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After a long period of prohibition that would surely have shocked Mark Twain and his poker buddies, riverboat gambling was relegalized in Louisiana in 1991. Since then, a number of “floating casinos” had come and gone. The Pot O’Gold had been in business for about five years. Though it was lumped in with the riverboats, it was actually moored on Lake Pontchartrain. Originally all boats had been required to leave their docks and cruise several times a day. None of them wanted to, since gamblers disliked being stuck on the boat for an entire cruise and would disembark before it set sail. Because the law allowed them to remain in port if sailing conditions were dangerous, the captains came up with all sorts of creative threats to their vessels: mysterious debris in the lake, approaching hu
