Deputy Editor
Green Valley Ranch, a casino in Henderson, Nevada, plans to reopen its poker room shortly. The casino suspended live poker during the COVID-19 pandemic and kept its poker room closed for years thereafter.
Vegas Advantage was first with the news.
Failure to reopen after the pandemic abated has been a common pattern for many poker rooms around the country that cater primarily to locals. Green Valley Ranch, known as “GVR” to its regulars, is certainly in that category, located 12 miles southeast of the Strip and rarely visited by tourists.
Station Casinos operates the property, which is one of seven full-sized resort casinos it owns in the city.
“Poker’s home in Henderson is back at Green Valley Ranch,” said GVR General Manager and Vice President Ken Janssen. “We took our guests’ feedback loud and clear and are pleased to announce the return of poker, among the many exciting upgrades happening at the property.“
Key Info for Green Valley Ranch Poker Reopening
The GVR poker room will be running 24 hours per day immediately upon reopening, with 16 tables available. It will occupy the same space as it did before the 2020 closure. However, longtime patrons will find that the casino has taken advantage of the downtime to give the room a makeover. Staff hope that the new bells and whistles will make it one of the more attractive rooms in Las Vegas.
There’s no exact reopening date, but GVR says that it’s aiming for sometime in December.
Players will find a variety of games on tap:
- Limit Hold’em from $4-$8 through $8-$16
- No-Limit Hold’em from $1-$2 through $3-$5
- Omaha Hi-Lo from $4-$8 through $8-$16
- Pot-Limit Omaha
The new GVR room will hold a special poker tournament to celebrate its reopening as well, alongside promotions for cash game players. Local players may want to keep an eye out for an official reopening date in order to take advantage of the added value.
Nevada Poker Rooms Remain Near All-Time Low
The reopening of GVR is interesting because it follows a period of consolidation in the Nevada poker scene. The COVID-19 pandemic marked a turning point in the industry. Statewide, the number of operational poker rooms is near an all-time low, yet business is booming for the rooms that have reopened.
According to the UNLV Center for Gaming Research, the state had 39 rooms in operation each of the past two years. That’s only two more than the 37 rooms in 2021 and 2022, which was the all-time low for UNLV’s data set, going back to 1992.
Of the 39 rooms now operating, roughly half are in the Las Vegas area.
By contrast, Nevada had 59 rooms running just before COVID hit. That in itself was the lowest number for the state since 2003, part of a steady decline since peak of the poker boom in 2007, when there were 113 rooms dealing poker games.
Consolidation Has Helped Business
Yet, despite the small number of rooms open, the period from 2021 to 2024 has been the highest-grossing four-year period on record for Nevada poker rooms. The $228 million pulled in by Nevada rooms in 2023 remains the all-time high for annual revenue. So, it appears that concentrating poker players into a relatively smaller number of poker rooms has been beneficial for the business as a whole.
Essentially, players eagerly flocked back to live poker as soon as it reopened, and they’ve continued to play and produce rake at a rate well beyond anything before the pandemic, including the boom years.
Casinos that left their rooms shuttered may have begun to notice that it’s a more lucrative endeavor than it was previously. GVR’s announcement is the second significant poker room reopening in Nevada this year. Planet Hollywood reopened its room in May, which had been closed since 2021.
Image credit: kennejima/Flickr (license)
