A man in a red waist-length jacket and his partner were betting as much as $6,000 in an Asian card game on a Friday afternoon in the Gold Room of the Bicycle Club in Bell Gardens.
In the Golden Terrace section of the nearby Commerce Casino, stone-faced poker players placed bets of $200 and $400 all afternoon and into the evening, vying for four-digit pots.
The recession may be responsible for growing unemployment, pinching municipal budgets, closing auto dealerships and crippling some manufacturing, but, so far, it has dealt a pretty good hand to at least four of the six gambling casinos in Los Angeles County.
The Commerce Casino in the City of Commerce is expected to have finished 1991 with its highest revenues ever--more than $75 million. At the Bicycle Club, gaming revenues in 1991 nearly equaled the record $84.1 million the casino brought in the year before. The combined revenues from the Normandie Casino and Eldorado Club, both in Gardena, are the highest ever, according to city records.
Despite years of suffering from legal and financial problems, business is picking up at the Regency Club in Bell. The Huntington Park Casino has been attracting less business recently, but a spokesman there said a Los Angeles County sheriff's investigation into alleged profit skimming is more to blame than the recession.
"We're about the last industry to get affected by the recession, and the effect is minimal," said Ron M. Sarakbi, general manager of the Commerce Casino.
Sarakbi and several other club managers cited various reasons for their relatively good fortune.
Regular customers may be betting less and generally playing more conservatively. But they are still spending about as many, if not more, hours at the tables--good news for the casinos, which make their money charging fees by the hour and for every hand played.
The casinos also are picking up players who, in better times, would go to Las Vegas for a more costly gambling junket. Senior citizens with steady pensions are the casinos' wild card against the recession; retirees make up the bulk of players during the day. And the opportunity to win quick bucks becomes increasingly attractive to many players seeking to ease their recession worries with a few good hands.
