Knowing when to hold, when to fold

Winning at a casino is about hope, risk and timing. Lawmakers working to help bring a casino to Bridgeport stepped away from the table Tuesday, recognizing the need to build more hope, reduce the risk and wait for better timing.

Continuing to play their hand could have been risky for lawmakers from Bridgeport and New Haven, where a related job training center is proposed. The bill sought to initiate an open-bidding process among competing casino companies. It’s such a preliminary step it doesn’t even name Bridgeport. Though the House of Representatives backed it, 77-73, after a couple days of debate, lawmakers recognized they would hold a losing hand in the Senate as the session ticked toward Wednesday’s midnight deadline.

This is the way the game is played. The New Haven and Bridgeport delegations could have put future hopes of collecting the pot on the multimillion vision in jeopardy with a truncated and polarizing discourse. So they seized a small victory from which to build during next year’s long session.

In The Land of Steady Habits, perhaps the steadiest is to hold off on decisions involving problems and solutions. That’s why our infrastructure has been eroding for decades, original approaches seldom advance past committee discussions and — oh, yes — lawmakers missed their deadline on the budget by four months last year.

In this case, it was the right call.

Our support of bringing a third casino to Connecticut has been tempered. We stand behind Bridgeport as the right host city and that Connecticut is in no position to ignore MGM Resorts International’s pitch to produce millions of dollars in state income and create thousands of jobs. But opportunity won’t wait forever at the door after knocking.

MGM has been doing this long enough to know how to read the hand. Support in the House didn’t come easy, but it seems to represent more progress than they were expecting this early in the game. MGM senior vice president Uri Clinton not only acknowledged they are in for the long run, but that “rarely we have gaming policy that moves so far in a single session.”

Rep. Toni Walker, D-New Haven, saw it as “a good starting place for us next year.”

Ramrodding a vote in the Senate could only have come up snake eyes. Too many questions linger over what this deal would mean to a

But opportunity won’t wait forever at the door after knocking.

25-year exclusivity pact with the Mohegan and Mashantucket Pequot tribes that operate Mohegan Sun and Foxwoods casinos.

Two days wasn’t enough time to get skeptics on board, particularly given more urgent budget matters that demanded attention.

Sen. Ed Gomes, DBridgeport, claimed victory as well, acknowledging the need for “cohesiveness” in the General Assembly. It’s a noble goal, and the united effort by delegates in Bridgeport and New Haven has been a refreshing display of collaboration between Connecticut cities.

With a little more time, Connecticut lawmakers may come to realize they don’t have to play against one another.