Gambling News by Gambling Headquarters

The fate of a stalled plan to bring the largest video gaming parlor in the country to Queens could rest in the hands of Governor-elect Eliot Spitzer. The 4,500-Video Lottery Terminal parlor was set to open this year at Aqueduct Racetrack in Ozone Park, but is now on indefinite hold after the track's owner declared bankruptcy. "The delay in approving this is what drove us to bankruptcy in the first place," said Aqueduct spokesman Bill Nader, referring to the racetrack's owner, the New York Racing Association. "Once we do get approval, the revenue going to New York state from these machines will be the same revenue as all the Atlantic City gambling combined provides the state of New Jersey." The devices look like traditional slot machines but are actually "video lottery terminals," or VLTs, and use a different equation than slots to calculate winners. Players can't tell the difference. The racing association filed for bankruptcy earlier this month, preventing the New York Lottery, which supervises the eight other video lottery sites in the state, from approving the Aqueduct parlor. The delay stemmed in part from the financial problems at the racing association. Now the fate of what would be the city's first legal gambling hall is in the hands of Spitzer, who will decide whether to find new management for Aqueduct. Representatives for Spitzer's transition team were not immediately available for comment Wednesday evening. "If and when the VLTs open at Aqueduct, they will be a huge draw," said Bennett Liebman, coordinator of the Racing & Gaming Law Program at Albany Law School. "You have such an enormous market to draw from in New York City, and a regular player will not be able to tell the difference between that and Atlantic City."

Extremely profitable VTL halls are up and running at Yonkers Raceway and seven other racetracks upstate. They are all open seven days a week, from 10 a.m. to 2 a.m, and brought in more than $12 million last year.

The State Supreme Court recently validated the legalilty of the video terminals, half of whose proceeds benefit public schools.

Seventy years ago, Mayor Fiorello La Guardia lifted a sledgehammer and personally wrecked dozens of slot machines confiscated from gangster Frank Costello. Now the city is poised to have a legal video terminal parlor with yearly profits beyond Costello's wildest dreams.