Twin River Casino offers Texas hold’em and seven-card stud.
The poker room of the Twin River Casino in Lincoln, Rhode Island opened this week. It is the first-ever legal brick-and-mortar poker room in the state of Rhode Island. Casino officials say that 130 people gathered to play in the first few hours of operation. Some were waiting in line to play.
Texas Hold’em remains a favorite game 12 years after the Poker Boom started. Card players who might not come out to the casino for blackjack and craps — and certainly not for the slot machines – might venture to the Twin River Casino for poker. In most casinos, the poker room is set off in its own section of the gaming space. Players sit 9 to a table, just like they do in televised poker.
Poker Room Details
The Twin River Casino’s poker area has 16 card tables. The room has two gaming options: Texas hold’em and seven-card stud. Each table seats up to 10 players at the table, giving the room capacity of 160 players. Two different tables offering the same variant of poker might have different blind limits and other rules. For instance, a gambler might prefer pot limit hold’em or no limit hold’em. Therefore, players might find they have to stand in line when the room is not at capacity.
Poker tables are open from 12-noon to 4 a.m. on weekdays. On the weekends, games are held nonstop from Friday afternoon. This goes all the way to 4 a.m. on Monday morning.
“A Full-Blown Casino”
Craig Sculos, the Vice President and General Manager of Twin River, says poker was needed to make the Rhode Island gaming venue a “full-blown casino”. Officials in Rhode Island and Massachusetts have been increasing the gaming action in their local casinos over the past couple of years, as each state is trying to retain players from their states while drawing gaming money from other areas.
Twin River is in a competition with the Plainridge Racetrack in nearby Plainview, Massachusetts. Plainridge owner’s Penn National Gaming convinced Massachusetts officials to add gaming machines to their complex, in order to compete with Twin River. Twins River, afraid it might lose its customer base, therefore needed poker.
Newport Grand Casino: No Poker
A third city, the city of Newport on Aquidnek Island, had the right to approve poker for the Newport Grand Casino, but the referendum did not pass. The right to vote in the poker resolution happened after a statewide vote in 2012. At the time, the Global Recession was still in effect and state and local officials promoted such gambling to raise revenues.
Since then, the economy has recovered to a certain degree, but other challenges have presented themselves to the gaming interests of Rhode Island. In the past couple of years, it has become evident that regional saturation is an issue — and it may be getting worse.
Wynn Everett
The competition between the casinos on the Massachusetts-Rhode Island border will become more intense when the Wynn Everett opens in the Boston Area. The $1.7 billion complex is going to be a world-class gambling facility, drawing the vast majority of Boston-area gamblers. When that happens, both Plainridge and Twin River could have trouble drawing Bostonians — a key demographic for both establishments.
One reason both states were proactive in bringing casino-style gambling to their outlying areas is a desire to build a loyal customer base before an integrated casino was opened in the area.
Across the United States, casino gambling is becoming a localized phenomenon. Regional destinations no longer seem viable, because so many states have casinos now. Only Las Vegas retains the allure which draws customers from all over the country.
