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Game room reopens with new machines

Closed for almost a year, the Diamond Dust is promoting new games that it says require skill, not just chance.

By JONATHAN ABEL
Published November 1, 2006

ADVERTISEMENT [Times photo: Keri Wiginton] Paul Lizotte looks on while Aimee Greenfield plays a Billy the Kid video machine at the Diamond Dust game room at 16090 Cortez Boulevard on Tuesday.

BROOKSVILLE - The Diamond Dust game room opened quietly this weekend, almost a year after game rooms across the North Suncoast were forced to close.

Regulars have already started to come back to the salmon-colored building at 16090 Cortez Blvd.

The machines are new and the game room's supporters say it fully complies with Florida law: offering games of skill and not games of chance.

"I hope for their sake they are," said prosecutor Mark Simpson. He promised that investigators would examine the games soon and, if they're not in compliance, arrests would follow.

In December, the Sheriff's Office arrested five owners and operators at two Spring Hill game rooms, charging that their video slot machines constituted illegal gambling.

The other 11 game rooms in Hernando and Citrus shut down to avoid legal action.

But now the Diamond Dust is opening with machines that have no preset payout ratio - one factor that may make them less a matter of chance and more a matter of skill.

The Minnesota manufacturer Spectre Gaming and the Diamond Dust's new owner, Kathleen Moreland, offered to demonstrate the games for the Hernando Sheriff's Office and the State Attorney's Office before opening.

Neither agency agreed.

"We're hoping that they find that we're in total compliance," said Moreland. "We're hoping that there's no problem. But if there is, I guess we're just going to have to wait for a judge and jury to decide this one."

Jonathan Abel can be reached at jabel@sptimes.com or (352) 754-6114.

[Last modified November 1, 2006, 16:22:46]