Encore Boston Craps
4/11/2022 admin
Officials from Encore Boston Harbor have been saying they'd have 5,500 workers on staff when the $2.6 billion gambling resort opened in June. But headcount is far below that, and it's unclear. Two of the casinos, MGM Springfield and Encore Boston Harbor, had asked the commission to authorize craps and roulette, but commissioners agreed that now is not the time to do so, given the current public health landscape and a recent, though since improved, uptick in COVID-19 transmission. Welcome to Encore Boston Harbor Resort. Luxury hotel rooms & suites, fine dining, casino, event center, shopping. Six feet social distancing, plexiglass and the temporary closure of poker tables. The reopening of Encore Boston Harbor on June 12 is a very different one than the opening just over a year ago on. If the stakes for craps and roulette remain this high, Encore-Boston may effectively become little more than an occasional slot parlor for locals, if even that. A slot parlor doesn't interest me. Unless things change at Encore-Boston, Foxwoods will remain our favorite casino in New England for craps and roulette.
In the three weeks since the slots parlor and casinos in Massachusetts began reopening, there have been very few incidents related to the pandemic-related health and safety measures imposed by the Gaming Commission and now the casinos are asking to be allowed to offer more games.
Loretta Lillios, chief enforcement counsel of the commission’s Investigations and Enforcement Bureau, reported Thursday that the number of incidents in which the commission’s enforcement unit has had to step in “can be counted on one hand.”
“All the reports have been very positive. There’s been an all hands on deck approach for all three of the licensees with a high level of on-the-ground engagement from casino employees, including management level on the casino floor actively engaged in reminding guests, for instance, whose masks fall below the nose to pull them up,” she told the commission. “And there’s also been, overall, a high level of cooperation from guests as well, with few problems around health and safety measures.”
Lillios said that the two licensees with tables games — MGM Springfield and Encore Boston Harbor in Everett — have requested that the commission allow them to offer craps and roulette, both of which are dice games currently prohibited under the commission’s reopening guidelines.
“We are working through those requests now. The agents are working on understanding the prototype to use plexi[glass] on the games, whether the seated option is viable and would enhance safety, they’re also looking at the question of proximity issues, taking into account the players and staff,” Lillios said. “It’s something that we expect you would evaluate substantively at a later meeting in August.”
(Copyright (c) 2020 State House News Service.
Need that revenue to flow again
Encore Boston Harbor and MGM Springfield have asked the Massachusetts Gaming Commission for the go-ahead to open up their craps and roulette tables. The Commission will consider the request, scheduled to have a virtual meeting to discuss the matter at 10:00am Thursday.
“We appreciate the Gaming Commission’s consideration of our request as we progress through a phased reopening with the health and safety of our employees and guests at the forefront of any decisions,” said MGM Springfield.
According to MassLive.com, the two casinos specifically asked about craps and roulette, but not poker. The Commission, will, however, also discuss poker during Thursday’s meeting.
Encore Boston Craps Table Minimums
The state has one other casino, Plainridge Park, but it is a slots-only facility.
Massachusetts casinos slow to ramp up
After shutting down because of the COVID-19 pandemic in mid-March along with the rest of the casinos in the United States, Massachusetts casinos were among the last to reopen. MGM Springfield reopened July 10; the other two welcomed back customers a few days prior.
Encore Boston Craps Machine
Casinos were required to implement a slew of health and safety protocols, including social distancing. The reason craps and roulette tables have been blocked off is because those are larger tables that support more players. Those games draw crowds. They are also games in which players and casino staff are frequently leaning over and reaching across the table. Even with everyone wearing masks, craps and roulette simply don’t lend themselves to social distancing.
MGM Springfield said that it will have plexiglass barriers installed at the craps and roulette tables to enforce social distancing and protect those at the games, just as they do with their other table games.
Poker is a similar situation. Short-handed games could possibly work, but full poker tables are arguably the riskiest gaming tables in the casino. Players are in close quarters, touching chips and cards, and poker is also a game where people tend to play for several hours at a time. All that time sitting in a room near lots of other poker players is something the novel coronavirus would very much approve of.
Encore Boston Harbor Craps
If I had to guess, I think the Gaming Commission will approve the request to open up craps and roulette tables, provided measures are in place to keep everyone safe. Massachusetts’s COVID-19 have been looking pretty solid lately, with daily new cases above 500 just a handful of times in the past two months.
Poker will stay closed. Plus, poker is not a particularly profitable gaming segment for casinos, so I would be surprised if MGM and Encore pushed for it at all. Additionally, with the casinos only allowing about one-third of its normal customer capacity inside at any given time, it may be hard for them to get enough traffic to even make reopening their poker rooms worth it.