The focus of much of the poker world for most of the summer was on Las Vegas and the World Series of Poker, and for good reason. During the WSOP, Las Vegas is where nearly every serious poker player wants to be.
SF bay area: Lucky Chances and Artichoke Joe's lowest bb? I went to Lucky Chances yesterday hoping to find a NLHE game with a $2 bb but the lowest they had was a 3/5 game. Does this vary depending on the day or is 3/5 now the lowest they spread?
But there are many other places in the United States that make great poker destinations, especially now that the WSOP is over. Here is my personal list of the eight greatest U.S. destinations for a poker-playing vacation.
1. Southern California
Legal poker has existed in California since the 1930s, allowing California to become the state with the most poker tables in the U.S.
Southern California features the largest poker palaces in the world, including the immense 200-plus table Commerce Casino, the 110-table Gardens Casino (formerly the Hawaiian Gardens, the 90-table Hollywood Park, the 80-table Bicycle Club, and the 50-table Hustler.
This adds up to unsurpassed poker action, including huge tournaments and nosebleed-stakes cash games. Truly, Southern California is the poker capital of the world.
There's also a whole lot to do other than play poker in Southern California, as it is home to beautiful beaches, Hollywood, and the incredible cities of Los Angeles and San Diego, as well as the beautiful resort town of Palm Springs.
2. Greater Philadelphia (including Atlantic City)
Back before so many states legalized poker, Atlantic City, New Jersey had the only legal poker on the East Coast south of Connecticut. The action there was fierce, with 10 poker rooms lined up in a row right there in that great beach town.
Such is no longer the case. Not only has poker legally expanded to Delaware, West Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania, but in the process, poker in Atlantic City has diminished. Even so, despite the fact that there are only five poker rooms left in Atlantic City — and only the Borgata, with 85 tables, is considered a major poker room — there are now nine other poker rooms within a 90-minute drive of downtown Philadelphia.
Among them are the Sugar House located in the heart of Philadelphia with 28 tables, and just outside the city limits Parx (61 tables) and Harrahs (31 tables). There are three more Pennsylvania rooms to the west and north of Philadelphia, and another three poker rooms to the south in Delaware.
That adds up to 207 tables at 14 different poker rooms within an hour-and-a-half of downtown Philadelphia. Couple this large variety of excellent poker rooms with the history, culture, and rich urban life of this major city, then mix in the still-beautiful beaches of the Jersey and Delaware shores, and you get one of the premier poker destinations in the United States.
3. Southeastern Connecticut
The towns of Ledyard and Uncasville, Connecticut are home to two huge resort casinos and among the finest and largest poker rooms in the world — Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun.
As the second-largest poker room in the world, Foxwoods on its own is a worthwhile poker destination. It's also one of only two casinos in the world with regular seven-card stud games at all stakes. Together with its younger sibling the Mohegan Sun, the area boasts nearly 150 cash game tables and some of the largest poker tournaments outside of Las Vegas, including regular stops of the major poker tours.
Boston is less than two hours away, and there's a beautiful sea coast 20 minutes south in Mystic, Connecticut. Providence's T.F. Green Airport is the nearest major airport, about 40 minutes from Foxwoods, and frequent shuttle buses run to both casinos from both New York City's and Boston's Chinatowns.
Both casinos also offer regular Vegas-style top shelf entertainment and many top flight restaurants. They also are regularly overflowing with a sea of gambling tourists who arrive in steady streams from New York and New England. What's not to like?
4. Florida — Southeast Coast
Miami, Ft. Lauderdale, Hollywood, Palm Beach, and the surrounding area are home to 12 poker rooms, among them Seminole Hard Rock Hollywood, Hialeah Park, and the Palm Beach Kennel Club (just to name three). At last count those 12 rooms collectively boast 376 tables, making it the largest concentration of poker action outside of California and Nevada. The area is also home to dozens of daily tournaments and frequent stops on the national poker tours, ensuring cash and tournament action for every bankroll.
Add in the scenic beauty of the Atlantic Coast, major league sports teams, and the great music and night life of Miami — plus all of the other gambling options at the horse racing, dog racing, and jai alai frontons that house many of these poker rooms (meaning lots of gamblers to enrich good poker games — and you have an overwhelmingly appealing destination for a poker trip.
5. Florida's West Coast
Over on the West Coast of Florida there are six poker rooms with 208 tables, including rooms in Ft. Myers, Naples, Tampa, Sarasota, and St. Petersburg. These include the large Derby Lane and Hard Rock Tampa rooms.
Read all of the superlatives in the section about Southeast Florida, scale back the action 20-30 percent or so, add a measure of calmness, and a few wonderful mid-sized cities, and you have this incredible poker scene.
There are cash games going at multiple venues around the clock and at least a couple of tournaments every day. The major poker tours stop there as well, giving visitors a lot of variety to go along with the beautiful weather, terrific seafood, gambling venues, professional sports, and lovely beaches.
And if you feel that you're shortchanging the spouse and kids with your great poker games, you can even take a day or two off from poker and drive the family to nearby Orlando and Disney World.
6. Gulf Coast of Louisiana and Mississippi
New Orleans has always been a huge tourist destination with Mardi Gras, Cajun cuisine, the Gulf Coast, and jazz. In addition, in New Orleans and within a 90-minute drive, there are eight poker rooms.
In New Orleans there's Boomtown for low limit hold'em, and (most significantly) there's the bustling 20-table Harrah's that has most of the big hold'em and pot-limit Omaha action in the area.
An hour-and-a-half west is Baton Rouge, Louisiana's capital, home to the beautiful L'Auberge Casino. Around 75-90 minutes to the east, just over the border in Bay St. Louis and Biloxi, Mississippi, there are five more casinos, the largest being the Beau Rivage, with the IP Casino, Scarlet Pearl, Golden Nugget, and Hollywood Casino rounding out the list.
With all of those rooms there are plenty of limit and no-limit cash games and tournaments to appeal to the poker tourist, not to mention all of the other great things to do in the area.
7. Northern California
Artichoke Joe's Casino Menu
The Greater San Francisco metropolitan area, extending southward to San Jose and up to the Santa Rosa and Napa Valley to the northeast — doesn't have nearly as many poker tables or poker rooms as in the southern part of the state. But it's a magnificent collection of rooms nevertheless, as Lucky Chances, Bay 101, The Oaks, Artichoke Joes, The Palace, Graton, Livermore, Napa Valley, Parkwest, Pete's 881, San Pablo, M8trix, and the California Grand each have something going for them.
They are also surrounded by a first class tourist destinations too numerous to mention. You don't have the huge action nor as many large tournaments as you do in Los Angeles, but hey, you've got the Golden Gate Bridge, The Muir Woods, the San Francisco Giants, the Golden State Warriors, and perhaps the greatest Chinatown in the world outside of China.
8. Baltimore-Washington DC
Artichoke Joe's Casino
For a long time, Baltimore and the District of Columbia were legal poker deserts. Aside from the 'charity' poker games in Prince Georges County, Maryland (that were eventually closed for being corrupt), there was no legal poker within 200 miles of the Capitol District, meaning the nearest action was in Atlantic City — a three-hour drive away.
But five years ago there began a torrent of legal poker that now has three rockin' poker rooms: Maryland Live! and the Horseshoe in Baltimore, plus the MGM located right outside of DC.
Those three rooms have over 100 tables among them. When you add in all of the other obvious tourist attractions of the nation's capitol and the great inner harbor city of Baltimore, the area becomes yet another great poker destination in the United States.
There are many other places in the United States that have poker, though the locations listed above comprise my top eight.
Ashley Adams has been playing poker for 50 years and writing about it since 2000. He is the author of hundreds of articles and two books, Winning 7-Card Stud (Kensington 2003) and Winning No-Limit Hold'em (Lighthouse 2012). He is also the host of poker radio show House of Cards. See www.houseofcardsradio.com for broadcast times, stations, and podcasts.
Finding a trustworthy room to play online poker can be a monumental burden. That's all the more true if you're just looking for a place to play poker for free. We've listed five of the best play-money poker sites to enjoy and help hone your skills.
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This is not a good look, Artichoke Joe’s. The 100-year old northern California casino was slapped with a hefty $8 million civil money penalty by the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) because it “willfully violated U.S. anti-money laundering (AML) laws from October 2009 to November 2017.”
If that sounds bad, it is because it is bad. Essentially, the casino allowed all sorts of shady dealings to go on right on the casino floor. Staff knew things were happening, management knew things were happening, and nobody stopped a damn thing. Procedures weren’t even in place for staff to report suspicious activity if they wanted to.
Artichoke Joe's Casino Fine
We’ll let FinCEN Acting Director Jamal El-Hindi explain:
Artichoke Joe's Poker
For years, Artichoke Joe’s turned a blind eye to loan sharking, suspicious transfers of high-value gaming chips, and flagrant criminal activity that occurred in plain sight. FinCEN’s $8 million civil penalty results from the card club’s failure to establish adequate internal controls and its willful violations of the Bank Secrecy Act. Casinos, card clubs and others in the gaming industry should consider their risk of exploitation by criminal elements, and understand that they will be held accountable if they disregard anti-money laundering and illicit finance laws. This significant action highlights the need for all entities, including those in the gaming industry, to build a robust culture of compliance into their policies and procedures to ensure they are not facilitating illicit activities.
One example of the “blind eye” was in 2011. Artichoke Joe’s (AJC) was raided by law enforcement officials and two casino customers were arrested, eventually convicted for “loan-sharking and other illicit activities at AJC.”
AJC “senior-level” employees knew these customers were conducting their illegal business on the premises, including using casino chips to make transactions, but they did nothing to stop it or even file the proper reports. Many of these chip transactions were made while the employees were watching.
As far as prevention and reporting controls were concerned:
In particular, AJC failed to adopt adequate policies and procedures to address risks associated with gaming practices that allow customers to pool or co-mingle their bets with relative anonymity. Further, AJC did not establish procedures for obtaining and incorporating information from propositional players (players paid by casinos or card clubs to wager at a game) or other employees who may have observed suspicious transactions. AJC also failed to file complete and timely reports on suspicious transactions involving potentially structured chip redemptions and purchases, and redemptions of large volumes of chips with no cash-in or gaming activity.
What a mess.
It’s not even like anyone could plead ignorance. Some of these activities – like cashing in large volumes of chips without previously having bought-in or gambled – were so obviously efforts to launder money that even the most novice casino employee would be able to spot them.
There has been no indication by FinCEN that anyone at Artichoke Joe’s was involved in any of the illicit activities or was paid by any of the criminals to allow the conduct at the casino.
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