27Jun
California Casinos & Gambling
Short Summary: Â California is fairly liberal when it comes to gambling laws. Â In addition to allowing players do whatever they want, (including playing online) the state has legal and regulated charitable gambling, live and simulcast racing wagering, card rooms and lottery. Â The only thing they presently lack are sports books, any regulated form of online gambling and, if you want slots or video poker, you have to go to an Indian casino.
The following forms of gambling are legal in California:
- Charitable
- Pari-Mutuel
- Lottery
- Commercial
- Tribal
- Racetracks
While there have been several pushes to legalize and regulate online poker, and to a lesser extent other forms of online gambling in the state, none of them have been successful as of yet. They tend to either die a Legislative death or otherwise be outright rejected. Given all of the other legal forms of gambling in the state, it is somewhat baffling that this continues to happen.
California is basically reasonable when it comes to charitable gambling. Any organization may conduct a raffle anytime that it likes, whereas bona fide non-profits can become licensed to conduct bingo operations. Charities are also permitted to have, “Monte Carlo,” casino nights, though state law does limit them to one of those per year. If the charitable non-profit has its own physical location (as opposed to renting one) then it may have up to four casino nights per year.
The state does not appear to tax any charitable gaming revenues whatsoever.
The state offers live and simulcast pari-mutuel betting or can, through its racetracks. This is all governed and regulated by the California Horse Racing Board and the State of California has about ten racetracks. These racetracks offer both live and simulcast wagering and can operate 365 days per year, as a result, even on days that there are no races going on.
The lottery is regulated by the State of California and is known as the, “California Lottery,” which is technically a division of the California Gambling Control Commission, which is also responsible for regulating the card rooms in the state. The card rooms are the form of commercial gambling that takes place within the state.
There are also tribal casinos in the state who offer machines and work with the state of California by means of compacts. These locations are different from the card rooms in that they offer electronic gambling devices, whereas the card rooms focus on table games and poker.
The card rooms of California are also unique because they do not have a house edge. The games do, but the card rooms charge a flat fee per hand to the players and do not have a house edge because they are legally prohibited from doing so by law. The way it works is that players can theoretically take turns offering to, “Bank,” the game, which means they act as the house covering all of the bets for the other players at the table. The card room itself gets it’s per hand fees from all of the players at the table, including the one banking.
As a practical matter, California card rooms usually have, “Corporations,” which are essentially players who are hired and are there for the purpose of banking every hand. While other players must be given the option to bank, technically, usually these corporations are the only ones there able and willing to cover all of the action. This also allows the game to proceed smoothly in a manner more similar to Vegas casinos, but still not exactly.
Live Poker is inherently a player-banked game, so the California card rooms take a rake of the poker pots as they would in any poker room anywhere else in the country.
Top 4 California Casino Sites
 |  | 100% up to $11,000 Sign up | Read Review Play  |
|  | 250% up to ∞ | Read Review Play |
|  | 125% up to $1,250 | Read Review Play |
|  | 300% up to $3,000 Sign up | Read Review Play |
Online Gambling in California
The most recent event in online gambling to take place in California was, in 2022, the question of legalized online sports betting was actually brought to voters, and was soundly rejected by a vote of 83% against to 17% in favor. While there would certainly be no shortage of players, given the fact that California is the most-populated state in the country, it would seem that the voters have no interest in giving those would-be punters what they want.
If anything is going to happen with online gambling in California, at least, anytime soon, then it’s probably going to have to be the state passing something that never gets put directly before the voters. It’s also a bit ironic as the states that tend to be the most strongly against casino gambling and gambling expansion are the most conservative states, not the most liberal.
Another bill to fail in the state was one that would allow sports betting at the Tribal Casinos located within the state, but that would be in-person betting only. That proposition was rejected with a vote of 70% of voters against while only 30% were in favor of such a measure.
With that, it seems unlikely that Californians will have any avenue to legalized and regulated sports betting whatsoever, at least, unless they come up with a way to avoid any such going to a public vote. I guess they could try a vote with a goal of allowing the Commercial Card Rooms to offer sports betting, but I don’t imagine that would be successful either.
The one piece of good news we can offer Californians is that there are plenty of Internet casinos that still want your business, and you can find a list of our top recommendations above!
From what we have found, any penalties that would apply to unlawful gambling in the State of California are focused only on operators, so players do not have anything to worry about, in terms of being prosecuted. As ever, we would advise against any, “Internet Cafes,” if you have any of those spring up, because those are within the state’s ability to take action against. When it comes to the offshore online casinos, the state has no ability to do anything about them.
Another interesting component of California gambling laws is that they extend to municipalities to make gambling laws more stringent than those of the state, so in theory, a municipality could make it illegal to play online, but we have never heard of any such thing happening and there is no way they could actually enforce it even if they did.
With that, there are no legal and regulated operators in the state for online poker, casino or sports betting, but plenty of websites based out of state perfectly happy to have you as a player.
California Casinos And Card Rooms
The State of California is positively massive, and as such, it is home to almost innumerable tribal casinos and card rooms that are regulated by the state. To try to list all of them on this page would be a fool’s errand akin to trying to do the same on our Nevada page. You would be best advised just to do a Google search for casinos or card rooms in whatever city in the state you are visiting.
One thing that might make the endeavor a bit confusing is that the, “Card Rooms,” do not have to advertise themselves as such, but may instead choose to self-refer as, “Casinos.” The Bicycle Casino is the largest example of this as it says, “Casino,” but it only has poker and table games. One of the larger casinos in the State of California to offer slot machines is the Barona Casino and Resort, which is located in San Diego.
If you’re looking for a casino in California near you or where you are visiting and want to find out what it has, you would be well-advised to do a Google Search and either call or visit the website that it pulls up. The one thing that you can know for sure is that the Indian Gaming Act is what enables a location in California to have slot machines, so if you see any of those (whether or not there are tables) you know that you are in a tribal casino.
A good example of a traditional California card room is Bay 101. This is a San Jose institution, a place where poker pros and amateurs meet daily for tournament and straight head-to-head play. Bay 101 is so closely identified with poker in part because of its position as the operator of the only bounty-style tourney on the World Poker Tour. Occasionally, California-style table games are played here, but not regularly enough for me to consider this venue a real casino.
On the other hand, take a look at Thunder Valley Casino Resort, a perfect example of a California casino. Located thirty miles northeast of the state capital, in an unincorporated part of Lincoln County, Thunder Valley Casino Resort is a Native American casino that’s been open since 2003. The main attraction here are slot machines – the casino has more than 100,000 square feet of space dedicated to them. Also available are California-style table games, video poker terminals, live poker, and a few other traditional games of chance and skill. The property is also home to resort-style amenities, like fine dining restaurants, shops, and a huge pool and fitness complex.
Basically, the state’s Native American casinos are different because they can legally offer a larger variety of betting opportunities than card rooms. California’s Native casinos offer table games, all forms of slot machines, poker rooms and occasional tournaments, and live bingo games and pari-mutuel betting windows.
Card Rooms in California
So how did card rooms become so popular? A rule change.
In 2007, the California legislature decided to expand the definition of “charitable games” (which were already legal by state fiat) from just bingo and raffle contests to include contests like “poker,” and other forms of casino-style gambling. That new rule, combined with the state’s existing easy access to tribal gaming, made California one of the most gambling-friendly parts of the country. The state’s relatively loose laws are loosening further still, with some suggestion that parts of the state could expand legal access to gaming in the next legislative session.
The Golden State loves its card rooms, which by the way are glorified poker rooms that may have some other games of chance thrown in for good measure. California requires special versions of table games, in order to fit the state’s gaming law’s definitions, and most of these are variations of blackjack. The most popular is called “California 21,” and you can usually find some version of it in every poker room in the state.
The reason these games are legal? They are entirely player-banked, meaning the host accepts only small fees in exchange for letting gamblers use his space for their private games. All players are competing against one another, not against the house. That’s only allowed at tribal casinos, and only under certain conditions.
Lottery
The State of California has a very robust lottery that does a ton of revenue on a per resident basis. It seems like they might be in some hot water recently because the State Auditor has suggested that not as much funding as should be has been going to education.
We recently found out that a minimum of 34% of all lottery revenues were to go to education, at one time, and that the state lottery was to have a strict return of as close to 50% to the players as practicable. Of course, that would put it at a competitive disadvantage compared to other lotteries because most other state lotteries have a much higher return to player than 50% on their instant games.
The 2019 Annual Report can be found here.
The first thing that we will look at is that the report mentions they are not bound to an absurdly low return to player of 50% anymore:
On April 8, 2010, the Legislature amended the Lottery Act with Assembly Bill (AB) 142. AB 142 requires the Lottery to return at least 87 percent of revenues to the public in the form of prizes and contributions to education, and established a cap of 13 percent of revenues as the amount the Lottery may spend on operating expenses. Prior toAB 142, the Lottery was required to return, as nearly as practical, 50 percent of revenues to the public in the form of prizes; at least 34 percent to public education; and allocate no more than 16 percent to administrative costs. As
a result of the revenue distribution changes from AB 142, the Lottery expects to continue to deliver increases in sales and revenues to the public in the form of both prizes and contributions to education.
Okay, so we see that this allows for an improvement in return to player as compared to before, and this change has been in effect for nearly ten years.
It appears 142A.B. changed the requirement to 87% was to contribute to both education and prizes, combined, which would seem to open the door for more than 50% to be returned in the form of prizes. Prior to the bill, as shown in the quote, at least 34% had to go to education and only 50% (or as close as possible) to prizes.
We might, for comparison, look at the 2007-2008 Fiscal Year for the California Lottery.
And, we will see that the overall return to player of all ticket types was only 53.1%, with a little over 34% of all revenues going to education.
The result is that prizes can be a little better under California law, in terms of return-to-player, but it’s possible for a lesser percentage to be going to education due to the fact that the percentage is now calculated as (Prizes + Education) >/= 87%…rather than education having to be some fixed minimum percentage by itself.
In other words, the goal of the lottery was to improve the return to player in order to drive up sales and, having done so, education would end up with more money despite the fact that it would be getting a lower percentage of overall revenues.
Anyway, the State Auditor’s office is now squabbling with the lottery department as can be found here.
“The Lottery has continued to grow the amount of absolute dollars contributed to public education,” Johnson wrote in a response letter.
But Howle disagreed with that interpretation and stressed proportionality in the funding law. While lottery sales revenue has increased by 115% since the change was adopted in 2010, the auditor’s office found that payments to schools increased by only 66%.
The argument for each side can be summarized as follows:
AUDITOR: Lottery sales have grown by percentages that are disproportionate to the increase in education funding. Schools should be getting a greater percentage of the revenues and it is clear that the lottery is concerned with profits over educational contributions.
LOTTERY: That’s true, but education is getting a lot more money than they were getting before because of the way we are doing things now. Players like the better return to player, so more people are playing the lottery and our sales keep going up. Even though education is getting less money as a percentage of revenues, education is getting more money in terms of actual dollar amounts.
Speaking for myself, this writer sides with the lottery on this one. If the schools are getting more money in dollars and cents terms and the players of the lottery are getting a better return percentage, then it seems to me that the situation is win-win. For example, would you rather have 60% of $10 or 90% of $5? I’ll take the 60% of $10 myself, that’s just how math works.
There’s also no way that the lottery could have kept the percentage that goes to education the same AND increased prizes because it still has to deal with retailer commissions and the costs associated with the actual act of conducting a lottery. I never thought I’d side with a State Lottery on something, but the auditor’s objection makes no sense whatsoever.
Drawing ticket sales totaled 1,526,370,543 with Instant Ticket Sales totaling 5,170,791,532 , Hot Spot Game totaling 313,779,077 and, “Daily Games,” totaling 377,109,164.
Scratcher Game prizes totaled 3,587,479,416 whereas Drawing Tickets are no longer separated by game type and total prizes are reported of 1,128,113,257.
When we add up the different types of drawing games from above, we get total Drawing Ticket game sales of 2,217,258,784.
| Instant Ticket Sales | Instant Ticket Prizes | Instant Ticket Return to Player | Drawing Ticket Sales | Drawing Ticket Prizes | Drawing Ticket Return to Player |
| 5,170,791,532 | 3,587,479,416 | 69.38% | 2,217,258,784 | 1,128,113,257 | 50.88% |
As we can see, Instant Tickets have a return of less than 70% to the players while drawing tickets have a return that is barely over 50%. We will see that this is probably right around the average for state lotteries and California, obviously, operates on a pretty strong sample size considering its sizable population and overall sales. In other words, California is a good example of the shellacking that lottery players can expect if they make the mistake of playing.
The first thing that the lottery reports, at least in terms of what is of interest to us, is the total amount in sales and prizes paid out for the Fiscal Year. Total sales amounted to 7,388,050,316 and total prizes were 4,715,592,673 which thereby results in a return to player of 63.83%, including all games. The total losses on all games were $2,672,457,643, which based on a population of an estimated 39.51M, results in losses of $67.64/resident.
Essentially, all the State of California Lottery Department did was start offering returns on Instant Tickets that were in line with what the rest of the country had been doing for some number of years. Even lottery players, who generally don’t seem terribly inclined to seek out good bets, are not going to put up with losing 50% on high-dollar scratch-off tickets for very long.
Simply put, what the California Lottery did starting around 2010-2011 worked. They started offering better Instant Tickets (even though they are still terrible), lottery sales went up, dollar contributions to education went up. It’s honestly hard to believe there is any controversy surrounding this. One would think everyone would just be happy that education is getting more money.
Conclusion
There are no laws whatsoever in the State of California that prohibit a gambler from playing online, provided he is not doing so as an operator. Despite several attempts, the state has been unsuccessful at specifically legalizing and regulating online gambling, but there are plenty of websites that offer their services to players in the State of California, including the ones that we mentioned above.
When it comes to live casino gambling, you can enjoy that at any of the California card rooms if you are looking for poker or table games, but you will have to go to a tribal casino if you wish to play slot machines or video poker. Aside from that, California has about ten horse tracks with live and simulcast racing as well as a state lottery.
References
Related News
You must be 21 or older to gamble in California
On This Page
© 2024 RealMoneyAction.com | All rights reserved