Page 36 - Southern California Gaming Guide • December 2021

each other dispelling any idea that it was a “man’s” game. This sparked the interest of many home poker players who wanted to try playing in a casino poker room. An amateur could never trot on to the baseball field and play in the World Series, but he could sit down at a table and not only play in the World Series of Poker, but win it!
Poker Rooms Expand
Over the last few years many casinos with poker rooms have found that they are filled to capacity every hour of the day. At a seminar during a Global Gaming Expo in Las Vegas a few years ago, Lyle Berman told casino executives that casinos without poker rooms were not offering full service
to their players. He predicted that they probably would lose business to their competitors who had poker rooms. Those casinos without poker rooms are quickly adding to them to accommodate their patrons who want to play poker along with the other casino games.
The covid-19 pandemic temporarily closed most
casino poker rooms, but
many casinos now offer remodeled and reopened
poker rooms with state-of- the-art safety precautions including plexiglass dividers and physical distancing.
Some players are making their way to the poker rooms to play in no-limit tournaments like they
see on TV. For many players it is their first introduction to playing live poker in anything other than kitchen table games with friends at home. One advantage to playing in
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PAGE 36
SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA GAMING GUIDE
DECEMBER 2021