Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Casinos staying in as poker popularity grows

Las Vegas casinos are scrambling to parlay the soaring popularity of poker into new revenue and customers.

Casinos that never had a poker room are building them, casinos that closed poker rooms are reopening them and many of the city's existing rooms are expanding and offering more tournaments as a way to tap into the game's increasing popularity.

And poker's heat is translating into bottom-line improvements at many of Las Vegas' top poker rooms.

"I don't think anyone could have dreamed it would be so successful," Bellagio Director of Poker Operations Doug Dalton said this week. "Most of the upswing happened since the World Poker Tour (WPT) began broadcasting in March (of 2003)."

The impact of WPT events broadcast on the Travel Channel, drawing 5 million viewers a week, combined with the incredible story of improbably named Tennessee amateur Chris Moneymaker, who parlayed a $40 online poker tournament entry into last year's $2.5 million World Series of Poker top prize, has been obvious in Las Vegas, casino poker bosses said.

Bellagio poker revenue is up, year-over-year, more than 50 percent since last March, Dalton said, crediting the WPT broadcasts and Moneymaker's implausible win for the lion's share of the surge.

"That's the best story ever for poker," Dalton said. "He takes $40 and now has $2.5 million in his pocket. Anybody can win, that's the message that Moneymaker sends, and that's the message people are getting: This could be you."

Las Vegas Investment Advisors casino analyst Dave Ehlers said that the poker boom will have a material effect on casino coffers.

"One way or the other, whether through additional revenue in the poker room itself or by attracting significant foot traffic to spend elsewhere in the casino, the properties are going to benefit, big time," Ehlers said.

Poker may never be a money-maker like slot machines, blackjack, baccarat and craps, but it has its place now, Ehlers said.

"For operators, poker was always a loss-leader, and a first-class pain ... until the World Poker Tour went on TV," Ehlers said. "Now people think they can do it. You've got a whole group of poker wannabees wandering into casinos, thinking they can do what they've seen on TV."

Bellagio plans to soon begin work on an expansion of its poker room, a project that will add another five or six tables to the 30-table room by December.

Space is being carved out of the Bellagio's slot floor to allow the expansion, which will include an ultra-high-end game area that Dalton promises will be the talk of the industry.

Bellagio is not the only casino expanding its poker operations.

The Sahara is getting ready to expand and add tables, a decision justified by the public's powerful interest in the games they see on TV, Sahara Director of Marketing and Entertainment Ron Garrett said.

"I've been doing this for 35 years and I remember when we were thinking about closing poker rooms," Garrett said. "We've had tremendous success and that's why we're adding tables."

Other Las Vegas poker expansions, completed or on the horizon, include:

The Palms, which recently replaced its keno lounge with a new high-limit poker room, a venue that the property hopes will tap into the popularity of the "Celebrity Poker Showdown" series that tapes at the Palms, now in its second season. "Celebrity Poker Showdown," broadcast on Bravo, pits celebrities against each other.

The Mirage, which recently completed an expansion from 24 to 31 tables.

Mandalay Bay, which is adding a 10th table to its nine-table room.

Cannery, which installed a four-table poker area shortly after opening in North Las Vegas in January 2003, and now has six tables. "It's been phenomenal," Cannery co-owner Bill Paulos said of poker's performance.

Golden Nugget owners Tim Poster and Tom Breitling hope to reopen the property's room, closed for almost 15 years, in time for the April 22 kickoff of the World Series of Poker at nearby Binion's Horseshoe, now operated by Harrah's Entertainment.

They also hope to capitalize on the televised popularity of poker and create some made-for-TV poker events that could boost the Nugget's profile in the poker community, Poster said recently.

Few would have predicted the recent explosion in poker's popularity, which has caused heads to spin in the casino business.

Only a couple of years ago, many casino executives thought poker was a waste of casino floor space, turf better spent on low-hassle, high-return slot machines.

Poker customers were old, and they were cheap, always looking for an angle, the bosses thought.

More Las Vegas poker rooms were closing than opening. Operators that kept poker rooms said the venues weren't big money makers if they made money at all, but said that offering the full range of casino games was an important customer service.

The Venetian, Riviera, Harrah's, Rio, Stratosphere, New Frontier, Rampart, MGM Grand, Las Vegas Club, Skyline, Santa Fe (now Santa Fe Station) and Treasure Island all once had poker rooms but dropped them.

Now the trend is heading in the opposite direction.

The best example is Harrah's Entertainment Inc., which has two properties in Las Vegas that have closed poker rooms, Harrah's and The Rio.

Harrah's recently completed its purchase of Binion's Horseshoe's intellectual property rights, including rights to the World Series of Poker.

Harrah's not only plans to leverage the World Series' status as the game's top tournament, perhaps using it as a springboard for a new Horseshoe hotel-casino it could build on the Strip, but also plans to reopen poker rooms at both of its Las Vegas casinos, company spokesman Gary Thompson said.

MGM Grand bosses are considering bringing live poker back to the Strip's biggest resort, Dalton said.

And Bill Paulos and his partners, who operate the Rampart as well as the Cannery, are searching for space to reopen a poker room at the Rampart.

Silverton General Manager Craig Cavileer said the Blue Diamond Road property has never before considered live poker games.

"As a way to draw customers, poker's not going to be extremely profitable if you're drawing 20 people," Cavileer said. "But if you can get 50? Then it's interesting."

The betting game's popularity with younger gamblers is particularly attractive, and is the reason the Silverton is seriously considering adding a small poker venue to its new Shady Grove lounge, with stylized tables and decor that would appeal to younger poker players, he said.

"It would be cool to take a hip design and offer poker in the lounge," Cavileer said. "There's an opportunity to draw the 25-to-35 (year-old) crowd."

The poker popularity boom has also fueled the city's poker tournament action.

Tournaments used to be thought of as a way to introduce players to the card rooms and as a way to draw business to the room's more lucrative cash games. Poker tournaments generally take a small cut out of each contestant's entry fee, while the rooms typically take at least a couple of bucks out of every single pot in live cash games.

But the WPT and the continuous rebroadcasts of Moneymaker's World Series triumph on ESPN have fueled incredible demand for poker tournaments, industry executives said.

The Orleans, the city's longstanding daily poker tournament king, offers two events every day -- one at noon, the second at 7 p.m.

Not only have entries for The Orleans' tourneys skyrocketed over the past year, with events that once drew less than 100 now regularly topping 200 entrants, but entry fees have gone up as well, meaning bigger prize pools and more money for the property.

About one year ago, Bellagio began holding a $540 entry tourney every Friday at 5 p.m., then the biggest buy-in for a regularly scheduled tournament in the city.

In February 2003, the events drew an average of 35 players.

Last February, they drew an average of 135.

To meet customer demand, Bellagio tournament boss Jack McClelland made the Friday event a $1,060 buy-in tourney, and started a new, $540 buy-in event at 1 p.m. on Wednesdays.

"We're getting an interesting mix of players," McClelland said, explaining what types of players are now entering tourneys and playing in casino poker rooms. "We're now getting some affluent businessmen, and young people in their 20s and 30s."

Bellagio's biggest tournaments, of course, are its signature World Poker Tour events, December's Five Diamond World Poker Classic and this month's Five-Star World Poker Classic, which culminates with the $25,000 buy-in WPT Championship.

Dalton and McClelland predict the WPT Championship will draw more than 300 entrants and have a prize pool of greater than $7 million, with an outside chance that the event could break the prize-pool poker tourney record set by last year's World Series of Poker.

"It's real reality TV," McClelland said. "If you pay the entry fee, you can play against the best poker players in the world, and if you win, you'll pocket a couple of million. It's not hard to sell."

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