Tribal Casino Deals Blow To Card-Room Owners Operators Left Reeling By Empty Tables Ask Legislators For Relief

Linda Hemphill and her husband, Bill, spent $100,000 creating the perfect card room in their Federal Way sports bar, P.J. Pockets.

Forget the image of a dark room with folding tables and worn chairs.

The Hemphills bought 50 comfy high-backed, five-wheel office chairs, five 10-sided tables, and wedge-shaped rolling drink carts to sit between the chairs. They hired five guys to watch the tables and four waitresses to serve them.

Now the Hemphills’ former employees work at the Muckleshoot casino. And their players go there, too.

P.J. Pockets is just one of the many local card rooms that have been pummeled by competition from the tribe’s new casino in Auburn.

“We knew it was going to happen,” Hemphill said. “We just didn’t know it was going to be so devastating.”

The expensive chairs used to be filled with customers who chatted and played friendly poker, paying $2.50 each half-hour.

“People sat in these chairs from 9 a.m. to 2 a.m.,” Linda Hemphill said. Now the card room sees 10 customers on a good night, and Hemphill doesn’t bother to open the room until 8 p.m.

There are six or more card rooms in south King County, and more than a dozen in Pierce County. Bets at the card rooms are limited by state law to a maximum of $10. Bets at the casino are limited to $250 - and the tribe hopes to double that soon.

“It’s not fair business,” said John Chong, general manager of Cafe Arizona, which also has a 50-seat card room with high-backed office chairs.

Cafe Arizona opened just a couple of months before the tribe’s casino opened in April. It’s less than 10 miles away.

Before the casino opened, Chong’s tables would fill up every night. Some nights, 60 to 70 people would wait in line for a seat. Photos of happy, noisy-looking gamblers adorn a bulletin board.

But at noon on a Thursday - which would have been a busy time five months ago - the card room was silent, empty. Chong, like Hemphill, will cut back the hours his card room is open.

The tribe seems oblivious of the card rooms’ troubles.

“I don’t know anything about card rooms,” tribal Chairwoman Virginia Cross said recently.

Card-room owners said they were also upset because they formerly paid thousands of dollars in taxes to the state. Now, the money that once was taxed goes to the Muckleshoots - and the state gets nothing.

Several card-room owners gathered recently at The Dynasties Chinese restaurant in Federal Way to ask local legislators for some kind of relief that would allow them to compete with the casino.

If voters in November approve an initiative to allow slot machines on Indian reservations, perhaps the Legislature would legalize slot machines or some other form of gambling that could compete, Linda Hemphill said.

But otherwise, Hemphill said, she doesn’t see many possibilities. The Legislature rarely moves quickly.

“How long is it going to take?” she said. “How many businesses are going to go under?”