[Port Conway Lane]

http://www.drf.com/news/charles-town...been-marylands

CHARLES TOWN, W.Va. – Charles Town Race Track has operated since 1933 and it introduced slot machines in 1997, but it had never experienced a gambling frenzy like the one that occurred last month.

Table games – including blackjack, craps, roulette, and poker – were made legal as of July 1, and it took some 24 hours to truck in the equipment, set up the tables, and get some dealers licensed. Charles Town’s casino was packed with customers playing its 5,000 slots, but shortly after midnight on July 2 almost everyone was impatiently eying the tables.

“When we finally opened 10 games at 12:45 a.m., there was a deluge,” general manager Al Britton said.

Casinos typically set the size of minimum bets according to demand, and the demand was so frantic that Charles Town established a minimum of $100 at the tables. There are few casinos on earth (not even Monte Carlo) where a customer must spend $100 to play a hand of blackjack, and the figure seems incredible for West Virginia. But it did not faze the patrons at the newly renamed Hollywood Casino at Charles Town Races.

“For the entire weekend,” Britton said, “people were standing four and five deep at every table, trying to get a chance to play.”

(Now that it has 85 gaming tables available for use, the casino can accommodate its customers more easily, but the minimum bet is still a substantial $25.)

Anyone who cares about Maryland racing will feel a sharp pang of regret visiting Charles Town. Its facilities are worthy of the Las Vegas Strip, and it is packed with the very customers who would have packed a Maryland racino if it existed.

“We have access to an affluent market,” Britton said. “Eighty percent of our customers come from Baltimore, Washington, and Northern Virginia.”

Nice job Glendening.