Poker is losing popularity in Las Vegas and across the state of Nevada as casinos have started to closedown their poker rooms or make them smaller. A case in point is the Monte Carlo casino which is to eliminate its eight-table room in a month as part of a $450-million renovation project.
According to industry experts, the peak of poker was in 2007, with revenues reaching $97 million and 405 poker tables in operation. Last year figures dropped to $78 million from the remaining 320 tables.
While the appeal of the game soared at the beginning of the millennium due to the rise in online gambling, there was a drastic twist in 2011 when the federal government carried out its first major crackdown on internet poker.
Brian Gordon, a principal at the Las Vegas-based research entity Applied Analysis, said, “Gaming has become a smaller portion of the overall revenue mix and things like poker rooms are candidates for further evaluation as to whether they make sense or not at a casino property.”