The soon-to-be-illegal games have become a way of life and a source of reliable revenue in places like Ambridge
By Sean D. Hamill
NewsWorks Lab contributor
As a vendor handed Darla Talerico a 4-inch wad of $1 and $5 bills from the till box in a crane machine game at her namesake restaurant in Ambridge on Tuesday, he made her a timely offer.
“If these [skill] games go away,” he said, motioning to the five skill games machines tucked into a small side room in Talerico’s Bar and Grill at 2300 Duss Avenue, “we might have something that would help, maybe another crane machine or some other game we could put in here.”
Talerico knows all too well that on Oct. 13 her skill games could become illegal under a state Supreme Court decision from June, unless the court grants a requested four-month delay by the legislators hoping to legalize the games. She considered the vendor’s offer and said she’d think about it.
After he left, she said it’s a tough pitch for vendors if they’re going to try to replace the revenue skill games have meant to her and others in Ambridge over the past decade with more crane machine games, which give players a chance to win a small toy, or other games.
“No,” she said, shaking her head as she sat at one of the Pace-O-Matic brand skill games in her bar. “Nothing does as good as these machines.”
Similar sentiments were repeated in conversations NewsWorks Lab had the past two weeks with owners or officers at most of the 18 businesses and social clubs in Ambridge that together have 82 skill games. It represents the most densely packed hub for skill games in Beaver County, local government officials said.
Throughout the Commonwealth, business owners – and officials in the communities where they operate – face questions about how to replace the lucrative revenues they stand to lose if lawmakers and the court allow the games to remain illegal.
“We may have to close,” said Harry Yadav, owner of Harry’s Market at 625 Duss Avenue.
He and his brother recently bought the store, which has four skill games near the front and a sign in the window that says, “Open – Skill Games.”
“For a small community store, we need these things,” he said. “Without them, we will be broke.”
Like the entire state, skill games have flourished in Beaver County, which is considered the birthplace of skill games in Pennsylvania. Several local officials said the county, with 166,000 residents, might have as many as 1,000 skill games spread among its 54 local governments.
“We have a lot ourselves, though we’re not sure how many,” said Sam Gill, manager for the nearby city of Aliquippa, where the first skill game was placed in a social club in 2013. “Up on Broadhead Road [that runs through Aliquppa’s west side], these machines line the way from Moon Township to Monaca. They are everywhere.”
The concerns about them disappearing from clubs, bars, convenience stores, and even laundromats and grocery stores, run statewide, as evidenced by the various lobbying campaigns by businesses.
Talerico, whose skill game space has a large yellow sign encouraging customers to call their local state representatives, organized one such protest. She convinced operators at 15 area bars and clubs that have skill games to collect at least 1,000 customers to sign a petition supporting the games. She gave it to local state representatives.
In Ambridge, many social club officers and business owners and managers said they have gradual, long-term fears as they struggle to figure out a future without the games they considered a god-send.
Many worry about having enough money to make looming repairs or renovations, or not being able to give employees pay raises, or, more personally, not being able to take a family vacation.
Most worry about a longer-term domino effect where losing tens of thousands of dollars of revenue from skill games forces them to raise prices on food and drinks, which ultimately could lead them to lose customers or members in a town where raising the price of a beer even a little could send a regular to a competitor.
“You can’t raise your prices enough to compensate for that” loss of skill game revenue, said Talerico, who has run her bar and restaurant for 26 years. “This isn’t a wealthy town. We’d lose customers.”
Ambridge, located about 16 miles west of Pittsburgh, was founded in 1905 and named after American Bridge Co., a U.S. Steel subsidiary that used to occupy most of the town’s Ohio River shoreline. Its 4,000 employees – at the peak – produced steel that went into some of the most iconic bridges and buildings in the world.
The town took a massive economic blow in the early 1980s when the plant, which had seen dwindling production and employment for decades, finally closed for good.
Ambridge had 20,000 residents at its peak in 1930, and it lost nearly two-thirds of its population over the decades, down to 6,900 in the 2020 census.
Since then, Ambridge has seen its population stabilize in U.S. Census Bureau estimates for the first time in a century. New residents are lured by its affordable housing and business owners by its still-largely intact century-old buildings on the main drag, Merchant Street, and second business center along Duss Avenue, officials said.
Two successful micro-breweries – Altered Genius, at 411 Merchant, and Fermata, at 918 Merchant – now book end Merchant Street. Both opened in the past six years. Neither has skill games.
“There’s a bar nearby that has higher prices,” said Josh Tomayko, whose family owns Firehouse Lounge, at 1301 Merchant St., which just had its three skill games removed as the Supreme Court’s deadline approaches. “But they’re serving different drinks to a different crowd. … Here, it’s still, ‘Give me a Miller Lite.’ ‘Give me my Coors Lite.’”
The town also has fraternal organizations with even less expensive beer for members, at $3 or $4 a glass.
Three of those social clubs have skill games: the Filipino American Club at 603 Duss Ave., the Fraternal Order of Eagles at 401 Maplewood Ave. (which just took its games out because of the deadline) and the Polish Falcons at 529 8th St.
“It’ll put a hurting on us,” Bob Hare, president of the Polish Falcons, said as he sat at the end of the club’s bar, at the back of a spacious banquet room that has five games along one wall. “Because like everyone says, it helps pay the utilities and expenses and stuff.”
A couple years ago the skill games revenue helped the Falcons pay for a new $20,000 roof and a new $19,000 set of security doors.
Beyond the revenue, Hare and other social club officers say skill games have become part of the culture of their clubs.
“I think people like the convenience of it,” said Johnnie McCracken, who runs the Filipino American Club, which has four games. “They can walk here to play them. And there isn’t any way people are going to the casino in Pittsburgh to gamble all the time.”
As evidence of their connection to the games, the clubs post “members only” signs on their games because club members don’t want anyone outside the club playing them.
The reason became clear a couple years ago to members of the Falcons, which hosts both dart and pool leagues, when a visiting dart player put $1 into a skill game and won a $500 jackpot.
“Oh yeah, they got mad,” Hare said. “[Members] see that as their jackpot to win. That’s why there are signs on every machine now.”
The games have become part of Ambridge’s culture too.
Isaac Elias, owner of Ambridge Shipping Center, which collects and sends packages for customers, thought they were so much part of the everyday life in the business community that he posted an April Fool’s Day photo on Facebook of him smiling while giving a thumbs-up sign in front of some skill games.
“We want to make shipping FUN so we added something special to the store this week!” he posted with the photo.
He thought everyone would get the joke that he was just pretending to have skill games.
“You look at our store,” he said, motioning to the mailboxes for rent on one wall and the shipping boxes around the store. “They wouldn’t fit here.”
But dozens of people thought he was serious, asking him online and in person when they came in where the skill games were. Even the borough took him seriously, putting his business on a list of possible places to charge their $600 license fee and sending a code officer to check.
“I honestly was a little bit sad that so many people believed me,” Elias said. “It goes to show that everybody has them.”
Ambridge borough would also see a loss if the games go away: It collected $51,600 from the 86 games this year, thanks to a $600 per year, per machine, license fee that was raised twice in the past decade from $400 to take advantage of the growing popularity of skill games.
This year’s take was nearly double from 2020, when the fee was $500 per machine, and the borough generated $27,500 in license fees from 55 games in 14 locations.
That increase in fees also applied to other amusement devices such as dart boards, pool tables and juke boxes. Combined with skill games, they generated almost $80,000 for the borough.
Before Beaver County’s recent property tax reassessment, that revenue equaled about half a mil in property tax collections, said Mario Leone, manager of the borough, with a $6 million annual budget.
“We increased fees on games and other activities to avoid having to raise property taxes,” he said. “It’s significant to us.”
Bar and club owners and officers said they are looking at doing what they can to make up the lost revenue, adding dart games, jukeboxes, and maybe even expanding.
“It’ll be devastating if I let it be,” said Curt Martin, owner of Fred’s Divot bar at 816 Merchant St. “But I’ll man up. Times have been tougher. And I’ve built up a good clientele.”
Tomayko said he might bring back the dart board he took out of Firehouse Lounge to make way for a fourth skill game machine.
“I’m also thinking of expanding, he said. “It’s vacant next door. It might be an option. … Look, I survived COVID. I can survive skill games.”
NewsWorks Lab is a public-benefit company owned by Trib Total Media to produce high-impact, accountability journalism as a free, open-source resource. You may find more information at NewsWorksLab.com. Questions, tips and comments maybe shared at Hello@NewsWorksLab.com.
Sean D. Hamill and Sophia Lucente are contributors to NewsWorks Lab.
Copyright NewsWorksLab, LLC 2026
