A Las Vegas-style casino has been approved for the Wind River Indian Reservation. Two nonprofit groups and a maker of electronic bingo machines, asked the Wyoming Supreme Court to overturn a judge's decision that electronic bingo is illegal gambling. Powerball, with jackpots topping $300 million, is making its way right up to Wyoming's border - literally right up to the border, in the case of one northern Colorado lottery vendor.
More than 100 years after Wyoming lawmakers outlawed gambling, is gambling making a comeback?
Still, signs are all around that gambling is making inroads into the state - and, in some cases, being shut down when law enforcement catches up:
€ Last year, Attorney General Pat Crank issued an opinion saying that poker games in bars - events that have risen in popularity in Wyoming and across the country - violated the state's gambling law because they allowed the establishment to profit from gambling, even if that profit is just from increased business.
€ In January, a judge in Cheyenne ruled that electronic bingo, a high-speed game that allows players to play 10 cards in mere seconds, bore little resemblance to traditional bingo and was an illegal form of gambling.
€ In April, police in Casper and Rock Springs raided businesses that sold long-distance phone cards and Internet time, along with free “sweepstakes” points customers could use to play casino-type games online with the hope of winning cash.
€In June, a judge in Cheyenne ruled that so-called “instant racing” machines, which allowed players to bet nearly blind on past horse races (players did not know what race was being run, nor what horses they were betting on) went beyond the parameters of the state's pari-mutuel laws and were a form of illegal gambling.
€ In September, the U.S. Interior Department approved the Northern Arapaho Tribe's plan for a Class III, or Las Vegas-style, casino on the Wind River Indian Reservation. Now, the Eastern Shoshone Tribe, which shares Wind River with the Arapahos, wants to negotiate terms with the state for their own casino.
If gambling does expand in Wyoming, the state may have some extra work on its hands.
