California Cardrooms Face New Headwinds

California cardrooms are under attack. If you’ve read us before, you know they were already facing an existential threat from local Native America tribes, who believe they have the right to California betting and only them.

But now, cardrooms are facing a new challenge, a political one. The state’s attorney general — one of the highest positions in California politics — just took a swipe at the industry, and this too, could break it for good. You’re going to want to read what happened, and the unintended consequences if the AG gets his way because it’s bigger than just playing cards.

Proposal Could Gut Cardrooms For Good

We’ll get the AG shortly, but first, we want to explain what cardrooms even are since they are a mystery to many non-Californians. Cardrooms are fully legal gambling dens without the slots or house-banked games. Instead, players bet against each other, and third-party dealers step in to simulate the house. There’s a legal loophole that allows them to stay in business, but we’ll get to that later.

The cardrooms specialize in blackjack, baccarat, poker, and pai gow. But… the AG wants to shake up how blackjack is played. So much so, that the game might not even be blackjack anymore.

Bonta has proposed significant rule changes to blackjack. Under his plan (not passed yet, but proposed), games can no longer use the word “blackjack” at all. The target number can’t be 21. There’s no more automatic busts. And pushes? Those become wins for the player. It’s a complete redesign — one that severs every recognizable part of the game most people came to play.

Obviously, this would erode the “edge” that cardrooms have when offering the game, tilting the odds more in the favor of players. That means less revenue, and significantly so, for the establishments off the game. But the AG wasn’t done, he has an even bigger change on his mind.

The “Killshot” Of The Proposal

The biggest threat in Bonta’s proposal isn’t the blackjack tweaks — it’s the attack on the banking system that makes cardrooms function in the first place. For years, these rooms have used third-party proposition players (TPPPs) to act as the “house,” letting players bet against a licensed contractor instead of the cardroom itself. This is the legal loophole we mentioned earlier that allows cardrooms to bypass the state’s exclusivity deal with tribes over legal betting.

Bonta wants undermine that loophole. His plan would limit anyone — including TPPPs — from acting as the banker for more than two consecutive hands. After that, the role must rotate or the game ends. Cardrooms would be forced to offer the banker spot to every player before each hand, with surveillance cameras required to capture the offer. Most players don’t want the job so good luck getting anyone to take it.

Not only is rotating so often inconvenient — it’s operationally impossible. Games won’t flow. Players will bail. Dealers will be stuck waiting on hands that never start. The whole setup collapses under the weight of bureaucracy, and that’s likely the point. The state isn’t trying to fix cardrooms, it’s actually trying to strangle them out of existence without opening themselves up to lawsuits.

Tribes Smell Blood in the Water

None of this is happening in a vacuum. California’s gaming tribes — who’ve long argued cardrooms were violating their exclusive rights — were already threatening cardrooms existence.

Earlier this year, the tribes banded together to sue the cardrooms. That suit is making its way through Sacramento County Superior Court, thanks to a one-time law passed last year that gave tribes a rare opening to sue. The case targets the exact player-dealer model Bonta wants to gut. But if his rules pass first, the tribes may not even need a win — the state will have already crippled the cardrooms’ legal foundation.

So if you’re the cardrooms, you’re facing not only the tribes, but now the state’s top cop. To borrow a term from the world of wrestling, it’s a handicap match, and the cardrooms are currently overmatched.

Cities Are Bracing for Impact

If you’re wondering who loses the most here, it’s not even the cardrooms— it’s cities throughout the Golden State. Dozens of California towns depend on cardroom taxes to pay for fire trucks, cops, parks, and basic services. Take a sub-15,000-person town in Soutshen California called Hawaii Gardens. Over 60 percent of its entire general fund comes from one casino. You pull that out, and the budget completely crumbles. And there’s no one to pickup the tab if cardrooms are gutted, as the AG is proposing.

Tribes don’t operate casinos in most of these small cities. Sportsbooks? Still illegal statewide (and offshore sportsbooks don’t pay local taxes). So if Bonta gets his way, and these cardrooms start folding, there’s no one stepping in to replace the money, maybe besides taxpayers themselves.

Bonta’s proposal isn’t law — yet. It’s still in the feedback stage, but obviously, he has a lot of pull to get this done. So yes, there’s a lot at stake here. Billions of dollars are on the line. Thousands of jobs are too. If these changes go through, it won’t just reshape cardrooms. It’ll reshape the cities around them too. Buckle up!