For the past two decades, Atlantic City’s casino industry has been under siege from gaming competition in neighboring states.
The Southern New Jersey seaside resort, where saltwater taffy was created in the late 1800s, which thumbed its nose at Prohibition in the 1920s and was the inspiration for the board game Monopoly, once owned the monopoly for casinos in the East.
But starting in the mid-1990s, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Ohio, West Virginia and New York legalized gaming. The competition, combined with the recession, took away business and caused Atlantic City’s annual casino revenues to fall more than 41 percent between 2006 and 2012.
A comprehensive reform package pushed by Gov. Chris Christie in 2011 that created the Atlantic City Tourism District and focused new attention on boosting the city’s 12 hotel-casinos — nine on the famous Boardwalk and three in the Marina district — was just beginning to take hold in October.
Jonathan Taylor $138,938 – WSOP-C Lodge Casino Main Event
Allen Kessler $20,859 – WSOP-C Lodge Casino $580 NLHE
Dan Shak $450,000 – PartyPoker Premier League VI
Michael Harris $95,663 – HPT Belterra Casin Main Event
There were plenty of results posted around the world over the weekend with the PartyPoker Premier League VI wrapping up, the Heartland Poker Tour crowning another champion, and the WSOP-C handing out a few more rings.
Dan Shak seems to love the big action, big attention games. He defeated Sam Trickett to capture the PartyPoker Premier League VI title after a few days of play for $450,000. As expected, it was a stacked final table with Antonio Esfandiari, Jonathan Duhamel, Daniel Cates, and actress/poker player Jennifer Tilly. Negreanu made a big splash as he just missed the final table (video can be viewed below).
Jonathan Taylor is the latest World Series of Poker Circuit event winner, his 3rd ring ring of the 2012/2013 series. He topped the other 420 entrees in the tournament for over $138,000. Perhaps only interesting to me, the small buy-in WSOP-C event in Blackhawk, CO drew exactly 150 less entrants than a similar Heartland Poker Tour event held in the same town just a few weeks. Also notable during this WSOP-C stop was the stunning non-min-cash of Allen “Complainsaw” Kessler who won the $580 No Limit Hold’em side event for his 2nd career ring.
Next up for the WSOP-C is a trip to the great Northeast and 12 tournaments at the mammoth Foxwoods Casino.
Link Dump
Tweet(s) of the Day – Allen Kessler’s humble brag with the Matt Salsberg follow up needle. Good stuff, now where is my Entourage movie?
Atlantic City’s Revel casino files for bankruptcy – This news isn’t very shocking. The latest, greatest, fresh casino in Atlantic City hasn’t been doing well since it opened. My one and only experience there left me wondering how quickly I could catch a cab to the Borgata. The Chapter 11 filing will help them try to cut debt and stay alive, but we’ve all heard those stories before.
Kane ‘Nascar_1949’ Kalas – Risks and Riches – As a Philly boy, I grew up listening to Harry Kalas call Phillies games but most sports fans probably know him as the “voice” of NFL Films. I had no idea his son has been a professional poker player/degenerate for years. “Friend of Pokerati” Remko Rinkema has a very in depth interview talking about all things gambling and sports.
UK’s online gambling sector worth £2bn in 2012 – An article detailing the size of online gambling in the UK, complete with a numbers for the stats junkies and pretty graphs for those less inclined towards words.
Louisiana To Study Possibility of Online Gaming – Louisiana adds it’s name to the list of states looking to follow in the footsteps of Nevada, New Jersey, and Delaware to pass online poker legislation. The more the merrier.
Emotions run high as poker pro Daniel Negreanu throws all his chips – WATCH THIS VIDEO is how Jesse May would extort you to view the following (I just see the words coming out of his mouth in all caps). Negreanu, the self appointed judge of all things poker etiquette, lost his mind a little when he caught a bad beat during PartyPoker Premier League VI action.
The gaming market has seemingly been covered by dark clouds for much of the past six years. Last week’s announcement that Revel, the Boardwalk’s newest resort, was filing for bankruptcy less than a year after opening, didn’t shock anyone.
Bad news has become expected.
Atlantic City gaming revenues have declined more than 40 percent over the last six years. The Boardwalk suffered through labor strife, competition from resorts in neighboring states, casino closures, stalled investments and the recession.
When Hurricane Sandy washed ashore in October, shutting down portions of the Boardwalk for as long as to a week, several analysts quietly wondered whether the freakish storm was a warning sign from above.
Last week’s news that November gaming revenues at Atlantic City’s 12 casinos suffered their worst single-month decline in the New Jersey community’s 34-year history of legalized gaming had to be the low point.
Or was it?
Granted, Superstorm Sandy, which hit the region in late October, caused most of Atlantic City’s casinos to stay closed between Oct. 28 and Nov. 5.
Infrastructure impairments hindered travel from key feeder markets while residents of the Atlantic City – many of whom are employed in the casinos – were dealing with their own property damages.
In November, casino revenues fell 27.9 percent, which followed a 19.9 percent drop in October.
Not all the declines can be attributed to the storm.
Ivaylo Peevski €141,800 – EPT Barcelona €2,150 NLH
Peter Dragar €44,800 – EPT Barcelona €2,100 NLH Turbo
Lars Garp €31,700 – EPT Barcelona €1,100 NLH Turbo
Liya Gerasimova €10,700 – €550 Women’s event NLH
Pretty slow week as far as results are concerned with the EPT Barcelona Main Event still playing down at the time of publishing and the WPT Legends Main Event just about to get underway. But that doesn’t mean things have been completely quiet around the tournament poker world and the forums are all abuzz.
There’s a little festival down in Hollywood, FL causing a disturbance in the normally sound and sane world of 2+2. A little tropical storm, most likely a hurricane in the future, named Isaac has Florida squarely in it’s cross hairs for this weekend right in the middle of the WPT Summer Splash Main Event. The decision-makers at the Seminole Hard Rock casino, already having big overlays in prelim events, removed the $500,000 guarantee just hours before the Main Event was to kick off.
Dear Seminole Hard Rock Guests,
We are very sorry to announce that, due to the uncertainty regarding the path and impact of Tropical Storm Isaac, the guaranteed prize pool has been removed from the Seminole Hard Rock & Casino WPT® Summer Splash Regional Championship Main Event running from Friday, August 24 – Monday, August 27.
Tweet of the Day – I love the Dutchies, and anything that goofs on Negreanu is a bonus. So I present this beauty created by Frank Op de Woerd (@webjoker).
Poker is game of skill, not chance, New York judge rules – Just one in the long stream of articles written about the NY ruling on poker but this one gets my link. Plus there’s a nifty, non-scientific, poll halfway through about online poker legalization.
Revel’s rocky launch – I made my first trek to the new Revel Casino in Atlantic City last weekend and was only impressed by the immensity of the place and nice poker room staff, the rest was a fine example of casino planners trying to get you lost. And now they are damn near broke. Suzette Parmley at Philly.com documents the casinos troubles from the start.
Casino Fails To Shuffle Cards, Sues Gamblers Who Won $1.5 Million – While I’m bagging a bit on AC, how about the Golden Nugget suing mini baccarat players who correctly figured out they were playing with an unshuffled deck and took the casino for a cool milly (and change)?
Introducing Hungarian Model Krisztina Polgar – So the PokerNews crew had a little video help from Hungarian model Krisztina Polgár (Google image search, you are welcome). So here’s a little introduction with a bonus of having Kristy Arnett doing the interview.
Here’s a quick rundown of what’s going on in one of the hungriest industries out there, and, game of skill or not, the parent biz of our beloved little poker world:
ALABAMA — A small little gambling fight is going down in the land Spencer Bachus represents, over a matter of semantics, technology, and the millions of dollars bingo machines represent. Bingo is legal in ‘bama … but should video bingo be? The fight is a dirty — complete with one agency repeatedly trying to raid a well-monied operation that believes it’s on the right side of the law.
Chinese foreign ministry officials strongly disputed the report, issuing a statement calling it “full of bias and ulterior motives.”
Personal information in the breach included names, Social Security numbers, home addresses and dates of birth. Most of the people in the licensing database are Iowa residents, but it also includes residents of Illinois, Minnesota, Nebraska, South Dakota, Wisconsin and other states, Ketterer said.
The list includes workers such as card dealers, slot machine technicians, jockeys, trainers and owners of horses and greyhounds.
LOUISIANA — The New Orleans-to-Shreveport casino-biz is in a definite recession, one not planned for when the state planned on becoming the central-coast alternative to Las Vegas and Atlantic City. They blame Texans for not gambling enough Oklahoma and Mississippi for cutting in on their action.
The Boardwalk can’t catch a break.
