Brian “Alf” Grzegorczyk has spent the past 16 years turning a Cheyenne charity he founded called Thankful Thursdays into a fundraising powerhouse for local nonprofits.
So far, the charity has donated more than $4.5 million to local groups, helping everything from fire departments and softball leagues to pet rescue programs and veterans.
At his own bar, Alf’s Pub, Grzegorczyk has added a series of smaller games to support Thankful Thursdays, the most recent being a bar-top game called Queen of Hearts.
In just the last 18 months, Queen of Hearts became one of the best tools he’s seen yet for drawing people into the bar and fueling his charitable giving — until a statewide crackdown on what regulators say is illegal gambling.
For Grzegorczyk, Queen of Hearts was never intended to be a casino-style jackpot machine or card game.
It was just a way to turn slow nights into a full room and then convert that energy into donations for local nonprofits, many of which also benefit from the larger Thankful Thursday events held during the spring and fall at Cheyenne’s Lincoln Event Center.
The popularity of the game has made it the best draw he’s seen yet at his business, and it came at a critical time, when grants and government support for charity efforts are shrinking.
“Grants are being cut tremendously for nonprofits. State assistance is being cut tremendously,” he told Cowboy State Daily. “So why are you hurting us when you have locals wanting to help locals? … We’re not hurting anybody.”
Funding Scholarships, Fire Departments, Softball And More
In the most recent 12-week run at Alf’s Pub, the Queen of Hearts game generated about $12,000 for Thankful Thursday.
That’s money Grzegorczyk said was then passed along as $1,000 each week to 12 nonprofits.
With additional activities and games at the bar, Grzegorczyk was also able to make $40,000 in other donations over the 12-week period, including $5,000 for the WYCO Volunteer Fire Department; $5,000 for a girls’ traveling softball team; $5,000 for Cheyenne’s Brewfest to support the Cheyenne Depot restoration; $5,000 for Yola's Pet Rescue; and $15,000 toward Compass for the Future. That’s a new veterans and first-responders park that will feature a Vietnam memorial wall.
Those donations wouldn’t have been possible without a game now flagged as illegal gambling, because that was the game that was predominantly getting everyone to show up at his business, he said.
Grzegorczyk’s not the only business using Queen of Hearts to support their business and local charities.
At a legislative hearing about gaming issues held last week, Grzegorczyk told lawmakers that many other bars and clubs are using the game to raise money for other charity efforts.
“I also reached out to the airport golf course … which has a nonprofit that runs their club,” he said. “I asked them how this is going to affect them with the Queen of Hearts, and every year they donate about $28,500 for 30 kids to get scholarships.
"All of that comes from the Queen of Hearts program.”
Why Regulators Say It’s Illegal
The trouble, as the Wyoming Gaming Commission sees it, is that good intentions can’t make an illegal game legal.
Wyoming statutes define gambling as risking any property for gain that is contingent in whole or in part by chance, said Wyoming Gaming Commissioner Nick Laramendy.
Under Wyoming law, all gambling is illegal except where exempted, which right now includes three options for charity efforts — bingo, calcutta, and pull-tabs.
Queen of Hearts is a progressive raffle and doesn’t qualify for any of the state’s existing charitable exemptions.
As explained by Grzegorczyk in legislative testimony, the stakes for Queen of Hearts are generally quite low.
A ticket typically runs from $1 to $5. A customer writes down a name and phone number on the ticket, as well as their choice of playing card.
Once a week, a winner is drawn from that week’s tickets, and the chosen card is then revealed. If it’s the Queen of Hearts, the winner gets the jackpot.
Otherwise, the exposed card remains visible so everyone knows it’s not the Queen of Hearts, and the game continues another week.
That builds up the overall jackpot each week until the Queen of Hearts is eventually revealed.
The longer the game runs, the bigger the jackpots, and the more interested people become in the game. Jackpots have ranged into the six figures in Wyoming, Wyoming Gaming Commission officials say. Some states have even reported jackpots in the millions.
The boards that Grzegorczyk uses come factory-sealed by a licensed supplier, with all the cards laminated facedown.
To reveal a card, staff cut it out and flip it over, leaving a visible cut that he believes makes the boards “cheat proof.”
Doesn’t Fit Wyoming Exemptions
The structure of the game means there is always a winner, eventually. But there are sometimes no winners for the drawings that lead up to the big and final reveal, and that’s a problem, Laramendy said.
Wyoming law requires that winners receive a prize of value, with all tickets having an equal chance to win that prize based on tickets sold.
“There’s no prize of value you are guaranteed to win,” he said. “You’re simply winning the chance to gamble on a secondary game, which is the Queen of Hearts game.”
Because cards are removed from the board each week, the odds also shift over time, which is counter to the “equal probability” standard that defines a raffle under Wyoming law.
Many businesses offer small consolation prizes for the weekly winners, which range from free drinks to a few bucks.
That helps with the requirement that there must be a prize of value for each drawing, Laramendy conceded. But consolation prizes don’t cure the overriding problem that the Queen of Hearts jackpot itself is a gambling game with jackpots won by chance that is not presently covered by any of Wyoming’s available exemptions.
The arguments he’s heard that these games help bars stay afloat is problematic.
“I had a bar owner call me and tell me that we are decimating his business by removing this game from his bar,” he said. “That’s a problem. These types of gambling activities or gaming activities are not authorized to further that business.”
Gaming cannot further any profit motive under Wyoming law, Laramendy said.
“If you look at the statute for professional gaming, it (prohibits) aiding or inducing another to gamble with the intent to derive a profit,” he said. “So, if you’re running these games to try to draw people into your bar to sell more drinks or to sell more food, there’s an argument that could be made that you are doing that to, you may not be taking a profit from the game, but if you have added business and added drink sales and added food sales, that’s a profit to your business as well.”
New Historic Horse Racing Casinos Prompt More Enforcement
To Grzegorczyk and others running similar games across Wyoming, what changed recently was not the law, but the level of enforcement.
As historic horse racing parlors and other casino-style venues have expanded to new communities, the Gaming
Commission started checking more of state’s gaming landscape — and shutting down games like Queen of Hearts and Music Bingo.
In Evanston, entertainer A.J. Lamb, owner of Bearded Boom Box, spent about eight years running Music Bingo and other games at local bars, bowling alleys, VFW posts and Eagles clubs.
For Music Bingo, players buy a $5 card, playing up to three games a night with 100% of each pot paid back to players through these games.
Lamb was paid separately by the venue, as entertainment.
Some nights, these events were framed around charity, with portions of the pot going to a good cause.
Lamb told Cowboy State Daily that regulators largely left his operation alone until the new Gateway Casino opened up in town.
When Gaming Commission staff came to inspect the new casino with its historic horse racing machines, they also fanned out through Evanston’s smaller venues to look at skill-based machines, bingo, and other bar games.
“They just went through like a sweep of the town, clearing out everyone’s events,” he said.
Lamb shifted to game nights, trivia, karaoke — but some of the businesses balked at that and told him that if he didn’t return to Music Bingo they would choose a different entertainer who would.
“I lost about $31,000 last year from one bar alone,” he said.
Lamb has heard other stories like that from around the state, including in Cody, where long-running bingo and Queen of Hearts games were caught in an enforcement sweep that sounded to him like it was very similar to the one he saw happen in Evanston.
Calls For Legislative Change
The state’s aggressive stance has been hard for Grzegorczyk and Lamb both to swallow.
“When you see all the money we’re giving back, it’s a win-win for everyone,” Grzegorczyk said. “Let’s say you buy $100, and I’m just making it for easy figures, but $25 of that $100 is going directly to charity.
"If you go to a casino and put $100 into the machine and lose that $100, that’s going to where all these corporates are. Nothing’s going here. We get our 12% sales tax, but that’s it.”
Lamb puts it even more bluntly, questioning why Wyoming has found a way to regulate historic horse racing and other casino-style products while saying it cannot accommodate small-stakes, charity-driven games.
“Why is horse racing an exception, but not charity?” he asked. “They want to protect people so they don’t feel bad.
"Well, I feel worse walking out of a day at the horse races, losing my socks, than I do walking out of a bar playing music bingo.”
Online Gaming Has Outpaced Wyoming Laws
Lamb has started a petition that so far has 600 signatures to urge lawmakers to create a legal path forward for low-stakes games like music bingo and Queen of Hearts, where people are spending a buck or two at a time, mostly for fun.
“It’s mind-boggling to me,” he said. “Don’t get me wrong. I totally understand why there’s no gambling. But if it’s no to gambling, then why do we have the horse races?”
Meanwhile, Lamb added, technology has already completely outpaced Wyoming’s laws on gambling, making them somewhat ludicrous, in his opinion.
“I could sit on my phone right now and play those gambling games and waste thousands of dollars and put my mortgage down without even getting dressed,” he said. “That right there is terrifying, but that’s completely fine.”
There are even prediction apps now, he added, which let people bet on the outcome of all kinds of things, from state and federal election races to when will it snow in Jackson Hole.
“That’s what honestly blows my mind,” Lamb said. “They’ve created so many loopholes by trying to stop willing people from throwing a buck at someone for a game.”
Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.
