Texas Station Closes North Las Vegas Poker RoomEight-Table Card Room Goes By The Wayside This Week |
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The eight-table poker room at Texas Station in North Las Vegas closed for good this week, according to a report from USPoker.com.
Despite having online poker in Nevada, Station Casinos Inc. elected to close the room. The casino operator also closed Sunset Station’s eight-table room earlier this year.
Station Casinos, which targets the locals market in Las Vegas, still has five other poker rooms. According to PokerAtlas, the rooms have a combined 76 poker tables.
Poker room closings have been commonplace over the past several years. According to the report, nine other poker rooms sprinkled around the Valley have closed since the fall of 2012.
According to research by UNLV, the number of poker rooms in the Silver State was just 88 in 2013, the fewest since 2004. The 88 rooms had a combined 774 tables, the fewest since 2005.
The decrease in supply didn’t actually have an adverse effect on overall poker revenues statewide in 2013. Last year, live and online poker in Nevada brought in $123,891,000, up from $123,253,000 in 2012, when there were 99 poker rooms with a combined 809 tables.
2013’s poker revenue represented the first increase year-over-year since 2006 to 2007. The record of $167,975,000 was set in 2007, when there were 113 poker rooms in Nevada.
Nevada online poker began in late April 2013 with just one site taking deposits, and revenue figures (released by the state) weren’t available until 2014 because regulators didn’t want to divulge the numbers until more operators came into the market. Right now, there are three online poker operators in Nevada. WSOP (Caesars) and South Point casino are the other two.
In other words, it can’t be said for certain that online poker was the reason why poker (as a whole) saw an uptick in Nevada in 2013. The important thing is that revenues are trending upward.
Also, since the number of live poker rooms has been dwindling since 2009, online poker can’t be blamed for the closings, but it hasn’t yet reversed the trend (assuming it will).
Online poker is still in its infancy, so it’s too early to tell if the web version of the game, this time sanctioned by Nevada and not run by unregulated offshore firms, will eventually spark a significant increase in the supply of live poker tables. One of the arguments for the legalization of online poker was that it could create synergies between the Internet and brick-and-mortar settings.
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