Video poker phaseout to begin

A Wake judge refuses to delay the law that requires machines to go starting Sunday

Video poker, a low-key kind of electronic gambling that attracted bettors to convenience stores, bars and truck stops long before the state launched its lottery, is set to start disappearing this weekend.

That is when a state law will begin forcing owners to unplug their 10,000-odd poker machines over the next nine months. By next summer, there will be no legal machines left in North Carolina.

Machine owners, renters and players have sued to stop the phaseout. The owners and renters say they will unfairly lose a key part of their livelihoods.

But they lost a big round Thursday when a Wake County judge refused to delay the law while the lawsuit goes forward.

"The court finds that [the] plaintiffs have failed to demonstrate that they are likely to sustain immediate and irreparable harm ... or that they are likely to prevail on the merits of the case," Superior Court Judge Narley Cashwell wrote in an order denying the industry's request for a temporary restraining order.

Another video poker industry lawsuit awaits action in federal court.

Unless a federal judge or the state Court of Appeals intervenes, hundreds of establishments with the current legal maximum of three video poker machines will have to turn one off by Sunday, then another one by March and the last one by July.

Law enforcement officials say video poker causes gambling addiction, is easily rigged for illegal cash payouts and fuels other crimes. The phased ban pleases Attorney General Roy Cooper and many of the state's sheriffs.

But it makes little sense to gamblers such as retired FedEx truck driver James "J.T." Thomas of Raleigh.

He leaned into the single video poker machine in a corner of the C-Mini Mart on Poole Road for 10 minutes or so Thursday afternoon and blew a few bucks on a money-losing game he enjoys but rarely wins.

"I just like playin'," said Thomas, 60. "It ain't hurtin' nobody."

About 20 feet away, an elderly man lost $11 in a minute playing the state's "Education Lottery." And a middle-aged woman -- who plays the lottery with her retirement savings, the store's operator said -- bet and lost again on the random, state-sponsored game of chance.

Lottery vs. video poker

Since North Carolina's lottery began this year, many customers have given up privately run video poker to play the state's numbers game, said the store's manager, Warren Liles. His store gets a 7 percent cut, so he doesn't try to talk his customers out of playing the lottery. But he said he thinks it's foolish.

"I'd rather put $10 in a video poker machine," Liles said, jerking his right thumb toward his brown, black and red Turbo Poker II machine, "than bet $10 on the lottery."

While the state is phasing in the ban on video poker machines, it is adding lottery games. Some of the proceeds goe to the state's public schools.

Thomas said he doesn't play the lottery because the odds of winning are too long.

And he doesn't buy the state's rationale that a lottery is good but video poker is bad.

"I think the government wants to take the business," Thomas said. "It's like liquor. The government outlawed moonshine so they could open up ABC stores."

That's part of the argument of the video poker industry's lawsuits.

"The state has now gone into the gambling business and is running what have been legal businesses out of business," said Raleigh lawyer Gene Boyce, a lottery opponent whose firm represents the video poker industry.

"I'm against gambling," Boyce said. "I think it's bad public policy. But having gambling is not as bad as having legitimate businessmen thrown out of business -- not by competition but by law. It's all about the state's monopoly."