Our position
We make money when people come to Rio Dorado for a weekend, dance, eat too much at two in the morning and spend a little at the tables. We do not want anybody's rent. A guest who loses more than they planned does not come back, and the staff who served them feel bad for a week, so the commercial argument and the decent argument point the same way.
That is why our hosts are told to interrupt. If an evening at the casino floor stops looking like fun, a host will come over, suggest a break, buy the coffee and stay long enough to see how it lands. No host at this resort has ever been reprimanded for cutting a guest's night short.
It also bears repeating here: this website carries no gambling at all. Nothing on these pages can be played, staked, deposited or withdrawn. The casino is a room with a door, and you reach it by walking in.
Strictly adults only
- Nobody comes down the staircase before their eighteenth birthday, and later than that wherever local law raises the bar.
- An identity document is read at the foot of the staircase every time, whatever age a visitor looks and however many nights a week they are here.
- We accept a passport, a national identity card or a photo driving licence. A photograph of a document, a photocopy and somebody else's card are all refused.
- A family with teenagers can book a room, eat in either kitchen and use the pool during family hours. None of that extends to the casino threshold, with a parent or without one, and the dance hall turns adults-only at 21:00.
- Where a document is missing, borrowed or does not match the person holding it, the door team refuses entry and does not debate it.
What a host will set up with you
- A spending ceiling. Name a figure before you start. It is written down, the pit knows about it, and somebody will tell you when you reach it.
- A time limit. Say when you want to be finished and a host will come and find you at that hour, even if the table is going well.
- A spell away. Ask the cage to refuse you at the staircase for seven days, for a month or until the end of the season. Setting it up takes about five minutes.
- Self-exclusion. A written agreement for a fixed term that we will not shorten, however reasonable the request sounds later. That inflexibility is the whole point of it.
Three things we never do: extend credit, run a tab from either bar against the tables, or put a cash machine on the casino floor. If you want more money you have to leave the room to get it, and that walk is deliberate.
Signs worth taking seriously
- Staying later or spending more than the figure you had in your head on the way down the stairs.
- Going back the next night mainly to win back what last night cost.
- Playing with money that was meant for rent, bills, school or someone else.
- Borrowing from friends, selling something, or keeping the amounts to yourself.
- Feeling edgy or short-tempered on a day when you cannot play.
- Choosing the tables over sleep, work or the people who came with you.
If more than one of those reads like a description of you, say so to a host or write to one of the organisations below. Conversations with our staff about this are not written into any guest record.
Independent help
All three services below are free, confidential and completely independent of Rio Dorado Casino Resort. We have no commercial relationship with any of them and they will never report back to us.
- Gambling Therapy — advisers, a live chat window and moderated groups that run in several languages: gamblingtherapy.org
- Gamblers Anonymous — a room of people with the same problem, meeting weekly almost everywhere and on a screen where they do not: gamblersanonymous.org
- Gam-Anon — built for the people around a gambler rather than the gambler: partners, parents, grown-up children, friends: gam-anon.org
The duty manager also keeps the current number for the nearest local helpline in the drawer at reception. Ask, and it is written on a card and handed over. Nobody asks what it is for.
Staff and training
Nobody works a shift on the casino floor until they have sat through the briefing on age checks, on limits, and on walking up to somebody whose evening has gone wrong. The briefing is repeated twice a year, and the door team practise refusing entry out loud, because saying it for the first time to a real person is harder than it sounds. A host who decides a guest has finished for the evening has the backing of the duty manager, every time.
Talk to us first if you prefer
Limits, breaks and exclusions can all be set up before you arrive. Write to [email protected], mark the message for the casino manager, and it will be waiting at the cage when you get here.