Feb. 26, 2005

You don't understand. I could have had class. I could have been a contender -- Budd Schulberg

It shouldn't come as any surprise but just in case you've been out of touch with the gaming world for the last two years, here's an announcement -- poker has made a comeback. Once just a convenience for in-house customers behind the flashing lights of Las Vegas, the game lost much of its popularity when casino moguls and managers realized poker floor space would produce tons more revenue when populated with slot machines instead of tables. One by one the power structure turned its back on the game, opting to satisfy only the lucrative video version of poker that quickly addicted a generation or two.

Even the now poker-wise Harrah's on the Strip closed a lively room that drew a genuine mix of locals and tourists

No problem. Business is about making money and poker just didn't cut it.

Meanwhile, the little people (dealers and managers) scrambled for new jobs, some of them reluctantly (but out of necessity) opting for table games, others searching for work outside the industry, still others setting out for other pastures.

Players who favored poker soon began heading west to California or east to the Phoenix area for a good game. In fact, the action at Fort McDowell near Scottsdale became a monumental success. Places like the Bicycle Club and Commerce Casino in the sunny southern part of California boasted waiting lists while showing off blueprints for expansion.

A few of the local Vegas casinos places like the Gold Coast and the Stations Casinos and the Boyd properties did not downsize or disappear. Management at these places realized that by accommodating locals via poker, they could also draw the spouses and friends who would populate the seats at the slot machines.

On the Strip, Steve Wynn's properties, perhaps in part because of the World Series of Poker champ Bobby Baldwin's influence, built a beautiful room first at Mirage, then an even more inviting arena at Bellagio while other casinos in the hood were putting their tables in storage.

You could still find a game at the Stardust (it is a Boyd property after all) and, if you searched hard enough, at the Sahara, but gone were the popular rooms at Bally's, Barbary, the IP, Frontier, MGM Grand, the Riv and other marquee giants.

So it's no wonder players began to look for alternate choices, and not just land-based. The online casinos, pulling from the pool of noted players and writers for promotional management positions, started to reel in both fish and fishermen. Though ownership remained silent, the rooms began to succeed. Enter the World Poker Tour on TV and the number of online players climbed even faster and when one of the cyber games sent a satellite winner to the infamous World Series of Poker and have him win, the steady climb turned to a quantum leap.

Could Vegas continue to ignore the game? Not if they looked at the filled-to-capacity Bellagio, where WPT tournaments succeeded in squeezing in extra tables to accommodate players! Not if they didn't want their customer base heading for other casinos to find a game! Not if they wanted to draw from the gazillions of online fanatics!

And so the phoenix began to arise, not out of its own ashes but out of the color of money. Here was an opportunity to lure the younger, hipper, somewhat wealthier crowd to Glitter City for a chance of harvesting some of their cash crop.

And so, places like Harrah's, Rio (which once had a lively room under the direction of Carol Tremble), Aladdin, Stratosphere, some of the previously mentioned casinos, got it!

Now, if we could just get some of the web sites and publications that specialize in poker coverage to update their lists ....