Are Casinos Ruining Poker?

The 2026 World Series of Poker started up this week, and we’ll be treated to many shots of poker housed in Las Vegas at the Paris and Horseshoe casinos. Not only will the WSOP be running, but other poker series will be bursting at the seams all over Vegas, from downtown at the old school Golden Nugget to the lavish Aria and the off-Strip gem The Orleans.

So it may seem absurd right now to pose the question “Are casinos ruining poker?”, but we will. Casinos and poker seem, especially since the pandemic, to have an uneasy relationship. Live poker took a hiatus in most places for months during the pandemic. Casinos and cardrooms seemed to take this time to re-evaluate poker’s role in their business as they decided if and how to bring it back. After years of flourishing across the US, live poker was suddenly on the chopping block.

The Profitability of Casinos and Poker

A key concern for casinos became the amount of space, personnel, and effort they were willing to expend moving forward for an activity whose profit margins pale in comparison to slot machines and most other table games. An absolutely legitimate business question. Poker is certainly not an entitlement. There is no mandate that any particular casino needs to include a poker room.

Historically though, poker had a critical niche in the gambling industry. It was played by some bigger than life characters like Amarillo Slim, Stu Unger, and Johnny Chan who provided a flamboyance and infusion of skill amidst gambling’s odds-based outcomes. Poker, if not wildly profitable, provided status to many casinos, particularly those in Las Vegas. Some high stakes cash games were even allotted their own space, like Bobby’s Room at the Bellaggio. Thus, poker, for a time, was something casinos had to offer to compete with one another. Whether a loss leader or not, poker was a staple at most casinos.

Card Rooms versus Casinos

Poker in the United States has emerged out of varying traditions. After the early days of games on riverboats and in western saloons, came home games and card rooms, many of them illegal. From the underground scene in New York to roadside bars in Texas, poker flourished under the radar. There were clearly people who just wanted to play poker, versus those who wanted to gamble at any game of chance. To be fair, there were plenty of general gamblers in these card rooms as well. But the focus was poker, and the game was of high value to participants.

In several states where casinos are very restricted (typically only to Native American properties) cardrooms with little to no other casino game access remain the standard. Most notable among these are California, Texas, and Florida. In these states, cardrooms put poker front and center. sometimes offering a few poker-based table games (e.g., Ultimate Texas Hold’Em).

The absence of slot machines specifically avoids the conundrum of “Is poker worth offering, when slots are so much more profitable?” in these areas. In Texas, there are dozens of cardrooms of varying sizes, operating under a loose “membership” model. In the Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio/Austin areas you have your choice of cash games or tournaments on any given day of the week. Poker continues to thrive in “cardroom states.”

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The New Hampshire Experience

New Hampshire, starting in the early 2000s, operated under the strict cardroom model. Poker there came under the legal auspices of “charitable gaming”. A percentage of each cardroom’s proceeds were donated to charities in the state. Then, of course, the state exacted tax money from these rooms as well.

Under this model, New Hampshire spawned many cardrooms, some quite large and very active. In the beginning, cash play was legally restricted to limit poker, which helped fuel the sizable interest in tournament play in that state. Tournaments were generally very inexpensive, most between $40 and $90 to buy in. There were also caps on how much an individual could put into a given tournament event ($250, which then increased to $500). This restricted re-buy action on these games. Eventually, the ban on No Limit cash was lifted and the popularity of cash play increased substantially. For several years in the 2010s, both cash and tournament play flourished, and the New Hampshire poker scene was one of the most vibrant in the country.

If you calculate the charitable contribution requirement, the state taxes, and the limits on buy-ins, you realize that the profitability of poker in this format was a bit limited. Not to say that the most active rooms did not make money, they did. But not casino, slot machine kind of money. But since poker was the focus in these cardrooms (only a smattering of other table games were allowed), there was a great emphasis creating a great poker culture. And, fairly universally, players loved playing in New Hampshire.

Casinos Come to New Hampshire

Over the past decade, changes have come to New Hampshire. Most notably, “slot machines” whose odds are based on historical horse racing results rather than traditional slot algorithms were legalized. In addition, DraftKings was legalized in the state, and sports books developed a huge presence in most of these former cardrooms. With those additions and a further loosening of caps on table game wagering, all the seeds were there for the logical evolution: a full casino gaming experience.

Fairly rapidly, existing sites like The Brook, Manchester (under various names through the years), and Gate City (formerly Boston Billiards) were purchased by national casino brands and transformed into more typical casino properties. Meanwhile new venues opened, like The Nash and Lilac City, as small to moderate-sized casinos. The pandemic, as mentioned earlier, Had also brought the reconsideration of tournament poker’s role in New Hampshire. For a while, tournaments, other than in Manchester, vanished almost completely. When they did re-emerge, they were noticeably changed. Gone were the days of daily cheap (under $100) tournaments. Tournaments became sparse and now saw price tags well over $100 a buy-in. Several casinos decided not to offer any tournaments at all, or to run just one special one per month. In the past five years, the climate of New Hampshire poker has completely changed.

The Marginalization of Poker in Casinos

The New Hampshire experience is a cautionary tale for states whose primary poker venues are cardrooms. If casinos with slot machines evolve, your poker experience and community will change. Inevitably, poker will not be front and center: there are far more slot players and blackjack players in the world than poker players. And any game where you are playing against the house is far more profitable for the casino.

While it may not happen overnight, the marginalization and deemphasizing of poker can happen in many ways. As happened in New Hampshire, tournaments can disappear and/or increase in price to drive better margins. Staffing, a major issue for poker in casinos, can be cut, thus limiting active tables in cash play or tournaments. The number of tables in a room can, in time, shrink. The physical space provided can be made uncomfortable at best. One small casino in New Hampshire was reduced at one point to 4 tables, which were placed in the entrance hallway. The tables were immediately inside the exterior doors, which is fun in February in New England!

Poker players get the message in these cases: you are not a valuable piece of this business. We’d rather have one active slot player than 10 poker players. Questions arise for the poker player as to whether the experience continues to be worth the cost.

The Future of Casinos and Poker

Casinos and poker will obviously continue to co-exist, and likely be strong in areas like Las Vegas. But even Vegas has seen the closing of many rooms and the shrinking of others. One of the newest Vegas casinos, Resorts World, opened an excellent, well-run room, and after just a few years of existence, closed it a couple of months ago. A lot of factors went into the closing, including Las Vegas’s tourism dip, but it may well be an omen for other poker rooms in the city. In the late 2000s, there were about 60 poker rooms in Las Vegas. After the Resorts World closing. there are now 17.

If casinos in Vegas can’t sustain poker, what are the odds for casinos in other areas? If poker is not the main event in a venue, what are its chances of a poker room thriving or even surviving? Sure there are exceptions. There remain some great (and very successful) poker rooms housed in casinos, like Maryland Live!, but will they continue to be the exception? In a recent trip we made to the long-standing. well-regarded, and large room, The Borgata in Atlantic City, we saw signs of erosion. There was a clear lack of concern for the poker player on the tournament side, at least.

All of this foretells a dim future for live poker in the United States. As long as profit is king, poker will continue to be marginalized wherever slots and table games are legal. In the meantime, we recommend you seek venues in Florida, Texas, and California where poker can still be found affordably, and poker players are welcomed.

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