The River Casino - A PCF Adventure (2 Viewers)

[Potsie1]

Table of contents
1. The story of The River Casino
2. The purchase of the chips
3. Other memorabilia
4. Button and sample set order link


The Owners Story

Dan and Audrey Dale were the owners of The River Casino in Kelso Wa. from July of 2008 until October of 2009. Audrey was a school teacher and Dan split his time between running his Dirt Bike track and playing poker at Cleopatras Wild Grizzly Casino. Dan had made friends with the owner Eric Nelson and learned that Eric was interested in selling the Wild Grizzly Casino. One thing led to another and Dan decided to buy the casino and rebrand it The River Casino.

The process began in March of 2008 with Dan describing it as "complicated". There was a tremendous amount of training he had to go through not to mention the licensing which involved numerous trips to Olympia Wa. They started by hiring 107 employees approximately 30% more than before. After 3 months of hard work the Casino opened.

In 2008 right as the casino was opening the housing market and the economy took a huge downturn. Right from the beginning the Casino struggled and had to work with the city of Kelso to adjust city taxes to stay open. In the end it wasn't enough and sadly the casino had to close. The entire endeavor was very costly, and emotional especially for Dan. I will write more about that in the story of how I picked up the chips.

Some interesting facts about the Casino:

• The casino was 16,000 square feet and was known for their prime rib and smoked clam chowder.
• The name of the casino was chosen by Dan and had dual meaning. The entire area in Kelso was known as Three Rivers. Dan wanted to reference just a single river and liked how the name related to the final card in poker.
• the $1 chip is a small tributary of the Koweeman river, $5 chip is the Kowlitz river, $25 chip is the Koweeman river and the $100 chip is the Kowlitz river. He deliberately chose the small tributary on the $1 chip because it was after all the lowest denomination chip so shouldn't be a river. The design of the chips was done by Dan.
• The casino had a huge cherry wood bar
• Dan said the writing was on the wall for the casino as 5 days before close someone hit a 7 card straight flush on Pai Gow emptying the last of the casinos funds.
• The poker room had a $3 rake with $2 going for player jackpots.
• The 50 cent chip was made and used only for Spanish 21 due to a 2 1/2 to 1 payout.
• "The River" is the Koweeman.

 

[Potsie1]

The story of the chips!

I had originally noticed the posting on craigslist but had emailed with no response. It took less than a day for it to be listed on this site. I found out later they were spammed with requests. Here is the original thread.
https://www.pokerchipforum.com/threads/southern-wa-river-casino-chipco-chips-cards-tables-etc.21471/

Dan and Audrey were adamant about not splitting the chips and eventually responded to everyone with a list of items and prices. Each person was put in order of priority. Thanks to be being local and my desire to purchase multiple items I received first chance to work out a deal.

Eventually we agreed on a time and day that was good for both of us. My wife and I drove two cars over an hour each way to meet with them. From the outset Dan and Audrey were welcoming and friendly. There was a tremendous amount of talking and laughing with them as they freely told stories about their time running the casino. They took my family on a tour of their beautiful lakeside property and showed us all the casino related goodness. After a while we got down to business and worked out a deal for the chips, the glass sign and the neon sign. We were all very happy with the outcome.

It was a very emotional experience for Dan and he had to excuse himself numerous times as he was on the verge of tears as he gave up some of these items he had held onto for so long. The items had been held in storage since 2009 but Dan and Audrey decided to retire and begin the next leg of their journey in life. Listening to them talk about the casino and the events that transpired gave me a deep understanding for how much they loved and cared for the employees. They mentioned how they felt they had let the employees down. They also mentioned that when the casino closed they never declared bankruptcy but instead paid back every penny they owed.

@MegaTon44 had been working previously trying to get the chips via text. I hope he can share the pic of his text string as its quite funny. I had him throw in a good word for me before the trip as I figured it could only help me in my encounter. I agreed to send him 2100 chips as I saw all the hard work he had put in and had always appreciated the links he shared with the community on chip deals.

On the long drive home it was a lot of fun to talk to @MegaTon44 and share with him my big adventure. Having a chippie share in this experience made it that much better.

The chips are Chipco and I have since lost count on what the original quantites were. The total quantity however was 13,300 chips. Most were casino used however there were about 10 racks of uncirculated 25s and 15 racks of uncirculated 5s. Its cool knowing I can account for about every chip from this casino. Only 500 of the 100s were made. I have 399(Owner Dan wanted to keep one of every chip) and @MegaTon44 has the other 100. The chips don't exist outside the 2 of us, though that will change with the sample sets available.
The chips at the base of the sign are all the uncirculated chips as I didn't want to take them out and stack them for the picture.

 

[Potsie1]

The tragedy and resurrection of the "River Casino" sign and other memorabilia.

It could be said that the chips were cursed. I had two major incidents with the memorabilia. The first was the weight of the chips caused my table to rip itself off the base. The real reason of the collapse was in addition to the 13000 chips sitting on one side of the table there were another 4000 chips inside the table also on the same side. This gave me an opportunity to touch and love every single chip, a happy ending to an otherwise unfortunate situation.

The 65x36x.5 250lb. 3D etched glass sign was the jewel of my collection. This originally hung at the entrance to the casino with two other pieces that had rivers on each side. The two pieces of river sold at the liquidation. Nobody wanted the casino portion. Needless to say I was devastated when I clumsily knocked it over and watched it shatter on the foot of the same table that had collapsed.

Never one to let something get me down, I found a sign company that could make me an almost exact copy out of acrylic. I spent months taking measurements on the original pieces and working out final designs and using the very talented Sal @OldWestPokerSupplies to vector the River Casino Graphics. I picked up the finished product 2 days before Christmas. Finally!

The beautiful wood stand was custom built by none other than @T_Chan . It has built in color changing LED's with remote. A true work of art! Thanks Tony it's beautiful!

Some other cool things:

• 24 River Casino Pint glasses
• 4 seating sets
• River Casino T shirts and hat
• Original business cards
• Neon Poker sign. Hung the entire time in both the Wild Grizzly and River casinos poker rooms. A nice piece of memorabilia. It had a ton of meaning to Dan.
• A poker Sign that listed the games that also hung in the poker room.
• State of Washington certificate of appreciation as well as a gambling hotline and No side bets that all hung in the casino.
• Red and Blue decks of paper cards
• Nice plastic card setups used in the poker room. Some new some used.
• 4 drink carts used in the poker room.

 

[Potsie1]

Button and sample set ordering link

Thank you @OldWestPokerSupplies for a great job on the buttons! The fishing line wraps around to both sides. A limited number of buttons and sample sets will be made available. Buttons and samples are now available to order here:
https://www.pokerchipforum.com/threads/river-casino-dealer-button-and-sample-sets.26129/

 

[detroitdad]

holy shit...... pictures if the faces? selling? holy shit dude.

 

[TheBigTater]

Damn don't know enough about the chips yet but that sign kicks butt. (y) :thumbsup:

 

[AK Chip]

I'm with Bill, holy shit!!

 

[Jambine]

Wow, great set! Is the $0.50 Chipco Unicorn cold stamp?
Can't quite make out the mold in that pic

 

[Rhodeman77]

Great set! Did the table break from the weight of the chips?!?

 

[Potsie1]

Wow, great set! Is the $0.50 Chipco Unicorn cold stamp?
Can't quite make out the mold in that pic

yes chipco unicorn

 

[Potsie1]

Great set! Did the table break from the weight of the chips?!?

yes. i updated the thread to reference it.

 

[DMack]

Very cool story and awesome memorabilia!

 

[B.C.]

Great posts & story. Amazing collection. Congrats.

 

[TheBigTater]

A shame on what happened to the original sign but your recreation is a fantastic tribute. Sal & Tony did a great job.

All the other memorabilia is super cool, I especially like the neon poker sign, that is great. Also is the poker room games listed sign a changeable alphabet/menu type sign or are the games printed on it? If it's changeable it would be perfect for any poker room.

Congrats & super back story. :

 

[Potsie1]

A shame on what happened to the original sign but your recreation is a fantastic tribute. Sal & Tony did a great job.

All the other memorabilia is super cool, I especially like the neon poker sign, that is great. Also is the poker room games listed sign a changeable alphabet/menu type sign or are the games printed on it? If it's changeable it would be perfect for any poker room.

Congrats & super back story. :

Glad you enjoyed the read. I thought it would be nice for everyone to see the story behind the chips. After meeting Dan and Audrey I felt the need to share it.
The poker room sign are adhesive stickers.

 

[CdnBeerLover]

Excellent story and acquisition. Congrats!

 

[upNdown]

Great story! So you're pretty much opening your own River Casino?

 

[Chino]

Yeesh, that cleanup from the busted table must've been a chore. Though, overall worth it

 

[Potsie1]

Yeesh, that cleanup from the busted table must've been a chore. Though, overall worth it

Cleanup was tough but fixing the table itself was a bigger pain.
Amazingly not a single chip broke. Ceramics are resilient.

 

[maxim_666666]

cool story!

 

[Gunnar]

Awesome story

 

[Justin Olson]

great story, poker history

 

[Venturalvn]

Thanks for sharing. This is very cool, and it must be awesome to know you own the whole of it!

 

[T_Chan]

Great story and history. It's very neat to have stuff with significance. I'm very glad to be part of the whole thing in my small way.

 

[DoubleEagle]

Great read.

 

[v1pe]

Finally got around to reading this, thanks for sharing. Cool story!

 

[One Eyed Dollar]

Great story and chips! My dad is big into fly fishing (particularly Tenkara - Japanese fly fishing), so I bought a sample set of these from Potsie and framed them in a shadow box from Michael's for a birthday gift. I think he will dig it! Here's the finished product:

 

[Potsie1]

Bumping for those who never got to read this.

 

[Highli99]

Fascinating story. Sad that the business failed but I’m glad you are preserving the history.

 

[MegaTon44]

I love this story. These chips get played at every home game of mine. Thanks so much for sharing this experience with me @Potsie1