A Valley Forge Casino dealer is out of a job and in trouble after passing $4,000 in counterfeit bills via the casino’s Spanish 21 table game.
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Several major casinos on the Las Vegas Strip continue to make it more expensive to gamble by raising controversial resort fees and parking rates.
MGM Resorts International became the latest operator to hike the price of a visit to most of its Las Vegas Strip properties, raising resort fees at 10 of its 13 casino hotels this week.
MGM’s mid-range properties, including MGM Grand, The Mirage, and Mandalay Bay, will see resort fees go up up by $2 to $37. Lower-end properties including Luxor and Excalibur will see resort fees raised by $5 to $35. Plus, resort fees at Circus Circus on the North end of the Strip are going up $2 to $30.
Resort fees at MGM properties including Vdara, Bellagio, and Aria are not going up.
Caesars Entertainment also raised resort fees at many of it’s Las Vegas Strip properties March 1. Resort fees went up $5 to $35 a night at Bally’s, Flamingo, Harrah’s and The Linq. The fees were also raised $2 to $37 a night at Cromwell, Paris and Planet Hollywood. Plus, resort fees were hiked to $39 at Caesars Palace.
This marked the third year in a row Caesars Entertainment has raised resort fees. Las Vegas Sands has also increased resort fees at its properties twice over the past two years.
Resort fees have become a source of controversy because they can be misleading. Although unavoidable, the fees are not often included in published room rates. Particularly on internet booking sites, where they may not appear until after a room has been selected.
The Las Vegas Review-Journal reports attorneys general in 46 states, as well as the District of Columbia, are currently investigating the legality of imposing resort fees. Nevada is not among those states.
Additionally, the newspaper also claims a class-action lawsuit has been filed against several Las Vegas Strip properties in regards to internet fees.
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Free parking was once a staple perk of the Las Vegas Strip casino experience.
MGM changed that in 2016 when it became the first group of properties to begin charging visitors for parking. Caesars Entertainment properties soon followed suit.
Now, both are raising the parking rates as well. MGM, announced in January it was increasing parking fees at 11 of its 12 Strip properties.
Self-parking at Caesars Palace went up by $2 from $10 to $12 for 1 to 4 hours March 1. Parking rates were also raised at:
Self-parking is still free at the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino just off the Strip. Plus, Caesars properties do not charge to park for 60 minutes or less.
The move to these fees coincided with casino resorts starting to earn a majority of revenue outside of gambling.
With 70 percent or more of Las Vegas Strip resort revenues now being derived from restaurants, shops, shows, and nightlife venues, the properties are no longer offering free parking or waiving resort fees to try to attract gamblers the same way they once did.
The post Pretty Soon Only High Rollers Can Afford Rising Vegas Resort Costs appeared first on Play USA.
The business transactions in the Pennsylvania casino industry just keep coming. On Feb. 28, Churchill Downs Inc. (CDI) announced it is acquiring Presque Isle Downs Casino and Racetrack in Erie, PA.
This is the third acquisition in as many months in the Keystone State. Penn National is in the process of acquiring Pinnacle Entertainment, which owns The Meadows Casino. Additionally, Boyd Gaming purchased Valley Forge Casino in December.
Unsurprisingly, Churchill Downs cited the online gambling opportunities as the major reason the Kentucky-based company is expanding operations to northwest Pennsylvania.
There is a second property in Louisiana that comes with this sale. For a combined cost of $229.5 million, CDI is purchasing both Presque Isle Downs and Lady Luck Casino in Vicksburg, LA. CDI already owns another casino in Vicksburg, the Riverwalk Casino.
Pennsylvania is new turf for CDI though. It also means new potential opportunities for the company. The PA gambling expansion laws mean CDI can now potentially pursue several new options, including:
Presque Isle is the home to 1,600 slots, 32 table games, and a poker room. There is also a thoroughbred racetrack that runs around 100 race days a year.
The Vicksburg sale will close in the second quarter of 2018. CDI needs to finalize the Lady Luck sale as a condition of the Presque Isle sale. the current timeline has the PA sale wrapping in the final quarter of this year. Another stipulation of the deal is approval of the sale by the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board (PGCB).
In the press release announcing the acquisition, CDI CEO Bill Carstanjen readily admitted online gambling was a major reason why the company purchased a Pennsylvania casino:
“We are excited about welcoming both of these properties to the Churchill family. Presque Isle will give us a foothold in Pennsylvania which has recently passed legislation authorizing real money online gaming. The Lady Luck Vicksburg is immediately adjacent to our Riverwalk facility and offers us operational efficiencies in a stable region. Both properties fit our investment criteria and will be immediately accretive to our shareholders.”
The online gambling angle is something CDI pursued in the past. In 2011, it acquired BLUFF Media, a company with a poker-focused magazine and website. The assumption was CDI wanted to leverage the BLUFF name to launch an online poker site.
Additionally, the company’s Twin Spires product allows customers to place horse betting wagers online in 30 different states, including Pennsylvania.
However, what is interesting is the software element of CDI. The company has Twin Spires, which uses in-house technology. There are currently no online casino software partnerships.
In fact, Churchill Downs actually unloaded its social gaming company, Big Fish Games, in December of last year. The company sold for $1 billion to Aristocrat Technologies in Australia.
For now, it seems like CDI is keen to develop in-house. However, given the timeline in PA, inking a deal with a software company could certainly speed up the process to get
Photo by Thomas Kelley / Shutterstock.com
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There is a growing concern that New Jersey online gambling revenues are approaching their ceiling. These concerns are a bit premature. Here’s why.
The post New Jersey Online Casinos Still Have Plenty Of Room To Grow In 2018 And Beyond appeared first on Play NJ.
888 In New Letter: PA Should Allow Online Casinos To Offer Multiple ‘Skins’
888 has written to the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board to make the case for casinos to be allowed to operate multiple online gaming branded websites.
The post 888 In New Letter: PA Should Allow Online Casinos To Offer Multiple ‘Skins’ appeared first on Online Poker Report.
California accountant Dennis Blieden emerged from a field of 493 players to win $1 million at the $10,000 Los Angeles Poker Classic WPT Main Event. Blieden held the chip lead for most of the latter stages of play and used an aggressive style to conquer a final table worth of the high buy-in. A live-streamed audience watched Blieden earn his title on PokerGO.
This year’s LAPC marked the 25th anniversary of the event and the 16th trip for the World Poker Tour to the Commerce Casino in Los Angeles, California.
Blieden showed no signs of inexperience in winning his first-ever WPT event in only his third career tournament cash.
Seat 1. Peter Hengsakul – 1,065,000 (36 bb)
Seat 2. Marc Macdonnell – 1,695,000 (57 bb)
Seat 3. Dennis Blieden – 4,125,000 (138 bb)
Seat 4. Manuel Martinez – 985,000 (33 bb)
Seat 5. Toby Lewis – 5,390,000 (180 bb)
Seat 6. Derek Wolters – 1,520,000 (51 bb)
The LAPC final table finished in an efficient 79 hands. In the sixth hand of play, Spaniard Manuel Martinez exited in sixth place at the hands of Blieden.
Martinez opened under the gun with pocket queens and Blieden defended his big blind with eight-six offsuit. Blieden flopped trip eights, turned a full house, and all of Martinez’s 30 big blinds were in before the river. No queen came for Martinez and Blieden jumped into the chip lead.
Eight hands later, local favorite Peter Hengsakul departed in fifth place. The real estate investor fell to Blieden. Hengsakul shoved for 19 big blinds over a raise from Blieden with nine-eight of hearts. Blieden called with ace-seven of hearts and faded any trouble to bust Hengsakul.
2018 Aussie Millions Main Event winner Toby Lewis and Blieden wrestled for the chip lead for the first half of the final table.
In Hand #35, Blieden took it for good. Blieden raised to 80,000 under the gun and received a call from Lewis on the button and Marc Macdonnell in the big blind. The flop rolled out ace-king-seven with two spades and a bet of 205,000 from Blieden left Lewis as the only opponent remaining in the hand.
Blieden bet 405,000 more when the five of spades hit the turn and put 1,215,000 in the middle on the ten of hearts river. Lewis called to see Blieden show jack-eight of spades and Lewis’ two pair was second-best. Blieden held half of the chips in play and closed out his win a few hours later.
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Three established pros stood in front of Blieden including Season XVI WPT Montreal final tablist Derek Wolters. Blieden proved too much to overcome and Macdonnell was the first to fall from that group.
With the blinds up to 25,000/50,000, Macdonnell moved all-in on the button for 1,105,000 with ace-seven offsuit. Lewis woke up with wired nines in the blinds and flopped a set to send out Macdonnell.
Wolters attempted to best his third-place finish from Montreal but wound as the low man on the podium yet again. After getting his kings cracked by Lewis, Wolters was on the short stack. He shoved for six blinds with queen-seven suited and could not beat the king-deuce of Blieden.
The 1,100 WPT Player of the Year points earned by Wolters put him into second-place on the leaderboard behind Art Papazyan. The 1,800 points of Wolters means he is one final table away from potentially passing Papazyan’s 2,400 should the current leader fail to cash before then.
Lewis started heads up play against Blieden with a fighting chance but their match ended in only two hands. Blieden finished off his amazing run in dramatic fashion.
Lewis raised with two tens to 120,000 and Blieden three-bet with ace-queen offsuit to 300,000. Lewis opted to four-bet to 750,000 and Blieden called to the six-six-three flop. With two spades on board, Lewis bet 400,000 and Blieden called. The queen of hearts peeled on the turn and Lewis shoved for 2,200,000.
Blieden thought it over and called to put Lewis at risk. No ten came for Lewis and the Brit was denied his second major victory of 2018. He did earn a $600,630 consolation prize.
Blieden is the World Poker Tour’s newest millionaire and he has a seat waiting for him in the $15,000 Tournament of Champions.
1st Place: Dennis Blieden – $1,000,000
2nd Place: Toby Lewis – $600,630
3rd Place: Derek Wolters – $430,210
4th Place: Marc Macdonnell – $319,310
5th Place: Peter Hengsakul – $244,430
6th Place: Manuel Martinez – $186,235
The West Coast trip for the WPT is in Lincoln, California this weekend. WPT Rolling Thunder starts Friday with the first of two Day 1 flights and wraps up on March 6 with a live-streamed final table.
Photo courtesy of WPT/Flickr
The post Dennis Blieden Wins WPT L.A. Poker Classic for $1 Million appeared first on .
There are almost four million more people living inside of Pennsylvania than New Jersey. That means the online poker market that opens up in the Keystone State later this year will likely be a bigger one than the Garden State currently hosts.
More people generally means more players. That creates bigger tournament prize pools and more cash game action.
Unfortunately, bigger doesn’t always mean better. In fact, there are already some clear indications that PA online poker may not end up being as much fun as it is in NJ.
As Steve Ruddock reported on Online Poker Report this week, PA will have a prohibition on online poker play at land-based casinos in the state when the market launches.
According to Ruddock, the ban was put in place to protect against land-based casinos pushing their customers to online games where taxes on operator revenues were originally planned to be much less.
In the end, the state passed laws that will see online gambling operators pay the same taxes as land-based casinos. However, the state never lifted the online gambling prohibition at live casinos.
Now, online poker players in the state will start out stuck with this situation. Where the chance to multi-table live and online tournaments simultaneously won’t be available to them.
That means less fun inside poker rooms.
Back in the Fall of 2016, about six months after launching online poker operations in New Jersey, PokerStars held a live tournament series in Atlantic City. It actually started the same time the PokerStars New Jersey Championship of Online Poker was wrapping up.
Since there are no regulations in the state preventing it, this gave those in attendance the chance to multi-table live and online tournaments simultaneously. Many had a blast doing it. Including Team PokerStars Pro Victor Ramdin, who happened to run deep in the $500 PokerStars NJCOOP Main Event, and the PokerStars Festival New Jersey $300 PokerStars Cup opening event, at the same time.
2003 World Series of Poker champion, fellow Team PokerStars Pro, and good friend Chris Moneymaker also happened to make it down to the final two tables in the live event. He was sitting across the room and Ramdin kept shouting over with updates from the online event.
It wasn’t long before a rather awkward situation arose.
There were 16 players left in the NJCOOP Main Event online. Ramdin was relatively short and got it all in preflop with two kings versus two nines. Winning the pot would put him in a spot among the leaders. He had lot more chips in the PokerStars Cup live event, and also happened to be in a hand at the time.
It was heads up on the flop and Ramdin’s opponent had just checked to him.
“I’m all in, Chris,” Ramdin shouted across the room.
He was clearly referring to the online game. However, in live poker, verbal declarations are binding.
Ramdin’s opponent called. The tournament staff was forced to hold Ramdin to his verbal declaration, despite him having just queen-high, and he lost a good chunk of his stack.
There was a lot of good news though. Ramdin’s kings held online and he soon moved on to the final table of the NJCOOP Main Event.
He finished 10th in the live PokerStars Cup event, bubbling the final table. However, he was able to laugh off the entire situation. Mostly because the prize pool in the live event was so much smaller.
In the end, Ramdin, who is originally from Guyana, but calls New York City home, was just stoked to have been able to play online poker in the United States. Plus, doing it at the same time he was playing in a live PokerStars event was a major bonus.
Who could blame him? He said he had a great time doing it. Even the multi-tabling faux pas didn’t put a damper on it.
Unfortunately, at this point, it looks like he and others won’t be able to do the same thing in Pennsylvania anytime soon.
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There was a massive crackdown on underground poker in Oslo Thursday evening, per a translated report from nrk.no. According to the report, around 100 police officers arrested the operators of …
It has been said that poker is the hardest way to make an easy living. The one thing we can say for sure is that its a lot harder to make a living at it in a state with limited options for plying your trade.
That means if you want to play poker for a living you’re probably going to want to do it in a state with a lot of casinos or legal cardrooms. Playing in underground games every day may sound like a thrilling lifestyle. However, it’s a tough one to maintain when your bankroll is constantly under threat from local law enforcement and opportunistic thieves.
Essentially, what we’re saying is the best states to try to make a living playing poker are the ones with the most action. Legal, regulated and above board action.
Want to know where they are? Check out US Poker’s list of the five best states to make a living playing poker below:
There’s no better place for a poker pro to call home than the state of Nevada. Probably because if you fall down just about anywhere inside the state, you’re a favorite to hit a poker room on the way to the ground.
In fact, there are more than 60 poker rooms operating across the state, which is probably six times more than the amount required to make a state a decent place to make a living playing poker.
Of course, the biggest and best action goes off on the Las Vegas Strip, where there are 18 different poker rooms hosting big-time cash game action and daily tournament schedules all within a few miles of one another.
Big-time tournament action comes in the form of the annual World Series of Poker held in Las Vegas for six weeks every June and July. Thousands of poker players from all over the world descend upon Las Vegas for the events of the WSOP. However, it’s more than just the tournaments they come for. Cash game revenues at rooms across the state jump big time throughout the WSOP.
It’s a poker pro’s dream for six weeks. In fact, there’s so much poker money in Las Vegas during this time, whether they are playing cash games or tournaments, the WSOP can make or break a Nevada-based pro’s year.
The rest of the year brings a steady stream of big-time tournaments including regular World Poker Tour stops. Plus, as the gambling capital of the country, there’s always a good number of tourists filling the cash game tables from Las Vegas to Reno and Lake Tahoe.
There’s also legal and regulated online poker. Although the action is mostly limited to the WSOP site during the WSOP.
Regardless, Nevada is far and away the best state to make a living playing poker. The only issue might be that so many pros have moved there, the competition can be pretty stiff at times.
There are more than 90 licensed cardrooms that offer poker in California. They also offer player-banked versions of certain casino card games like blackjack.
Additionally, there are somewhere around 60 Tribal casinos in the state, many of which host poker rooms.
Between the cardrooms and Tribal casino poker rooms, there’s probably more action in California than there is in any other state across the country. The only thing that makes it a step below Nevada is most of that action is spread out across the state, instead of in one small area like Las Vegas.
However, the Los Angeles area does host two of the largest poker rooms in the world in the Bicycle Casino and Commerce Casino. The amount of cash game action in either of these cardrooms is enough for the average pro to make a sustainable living.
Plus, the World Poker Tour makes annual stops at both properties, if tournaments are where you’re looking to make big bank.
Getting lawmakers, cardrooms, Tribal casinos and potential online poker operators to agree on what legal and regulated online poker should look like in California has proved difficult. In fact, after a decade discussing it, the state seems no closer to passing online poker legislation than when those discussions started.
However, there’s a lot of big-time live tournament and cash game action up and down the coast all year long. And that’s enough to make California one the best states to make a living playing poker.
It wasn’t that long ago that poker in Florida was limited to home games at seniors centers and not much else. The game spread to dog tracks and Jai alai frontons in 1997. However, a $10 maximum on all pots rendered the game unrecognizable by today’s standards. The laws changed a couple times in the early 2000s, but the betting limits, limits on the number of bets and a $100 maximum buy-in still didn’t make any sense.
Poker soon spread to the state’s first tribal casinos. However, except for a brief period of time where the tribes allowed multiple rebuys to skirt around the maximum buy-in laws, the poker scene in the Sunshine State remained small.
Most of the caps were removed in 2009 and Florida suddenly became a destination for poker.
A big-time tournament scene emerged, particularly down south at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Hollywood, which put up some major guarantees to attract players. There were overlays at first, but the Hard Rock in Hollywood now boasts some of the most well-attended tournament series in the country. The World Poker Tour and The World Series of Poker Circuit have even made it a regular stop.
The cash game scene has also thrived, from Jacksonville to Fort Lauderdale.
Atlantic City and Las Vegas may have the market cornered on check-raising tourists. However, there’s no better place to get called down by a wealthy retiree who just had to see it than Florida.
Add it up and for pro players who want to play lucrative cash games year round and major tournaments on a regular basis, Florida has become one of the best states to make a living playing poker.
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The casino business in Atlantic City has had its share of ups and downs over the years. However, the seaside resort town has long maintained its status as the home of poker on the East Coast. Casinos became legal in the late 1970s, but poker didn’t get the thumbs up from lawmakers until the summer of 1993.
The Trump Taj Mahal launched a 50-table poker room that year that immediately became the center of the poker universe. There were other rooms, but no one really emerged as real competition until the Tropicana opened up a 40-table poker room in 1998. It was a pretty fierce rivalry between the two.
In fact, it was all about either the Taj or the Trop for poker players in AC until 2003, when Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa opened up in the city’s marina district.
The Borgata opened with a modern 34-table poker room that immediately became market leaders. A big boom in poker’s popularity soon followed. Suddenly, Borgata established itself as the East Coast’s premier poker destination.
The property started hosting events on the burgeoning World Poker Tour right from the outset. Its WPT events are still breaking tour entry records on a regular basis.
In 2006, poker’s popularity peaked and Borgata underwent a $200 million expansion. The poker room was expanded to 85 tables and revenues kept on rising, even as the growth of the game slowed.
The Taj has since closed and poker at the Trop moved to a much smaller space. However, there are other poker rooms around Atlantic City with action, and certainly plenty of it at Borgata to this day.
When it comes to major tournaments, the WPT is still huge at Borgata and the property runs seasonal festivals that draw big numbers with or without the WPT’s name on the marquee. Plus, Harrah’s Atlantic City has emerged as a regular stop on the WSOP Circuit.
The state also opened up a legal and regulated online poker market in 2013, with major operators like PokerStars, partypoker and 888poker opening shop to offer real-money games. It’s still a rather small market. However, New Jersey did sign on to share player pools with other states in 2017, so it should grow from here.
Put it all together and New Jersey is clearly one of the best states to make a living playing poker.
Pennsylvania is one of the more recent entries into the casino gambling game. Slot machines were legalized in 2004. Table games, including poker, were legalized in 2010.
Then, in just the first three years of full casino operations, Pennsylvania surpassed New Jersey as the country’s second most profitable gaming market.
There are now 12 casinos in the state and 10 of them have poker rooms. In fact, poker has become quickly become a big part of what several casinos are doing to bring people in.
Parx Casino has long been the poker room revenue leader in the state. It had an 80-table poker room that hosted a ton of cash-game action, daily tournaments, and the popular Big Stax tournament series five times annually.
Now it has moved poker into a sleek and modern 48-table room inside the main building. Nothing about the amount of action at Parx should change, and to be honest, there’s probably enough of it at Parx alone to make PA one of the best states to make a living playing poker.
However, there’s more.
Sands Bethlehem’s 30-table poker room also hosts a big cash game scene and the somewhat regular DeepStack Extravaganza tournament series. Harrah’s Philadelphia has a room affiliated with the World Series of Poker, which means WSOP Main Event satellites.
Plus, The Poker Night in America Poker Room at SugarHouse Casino in Philadelphia has all kinds of action and is affiliated with the “Poker Night in America” TV show, regularly hosting televised events.
The 30-table room at Rivers in Pittsburgh shares the same affiliation. Plus, the Pittsburgh-area’s Meadows Casino started hosting a Heartland Poker Tour stop in 2017.
Additionally, there’s a ton of great cash game promotions at the other smaller rooms across the state. Put that together with all the big time tournament action, plus the fact the state just green lit online poker, and there’s little doubt Pennsylvania is the kind of place a pro can make a living now and for years to come.
Honorable mention has to go to a state like New York. The New York poker scene used to be all about underground cash games in New York City and underage tournaments at Tribal casinos upstate. However, the state has seen four new commercial casinos open up over the past year and they all have poker action.
Connecticut deserves some love on this list as well. The rooms at Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun have enough cash game action to sustain the average pro and they host some big tournaments as well.
Finally, a shout out goes to the District of Columbia. Folks from the capital region used to have drive three hours or take the train to Atlantic City to play poker. Now, there’s an emerging poker scene including more than 100 tables at Maryland Live!, Horseshoe Baltimore, and the MGM just outside of DC.
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This year started off hot for the Macau casino industry, but growth cooled off in February. The Macau government said that the three dozen casinos won 24.3 billion patacas ($3.02 …