Nevada loses another poker room

The closure of the MGM-owned card room follows Monte Carlo’s move to shutter its poker room last month. Monte Carlo is also an MGM property.

The news about Luxor was first reported by Las Vegas-based journalist John Mehaffey.

The three-table poker room at Hard Rock closed in March. Twenty two poker rooms in Las Vegas have closed within the last six years and change, leaving Sin City with about three dozen rooms.

The end for Luxor’s poker room will leave the Las Vegas Strip area with 18 poker rooms and about 260 tables. In 2007, which was the height of the poker boom in Nevada in terms of market size, there were 26 Las Vegas Strip poker rooms with a combined 396 tables.

The move by Luxor comes at a time of little growth for poker in Las Vegas. Over the 12 months prior to May 1, 2017, Strip area poker rooms took in $77.6 million from cash games, virtually unchanged compared to the same period a year prior.

“The proliferation of casinos across the United States has decreased the need for players to travel to Nevada to play poker,” Michael Lawton, Senior Research Analyst for the Nevada Gaming Control Board, told Card Player. “At this point the consensus is that traditional poker will not experience any significant growth without a national interactive component to support growth in traditional poker by introducing new players to the game.”

Nevada launched online poker in 2013, but with a lack of liquidity those games haven’t been as robust as originally anticipated. Nevada’s online poker market is worth about $7 million a year.

The beginning of Nevada’s poker boom began in 2004 when the $98.9 million in statewide revenue was a 44.8 percent increase over 2003. It grew by another 42 percent in 2005 to $140.2 million. Though Nevada poker has stagnated since 2013, it’s still a bigger market than it was in the early stages of the poker boom. Poker is still more popular than it ever was prior to 2005.

MGM will still have a strong poker footprint in Las Vegas after June 18. The casino giant has poker rooms at the likes of Aria (24 tables) and Bellagio (37 tables).