BY Jonathan Abarbanel
“I am shocked – shocked! – to find gambling going on here,” police inspector Claude Rains barks at nightclub owner Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca. The State of Illinois is just like Casablanca: everyone knows gambling is illegal except for floating casinos, pari-mutuel racetracks, the state lottery, off-track wagering facilities and any old Catholic church bingo game. But other than that, forget about it.
Unless you happen to be a 501(c)3 charitable organization, in which case you can legally host up to four gambling events a year with the net take going into your organizational coffers. Theatre and dance troupes and other nonprofit arts organizations qualify. All you need is a Charitable Gaming License, courtesy of the Illinois Department of Revenue’s Office of Bingo and Charitable Gaming, and enough gamblers – oops, gamers – to make it worthwhile.
Fortunately, Ken Kaulen, Jr., head of Chicago Charitable Games (www.ChicagoPokerLive.com) has 10,000 or so card players on his e-mail list, as Chemically Imbalanced Comedy recently discovered. Employing Kaulen’s services, Chemically Imbalanced has netted $1,500 and $2,300 respectively in the course of two poker events with two more still to come, each expected to net at least $3,000.
Although Chemically Imbalanced is not the first non-profit to fundraise through gaming, it appears that most performing arts organizations are unaware of the opportunity. Or, it may be that a net of $10,000-$12,000 is not a sufficient return for our largest companies. But for scores of theatre and dance troupes with budgets under $250,000, a few legal poker games could raise a significant piece of change.
Enter Kaulen and Chicago Charitable Games. Chemically Imbalanced Comedy (CIC) executive producer Angie McMahon explained that Kaulen is a one-stop shopping service for those who wish to put together legal poker events. Basically, in exchange for a percentage of the gross revenue of an event, Kaulen books a room – usually a banquet hall with a cash bar – organizes and supervises the games, provides the tables and dealers, and markets the event to his thousands of dedicated players. Kaulen even helps secure the gaming license.
“There’s a lot of paperwork to fill out and a lot of hoops to jump through and I walk [the organizations] through that,” he says.
As for his players, they must legally be 18 and they are overwhelmingly male. The most recent CIC event drew 244 men and five women. Kaulen says, “These are guys who want to play poker for charity, and they don’t much care what charity it is.” What the official hosting theatre or dance troupe does is provide a few volunteers to meet and greet the players, and talk up your troupe’s work to those who are interested.
The gaming license allows such charitable events to run for 12 hours. That’s a long time, a lot of poker. An “evening” can run from noon until midnight, or from 2 p.m. until 2 a.m., which is the legally mandated stop time. Weekends draw better than weeknights, Kaulen says, and Saturday night draws best of all. Neither of CIC’s first two events was on a Saturday night, which is why the net was under $3,000, he explains.
Typically, Kaulen provides several types of action at an event. There may be a tournament game for which each player pays a flat fee up front, there may be one or more tables offering a cash game played for a per-hand pot, and there may be one or more blackjack tables. In a tournament game, 20 percent of the entrance fee ($100 per player is typical) goes to the charity and 80 percent to the prize pool. In a cash game, 10 percent of each hand is taken for the charity to a maximum of $5 per hand. In 12 hours of poker, it adds up. Depending on the event and the crowd, there may be table limits such as a $2-$4 bet at the beginners’ table or a $5-$10 bet for more experiences players who nonetheless want to limit their exposure. There may be no-limit tables, too, although it’s never going to resemble the high-stakes games of professional poker played in Vegas and Monte Carlo. It’s more like Reno than Vegas.
Kaulen’s portion of the charity’s take is flexible, he says. For a lesser-grossing event, it may be a 50-50 split, which McMahon says is CIC’s deal (and she has no complaints). But Kaulen adds that his percentage drops as the gross rises.
A Charitable Gaming License allows more than just poker, too. Roulette, craps, keno, high-stakes pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey and other games are covered. But Kaulen points out that poker is the only game in which a charity can’t lose “because you’re playing against the other players, not the charity.” In games such a roulette and craps, it’s one player vs. the house, and the charity is the house.
Kaulen believes that Chicago Charitable Games is the only company in the area offering this particular kind of service. (He says there’s another one in Rockford.) Based in Naperville, he welcomes inquiries online at www.ChicagoPokerLive.com or at 630/901-9797. He suggests that organizations plan on 45-60 days from first contact with him through the event itself, including the licensing process. Applicants must be 501©3 corporations in business for at least five years.
At least one other Chicago Off-Loop troupe has experimented with gaming nights, and that’s Stage Left Theatre Company, which has held two gaming benefits in two years. Stage Left, however, chose not to secure a Charitable Gaming License.
”We didn’t make it a gambling enterprise,” says Stage Left’s John Sanders. “We made it an admission event where people didn’t gamble their admissions.”
Instead, people bought a ticket as they would for any other benefit, and then played gambling-type games for donated prizes. Held at the theatre itself, there was little overhead or expense involved for Stage Left, which was happy to clear $500 on such events, says Sanders. Stage Left is considering a similar future event.
