti-gambling ordinances on the books that would prohibit the games from being installed.
Some communities - including Forest Park, Plainfield, and Romeoville - are still debating whether to allow video poker, while others, such as Palos Hills, have reversed previous bans. Proponents say the games will create additional tax revenue while providing more income for local establishments and greater job security for their employees.
"Plenty of people had a knee-jerk reaction and voted to opt out of video poker," said Zack Stamp, a lobbyist with the Illinois Coin Machine Operators Association.
"But now people in these communities are starting to see this is going to be pretty well regulated and are willing to take another look at it.”
The Illinois Gaming Board last week announced it had cleared a major hurdle in launching video poker later this year. The board declared that its master computer system is ready to be linked to the thousands of games expected to be offered across the state.
So far, the Gaming Board has received licence applications from more than 1,200 establishments - about 20 per cent of them from suburban Chicago. To date, the board has issued 89 licences - 19 of them in the Chicago region.
