Piled into my silver Toyota Matrix, me and two of my suavest pals contemplated Danny Ocean. Crawling through traffic towards Charleston, the three of us were dressed to the nines – well, they were, anyhow. My one suit and tie were nowhere to be found in my closet; I had to settle for a nice pair of jeans and a gray suit jacket, an ensemble classy enough to make me feel confident in saying I was dressed at least to the sevens – perhaps to the seven and a halfs.

The reason for the unnaturally high dress code and conversation concerning fictional Las Vegas robbers was this – the three of us were headed to the Tri-State Racetrack and Gaming Center. Not to bet on the greyhounds, or to relinquish our hard-earned cash to the unforgiving slots, but rather, to partake in the recently added table games – a feature not only new to the fledgling casino, but to the state as well.

I considered myself pretty knowledgeable about Texas Hold ‘Em (poker, for the uninoculated), and was fairly certain that I would be leaving the establishment with a healthy chunk of change – so certain, in fact, that I began to make plans for my winnings. Perhaps investing in a new suit would be a wise purchase. Perhaps waving the cash around my brothers and other poker acquaintances, like a crisp green banner of victory, would prove a more satisfying course of action.

The history of table gaming – that is, casino games that require a table, such as blackjack, poker, and roulette – is a long and sordid tale, as far as West Virginia is concerned. Votes and referendums have popped up and been quashed every couple of years throughout my childhood, creating brief surges of political activity in circles of social conservatives and economically-minded liberals.

In the summer of 2007, the table game debate came to a climax – the issue was simultaneously debated in counties with casinos and gaming centers across the state, including Ohio (the county, not the state), Hancock, Jefferson, and Kanawha. The campaigning that followed was extraordinary – water cooler conversation turned into discussion of the perils of 7-card stud. Local religious groups pooled $7,000 of their own funds to finance an ad campaign, featuring somewhat inflammatory billboards featuring the words “Vote No on Table Games – Signed, God.”

However, for the first time in the state’s history, the vote leaned in favor of gambling. Ohio and Hancock counties approved table gaming, while Jefferson county turned it away once again. Kanawha, the district containing Charleston (and the gaming center mentioned above), passed the measure by a paltry 33 vote margin. This resulted in a full investigation of the narrowly won referendum, which held up any games of Omaha Hi-Lo that were waiting to be played for a few months.

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Awash in the intoxicating glow of neon from the nickel slot machines, I waited in line to get a seat at one of the tables, a 2-4 Limit game of Texas Hold ‘Em. After about thirty minutes of anxious anticipation, I found my seat at a table of ten. I made small talk with the man on my left, a local newscaster, then began to settle in for what I thought would be a long and prosperous evening.

My friends hadn’t followed me to the table – I was alone, playing with strangers of unknown skill and luck. It wasn’t the ideal circumstances for poker, in my humble opinion – for me, the camaraderie and conversation were the high points of the game. Camaraderie went out the window the first time my new, left-hand friend bullied me out of the pot. “That’s okay,” I reassured myself, “there’s plenty of poker left to be played."

My next hand seemed promising – a suited Ten and Jack. I called the blinds, and the seemingly obligatory raise, then saw the flop: Two, Queen, King. None of the right suits, shattering any hopes of a flush – but I was fairly excited about my outside straight draw. I called the bet, and my leftward neighbor’s raise, and saw the turn. Another Queen. My chances of catching the straight somewhat diminished, I called the bet with conviction that I had led a life of decency and kindness, and that I, more than anyone else at this table, deserved to catch the straight on the fifth and last card that fell.

That card, that insipid final card, was a Six. I folded with a heart made heavy by sundered dreams. Checking my chip count, I realized that I had sunk sixteen of my hard-earned dollars into a single hand.

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Here’s the central crux of the table gaming debate – economy vs. society. It’s certainly a familiar debate for many political matters, a theme whose importance is amplified when speaking in a local sense – particularly when the locale in question places equal levels of great importance on both the economy and society.

For many conservatives and religious groups, the enemy is the act of gambling itself. The gambling, and all that entails, is immoral. Worse yet, a prominent, table games-equipped casino in our state’s capital city could bring in a fairly dangerous crowd, and increase our relatively low crime rate. To this group, the economic boon that others claim the casinos would bring in for the state would be counterbalanced by new cases of gambling addiction in West Virginia’s citizens. The state, as a whole, would certainly make money, but with its newfound wealth, could the state take care of its newly impoverished citizens, made bankrupt by a bad run of cards?

The other side of the argument doesn’t exactly think like this. Sure, they know about the bad crowd, and the gambling addiction, but the intrinsic benefits of a major casino in our state’s capital would make themselves known almost instantly. Not only benefits as far as profit is concerned, but with new tourism opportunities, and a cadre of new job openings – an incredibly valuable commodity in our relatively jobless state.

Zac Ferrell, a 23-year-old Huntington native in attendance of the grand opening of the poker tables, agreed with the first group.

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To make a long and heartbreaking story short, I didn’t win one of the eighteen hands of poker that I participated in that night. I left the establishment forty dollars poorer – “but forty dollars wiser,” I would later say, to help soften the blow. My sharp-dressed friends hadn’t shared my misfortune, each winning small sums of money betting on the greyhounds – but winning nonetheless. “Dogs,” they explained, “you can evaluate. You can look at them, and guess how they’re going to place. You can’t evaluate cards.”

There was some truth to this, and to other lessons I had learned during that evening. For instance, don’t sit to the right of the table bully. Or, don’t bet on a straight draw when you’re gambling with actual money. Unfortunately, I couldn’t chalk up my forty dollar loss entirely to luck – my own poor decisions, results of my apparent lack of skill at Texas Hold ‘Em, contributed to my extraordinary failure. Simply put – I didn’t know when to hold ‘em, and I didn’t know when to fold ‘em.

I imagine Kenny Rogers would have been extremely disappointed.