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Most Recent Online Casino News
More Gamblers Hold 'em, Fold 'em
Once relegated to smoky back rooms and cramped basements, poker has
hit the big time. Online, on TV and in casinos nationwide, millions of
people who never knew a straight from a flush are feeling the pain of
getting beat on the river.
And these days you don’t even have to play poker to get caught up in
the frenzy.
“What’s happened is it’s become a spectator sport,” says Craig Ghelfi,
chief operating officer of Greektown Casino. “You can almost play along
and sense the tension of trying to bluff or drawing that last card.”
Greektown’s poker room, which Ghelfi put in about two years ago and
is still the only one in Detroit, has a full house most weeknights and
24 hours a day on weekends. The casino recently took rows of slot
machines out of the room next door and put in eight more poker tables.
Greektown can now simultaneously offer many poker variants at the
same time, from low-stakes versions of Seven Card Stud and Omaha High to
the as-seen-on-TV game that’s most in demand: No-Limit Texas Hold ’em.
Men, women, retirees and college students all lineup for the casino’s
only game pitting players against each other rather than the house.
Even before lunchtime, dozens of players stream into the newly
expanded poker room, which now has a nonsmoking side, a large skylight
and plenty of space between the tables for crowds to watch.
“Before they opened up the new room, even at this time in the
morning, there was a three- to four-hour wait to get on a table,” says
Sean Romanuk, a 34-year-old teacher from Dearborn who visits several
times a week and plays nothing but poker.
“When it was all slot machines, this room sat empty most of the
time,” says Romanuk.
Leading to the game’s rebirth are the ever-growing number of
televised tournaments and Internet poker rooms.
Read the
entire article at:
detnews.com
2004 Online Casino News Archive
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