Brian Berk won more than $10,000 in one night at Turning Stone Casino. He went on to gradually lose it all at the black jack table. Parker Davis found himself $700 in debt his freshman year of college, on account of bi-weekly trips to the casino’s poker room.

Both have since quelled their gambling addictions, but at the expense of countless hours and dollars spent on the casino floor. As the economy flounders, national casino revenue declines, but Turning Stone in Verona, N.Y., and other upstate New York casinos appear to be staying afloat, partly due to their heavy college clientele.

Charles Coffin, who has been working at Turning Stone for a little more than a year, estimates the college-aged crowd to be about 30% of patrons. ‘They wanna have fun and there’s not a lot to do in New York, so they come and try to win some money. You also only have to be 18, which is a huge draw,’ he said.

Turning Stone is owned and operated by the Oneida Indian Nation, and thus does not report revenue to state agencies. As a sovereign nation, it also doesn’t have to adhere to the Freedom of Information Law, which provides access to public information. Both of these stipulations make it difficult to determine the casino’s financial standing, though media representative Mark Emery said Turning Stone is ‘holding its own.’

Turning Stone’s success is contrary to that of casinos in Las Vegas and Atlantic City, where effects of the economy have resulted in layoffs and revenue declines. This September, Atlantic City casinos suffered the worst revenue decline in their 30-year history with all 11 of the area casinos reporting losses. Bloomberg reported the Vegas Strip has suffered eight straight months of declining revenue, the longest stretch in history.

Al Jones has bartended at Turning Stone for five years, and he said he thinks Turning Stone’s success has a lot to do with the number of young people he sees coming in. ‘We get a whole slew of younger kids creepin’ in later at night. By ten, eleven o’clock, it’s almost all kids. Now, they don’t spend a lot, but there’s enough of them,’ he said.

As Jones predicted, by 10 p.m. the poker room was packed, mostly with younger players, and the 32 tables were all filled to capacity.

Parker Davis, a senior finance major at SU, was a regular in that poker room. Parker stopped gambling to focus on his post-graduation plans.

‘I used to go two to three times a week. The first time I won, I won $800,’ he said. ‘It just keeps you coming back.’

Davis said he usually spends five to six hours at the casino. He said he’s seen college kids from all over the state. ‘There’s usually two big groups – the older guys and then it’s the college kids. And when I say college, I don’t just mean Syracuse. They’re from Ithaca, Utica, some from the city, SUNY schools, all over,’ he said.

Davis said Turning Stone’s success is probably a combination of the younger crowds and the decreased tax burden. Indian tribal businesses are governmental entities and are not required to pay taxes on income generated by Indian tribes, including casinos, according to the Oneida Indian Tribal Web site.

After borrowing $700 dollars from a friend and having to ask his parents to loan him the money, Davis cut back on trips to Turning Stone. He hopes to open a video game café -similar to Internet cafes – in Louisville, Ky.

‘I’m gonna start it up and hopefully it’ll be the first nationally known one, and I’ll make millions and then I can go play poker all the time,’ he said.

Brian Berk created the Syracuse Facebook group ‘I lost a s***load at Turning Stone Casino…but I still wanna go back.’ Berk graduated last spring, but said his freshman and sophomore years he’d go gambling three to four times a week.

‘I used to schedule classes so I’d have days where I had class all day and then I’d have the next entire day off so I could go,’ he said.

He said that his visits became less frequent junior and senior year, and since his move to Los Angeles, he hasn’t visited a casino. This decision came after two years of intensive gambling, which Berk said amounted to nothing.

‘Everything I ever had, I lost in gambling, not just at Turning Stone, but online,’ he said. ‘The money I have is what I haven’t gambled from jobs I used to work.’

Nick Turitilo started gambling at age 16 and has been coming to Turning Stone since it opened in 1993. ‘I see a lot of young people coming in and hitting pretty heavy,’ he said. ‘They’re pooling their money, they use $100-200 that they ain’t got. Maybe they have, but it doesn’t look like it.’

Turitilo said even with the weakened economy, he’s seen an increase in college-aged gamblers, a trend that worries him.

‘I’ve been gambling since I was 16 – I’m 67. But I kinda learned in the past 10 years it’s an addiction. A lot of people have lost a lot of things here. (They’ve) lost cars, lost homes, lost a lot of things. It’s not good for young people to get caught up in it.’

Parker Davis, the SU student, said he’s now much more aware of the risks.

‘I’ve learned there are no guarantees. Last time I went there was one card left in the deck for me to lose the hand (and) $300 in the pot and I lost. I think that kind of put it into perspective. Things like that can happen, even if you’re 99% positive you’re gonna win. It’s always in the unexpected.’

jmterrus@syr.edu

Published on January 28, 2009 at 12:00 pm