Quote:
Originally Posted by Jim215
Here's a stat for you:
The WSOP Main Event runs for 2 weeks every year with part-time dealers.
Most casino poker rooms are open 365 days a year with full-time dealers, who depend on their sustained income to feed their families.
On Thursday night, the Golden Nugget in Atlantic City closed their poker room.
Those dealers and floor personnel are now unemployed.
Add that to the loss of jobs at Revel (AC), the "M" Resort in Vegas, the Tropicana in Vegas and about a dozen other poker rooms in the last year that closed across the country.
How many rooms does that make?
Now, try telling those unemployed dealers about your view on the "burgeoning popularity" of poker.
I think they may disagree with your position.
Golden Nugget in Atlantic City opened in Nov/Dec 2011 so it entered a saturated and diminishing Atlantic City market less than 2 years ago, failed to establish a share of the market, and closed. Just an example of a failed attempt to enter the market.
Revel in Atlantic City is the same story. The room was hardly ever open except for a few tables during peak hours so just a sign of a horrible launch into a saturated and shrinking Atlantic City market.
The problem with Atlantic City in general is that with casinos opening in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, West Virginia, and even Ohio (another sign of the growing popularity of poker), there is much for competition and the Atlantic City poker rooms are too slow to respond since they have had a regional monopoly for way too long. The casinos around Philadelphia are enough to steal away a major share from Atlantic City poker rooms!
The Tropicana in Las Vegas is the same story. They opened with Jamie Gold as the room sponsor and had a bunch of horrible promos and never built up a share of the local market. They were closed most days and had 1-3 tables going on some Fri and Sat nights. They were new to the saturated LV market and never got any momentum going. Not a sign of less poker interest since other rooms around it are doing well; just horrible management.
The M Resort is an interesting story. They closed their poker room but it was simply as a business decision since they needed floor space for their slot tournaments. Clearly slots bring in more money per square foot than poker rooms so they decided to close the room as a business decision and not due to lack of demand. In fact, they had a $500K guarantee recently that drew over 630 players and built a prize pool of $1.4 million. They are even planning to repeat that tournament next year even without a cash game poker room.
In that same time, LVH opened a new poker room and an electronic poker room opened in downtown Las Vegas. So even though these rooms closed, others are opening due to the demand for poker!
So all those employees are simply working at bad businesses and should move to other poker rooms opening up around the country. Just recently, a big room has opened up in Maryland and earlier this year, CET opened a casino in Cincinnati complete with its own poker room.
So you're only telling one side of the story and picking poor examples to prove your false point.