Gambling Commission rules changes,

There's some big Washington State Gambling Commission rules changes in this quarter's Focus on Gambling newsletter. The big ones:

• Effective January 1, bet limits on table games are $300 instead of $200.
• Effective January 1, mini-baccarat is legal. This game has the smallest house edge in the casino. The only better game out there is a limited number of video poker machines, which aren't legal in Washington.

Still on the table for November's Commission meeting:

• Electronic poker tables
• Raise the limit on a poker wager from $40 to $500
• Increase the number of players at a table game, other than poker, from seven to nine
• A casino that only is running poker tables, and has wager limits at $40 or less, doesn't have to staff a surveillance room.

On a different topic, I'm really curious to see how Lakewood's proposition 1 ends up. I have no sense of which way the populace is leaning. It could easily go 65%/35% either way, and it's such a micro-issue, there's no polls to go by. Best case: it's defeated, which entices a new casino to fill in the hole left by Happy Days, increasing competition and benefiting edge players (me!). Worst case: I have to drive to Lacey to play poker.