Casino Berlin

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Casino Berlin
Logo Spielbank Berlin.svg
Casino Berlin.jpg
Front view at Marlene-Dietrich-Platz
Location GermanyGermany Berlin
opening 1st October 1975
inlet Potsdamer Platz: 2.50 euros, well-groomed clothes.
TV tower: free, casual clothes
Employees 420 (companies in total)
Table games Black Jack, Roulette, Poker (tournament / cash game), Ultimate Texas Holdem (only Potsdamer Platz)
Slot machine games Slot machines, jackpots with a ticket system, video roulette
Tokens Chips from 1 to 10,000 euros
owner Casino Berlin Gustav Jaenecke GmbH & Co.
Website www.spielbank-berlin.de

The Berlin Casino is a corporation founded in 1975 and opened the casino in Berlin . The then 18th German casino was originally located in the Europa-Center in the district of Charlottenburg . Since 1998 the casino has been located near Potsdamer Platz in the Tiergarten district (Spielbank Berlin am Potsdamer Platz) .

As of 2016, the Spielbank Berlin is the top-selling casino in Germany and has other locations, including the Spielbank Berlin am Fernsehturm not far from Alexanderplatz in Mitte .

The casino in the evening - after the 58th Berlinale
Buddy Bear , Marlene-Dietrich-Platz 1, in Berlin-Tiergarten

move

After reunification , the Berlin Senate endeavored to accelerate the upgrading of the area around Potsdamer Platz. The extension of the concession of Gustav-Jaenecke -KG as operator of the Spielbank Berlin was therefore tied to a relocation of the arcade. Along with the opening of the DaimlerChrysler site at Potsdamer Platz on October 2, 1998, the Spielbank Berlin opened at Marlene-Dietrich-Platz 1.

The assigned building, designed by Renzo Piano and actually intended as a car exhibition building or automobile museum for DaimlerChrysler products, subsequently proved to be unsuitable for the requirements of a casino. The division over several floors was sometimes too uneconomical, and long corridors in the adjoining rooms led to space that could not be used but could still be rented.

As a result, the premises were redesigned several times, often accompanied by a reorganization of gaming operations across the floors. In the initial phase, the classic game (KSP) was divided into two parts: Casino Leger, which was looser in terms of clothing, on the first floor and Casino Royal, which at the time still required a suit and tie, on the second floor. The slot machine game (ASP) on the two basement floors could only be reached by stairs from the ground floor, with separate ticket sales. On the ground floor there were mainly the restaurant, the cloakroom and the reception of the KSP.

For reasons of space, the Spielbank Berlin is currently planning to move the Potsdamer Platz location to the Kudamm-Karee, which is currently under construction. However, the move is not expected before 2020.

World of Games

For a period of around two years, the so-called World of Games was built on the ground floor at the beginning of the millennium . This included two roulette quick tables with double zero from the KSP area , an Easy Jack table ( Black Jack without doubling and splitting), Sic Bo and a wheel of fortune , which was later given up in favor of a second Easy Jack table , as well as several dozen slot machines from the field of ASP. No admission was charged for this area, nor was there an ID check. That is why, according to the Senate Department for Finance, only lower stakes were allowed. The entrance fee for the ASP in the basement was also abolished and access was established through a centrally located escalator. The previously spacious restaurant area was restricted.

Casino Royal

In the early days, the Casino Royal was inferior to the Casino Leger at the time in terms of games because of the smaller space available. The inefficiency of operating the KSP over two floors was countered by converting and expanding the premises on the second floor, which has since housed the entire range of games at the KSP. In 2006 this was once again optimized by converting the Baccara Bar and relocating the poker area to the front. The reception is located in the entrance area of ​​the casino.

Live bingo / Belle et Fou

Due to the concentration of the KSP on the second floor, the former Casino Leger was empty on the first floor. First of all, in December 2002 Germany's first permanent venue for live bingo was installed by Live-Bingo-Berlin GmbH, a company of the Deutsche Klassenlotterie Berlin and the Spielbank Berlin. However, the demand remained below expectations, which is why this game offer was terminated again.

In May 2006, a new attempt was made to fill the first floor with new life with the show “Belle et Fou”. Under the leadership of Hans-Peter Wodarz and the choreographer Arthur Castro as well as the newly founded Spielbank Berlin Entertainment GmbH & Co. KG, after initially bad criticism in the media, the success did not want to set in; a relaunch after a revision of the staging did not save the undertaking.

Touch Bet Roulette

Today there is again an area called Casino Leger on the ground floor of the casino . Slot machines from the ASP are still installed next to the restaurant. A small shop for casino accessories rounds off the offer. However, the focus is on the large area of ​​touch bet roulette, a hybrid form of ASP and KSP, because the bets are made on the machine, but these are connected to a roulette wheel into which a croupier from the KSP throws the ball. The initially line-shaped structure of the gaming machines was abandoned in favor of a semicircle arrangement.

Game offer

Classic game

There are currently eight American Roulette tables with French bowls, five Black Jack and two Ultimate Texas Holdem tables in the Casino Royal . Around a dozen poker tables with different variants ( Omaha poker , Texas Hold'em , tournaments / cash games) complete the offer. Baccarat Chemin de Fer has not been played for several years due to lack of demand. The Sic-Bo and wheel of fortune games have also been discontinued. Red dog and European Seven Eleven were only offered during the reopening ceremony at Potsdamer Platz in 1998. French roulette was also dispensed with in the course of the switch from chips to chips and the relocation of the poker floor from the ground floor to the Casino Royal at the beginning of 2018. For this purpose, more tables for roulette, blackjack and wheel of fortune are currently being set up on the ground floor.

Slot machine game

In the two basement floors and on the ground floor there are a good 350 slot machines with various jackpot opportunities, including the Berlin jackpot, which always contains at least € 500,000 and thus represents one of the largest jackpots in the German casino industry.

The branches

Spielbank Berlin has three slot machine branches. The first was opened on February 1, 1984 in the Hotel Steigenberger at Los-Angeles-Platz 1 near the Europa-Center, the second on November 22, 2003 at Hasenheide 107-113 in Neukölln , and the third on March 4, 2005 in the Ellipse Spandau , Altstädter Ring 1. These each have 80 to 100 slot machines, including bingo or poker machines and multi-roulette islands. There has also been a second branch with live games on Alexanderplatz since 2013.

Alexanderplatz location

Up until 2012, the Berlin Senate granted the WestSpiel Group a second license . This initially operated a casino on the 37th floor of the Park-In Hotel on Alexanderplatz, before moving to the foot of the television tower in 2006. Due to economic problems, Westspiel withdrew from Berlin. Spielbank Berlin took over the license and the location, including inventory and staff, on January 1, 2013. The offer now includes 170 slot machines on the ground floor and table games on the first floor. These consist of three American roulette tables, two blackjack tables and three poker tables. Admission is free in the Alexanderplatz location and the minimum stakes are lower than in the headquarters on Potsdamer Platz.

The staff

Around 300 people work for Spielbank Berlin Gustav Jaenecke GmbH & Co. KG, most of them in the area of ​​slot machines. Various activities such as running the bars or the shop are carried out by employees of Spielbank Berlin Service GmbH. The management consists of the managing partner Günther Münstermann and the managing director Christiane Brümmer. The director of operations is Marcel Langner.

Tokens

Cash values ​​used by Spielbank Berlin at the Potsdamer Platz and Alexanderplatz locations

In the casino in Berlin on Potsdamer Platz, French tokens were used in classic games (roulette and blackjack) . These included values ​​of 2, 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, 500, 1,000, 5,000 and 10,000 euros. The 1 euro tokens are not in regular circulation. The 200 euro tokens (brown) were abolished after a short time due to the risk of confusion with the 500. Likewise, the planned 1,000-euro token only came into circulation in a modified version and is therefore different from the rest of the series. In 2012, new high-quality game chips (internally called values) in American style were introduced by the manufacturer B&G for the poker sector, of which, for reasons of simplicity, initially only the values ​​1, 2, 10, 50, 500 euros were used. The chips were initially only used at the Alexanderplatz location and for the poker floor at Potsdamer Platz; since 2018, they have been used for all tables in all locations.

Visitors and revenue

The Spielbank Berlin is visited by around 1,500 guests every day. Since 1975 more than 2 billion euros in gaming revenues have been generated. The casino tax and the other services in accordance with Section 4 of the Spielbankengesetz currently amount to a good 60 percent of gross gaming revenue (gaming sales less the winnings paid out). In cooperation with the HU Berlin , Spielbank Berlin offers advice for people at risk of gambling addiction . Since the State Treaty on Gambling came into force on January 1, 2008, the Spielbank Berlin, as in all German casinos, has generally required identification, including for the area of ​​slot machines.

Trivia

Several sculptures from the Daimler Art Collection have been installed in the area around Potsdamer Platz, one of them in front of the casino. At first this was Balloon Flower by Jeff Koons . Initially, the striking blue sculpture to the north was "on dry land", but after the opening of Potsdamer Platz in 1998 it quickly became an extremely popular photo backdrop and attracted whole school classes to climb it. So it was finally moved a few meters - into the water surface.

In the meantime the work has been exchanged for Prince Friedrich Arthur von Homburg by the artist Frank Stella (status: May 2011).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. [1] accessed on June 6, 2018
  2. ISA-CASINOS warmly welcomes Spielbank Berlin to its Internet portal . ( Memento of November 13, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) isa-casinos.de, November 13, 2007, accessed on November 19, 2017.
  3. [2] accessed on August 1, 2014
  4. http://art.daimler.com/sammlung/profil/skulpturen/
  5. DaimlerChrysler Collection - FAQ - Frequently asked questions - Art goes out into the World , accessed on May 27, 2011.