The Venetian Casino in Las Vegas recently opened their renovated poker room. With 50 tables, the Venetian is now home to the largest poker room in Las Vegas. The new space opened in early August and is now located in between the Venetian and Palazzo on the second floor of the Grand Canal Shops.
Love it or hate it, the Venetian Casino now has one of the nicest poker rooms in Las Vegas. Poker has always been tethered to booms and busts in the gaming industry, especially Las Vegas. We're smack in the middle of a down cycle, so it's refreshing to see a renovated poker room open on the Strip that is specifically catering to the needs of poker players -- both locals and tourists alike.
The new poker room has 50 tables and their low stakes action starts at $1/$3 NLHE. Players at the Venetian will earn $3 per hour in comps. And yes, the free self-serve beverage counter returns. You don't have to wait for a cocktail server to make the rounds, and you can get coffee and soft drinks by yourself. There's also tableside food service from the Grand Lux Cafe.
The DeepStack Showdown Poker Series is underway and will run through mid-September with over $2.4 million in guaranteed prize pools. If you miss this series, don't worry because there's another on slated for the fall. DeepStack Showdown will run between October 28 and November 24.
The old Venetian poker room was next to the sports book but near an entrance from Las Vegas Blvd. Locals loathed it because it was a hike from the parking garage. It was not situated near food spots, and non-smokers kvetched about the second-hand smoke that seemed to accumulate in the poker room.
The new Venetian poker room is located in the Grand Canal Shops, which prohibits smoking so non-smokers are thrilled.
You can find the new Venetian poker room on the second floor of the Grand Canal Shops, which are located in between the Venetian and Palazzo, so simply take the escalator to the second floor. The new location is closer to popular food spots and locals love it because its much closer to the parking garage.
The Sphere is the latest attraction in Vegas and access is via the Venetian convention area, so there's plenty more tourists wandering through the casino and Grand Canal Shops.
There's still a segment of the poker community, especial online poker players, who continue to boycott the Venetian and its poker room. The late Sheldon Adelson was a staunch opponent to online gambling, especially online poker, and he diligently worked behind the scenes to end the boom with the UIEGA. I have not played poker or gambled at the Venetian since Black Friday. I prefer playing at the Wynn (Encore) these days. Anyway, I visited the new poker room on the day it opened (happened to be in Vegas to see the Dead shows at the Sphere). I checked out the revamped Venetian poker room, and it is as swanky as advertised.
During the glorious online poker boom, live poker exploded in Las Vegas. In the year before Chris Moneymaker won the 2003 WSOP Main Event, there were approximately 140 poker tables in Vegas. By 2007, the number nearly tripled to over 420 tables. Live poker reached a pinnacle in the late 2000s with 58 poker rooms.
Almost 15 years later, that number is less than 20 poker rooms in modern Vegas. The poker industry began to lose its luster after Black Friday in 2011 as casinos slowly began to close their poker rooms. The first causalities in 2012 were Silverton, Fitzgerald's, Tropicana, O'Sheas and Ellis Island. Five more rooms closed in 2013 with Circus Circus, Bill's Gamblin Hall, The M Resort, and El Cortez.
In 2014, three more rooms ceased operations including Texas Station, Sunset Station and the Palms. Two of those were personal favorites and it was sad to see Sunset Station and the Palms remove their poker tables in favor of slot machines.
Sunset Station was a funky locals' casino and I spent endless hours chasing a bad-beat jackpot there when I lived in Vegas between 2005 and 2011.
The Palms had become a favorite late-late-night spot for the poker media, who stumbled into their poker room after a long shifts at the Rio covering the WSOP and then binge drinking the stress away at the Hooker Bar or at the Gold Coast. You always had to bring your sunglasses to those sessions at the Palms -- not to wear at the tables, but for when your session ended shortly after the sunrise and you needed the eye protection to shield you from the blazing morning sun.
Between 2015 and 2019, Vegas said goodbye to some well-known poker rooms including Hooters, Aliante, the Plaza, Eastside Cannery, the Linq (aka the old Imperial Palace), Luxor, Hard Rock, Monte Carlo, Suncoast, Treasure Island, Arizona Charlie's, and the Strat.
After the 2020 pandemic, several other rooms became a casualty like the Flamingo, Mirage, Planet Hollywood, and Silver Sevens. Other poker rooms were lost in the post-pandemic shakeup like Binion's, Excalibur, Green Valley Ranch, Harrah's, Sam's Town, and the Rio.
Losing Binion's was a tough one for many nostalgic poker enthusiasts because that's where the WSOP was born. Sad that such a seminal poker room became a casualty, and the poker industry as a whole let it happen without trying to rally together to protect one of its most historical landmarks. Binion's had been on its way out for many years, but the pandemic was a coup de grace. With Binion's gone, the Golden Nugget is the last standing poker room in downtown Las Vegas.
Sin City took a massive hit in the wake of the pandemic and several legendary casinos lost their poker rooms. The Mirage Casino officially closed its doors last month and will undergo a renovation to become a new Hard Rock on the Strip. The Mirage poker room shut down at the start of the pandemic and never re-opened, so the room never got a proper sendoff. Losing both Binion's and the Mirage was brutal.
The Mirage was famously named checked in "Rounders" and the poker room was the center of the card-slinger universe in the 1990s and perfectly located next to the sports book (which was state of the art at the time). When I first began to make trips out to Las Vegas, the Mirage was the place with regard to both sports betting and poker. It was my favorite casino in my 20s, and I still had an affinity for the Mirage in my 30s even though it was a shadow of its former self. When the Bellagio opened in late 1998, the Mirage lost their big dogs and high-stakes action migrated down the Strip to the new "Bobby's Room."
Caesar's “temporarily” shut down their poker room in July while the area undergoes renovation. There's speculation on 2+2 whether or not they will actually bring it back or if the poker room is dunzo. Guess we'll find out in a couple of months when the renovation is complete.
Even though the WSOP was recently sold, the most popular tournament series will continue in Las Vegas for at least 20 more years. However, if you want to enjoy poker when you visit Vegas, then I strongly suggest you support different rooms by playing in them. There are not too many poker rooms remaining, and a couple are rumored to become the next ones closed.
Skyline is the smallest room in Sin City with two tables, the Venetian is the largest with 50 tables. Bellagio is the second largest with 37 tables followed by Orleans (34), South Point (30), and Resorts World (29).
Here's a current list of active poker rooms including the number of tables:
List of Open Las Vegas Poker Rooms
- Aria (24 tables)
- Bellagio (37)
- Boulder Station (10)
- Golden Nugget (13)
- Horseshoe (18)
- Mandalay Bay (10)
- MGM Grand (25)
- Orleans (34)
- Poker Palace (7)
- Red Rock (20)
- Resorts World (29)
- Sahara (7)
- Santa Fe Station (14)
- Skyline (2)
- South Point (30)
- Venetian (50)
- Westgate (7)
- Wynn (28)
