Sahara Las Vegas Poker Room Closes


The northernmost casino resort on the Las Vegas Strip, the Sahara Las Vegas, has announced it will be closing its dedicated poker room as of November 16. 

The seven-table room will be replaced by a new slots room with exclusive games. Poker rooms, while mostly popular among gamblers and tourists, are generally not a big revenue driver for casinos. Slots, however, take the top spot for most profitable casino game each month for casinos in Nevada. 

The pending closure of Sahara’s poker room makes it the seventh Las Vegas Strip casino to fold its poker room since 2019. There were 31 in 2017, with just 14 remaining now. The most recent to go was in June 2024, with the supposedly temporary closure of the expansive poker room at Caesars Palace.

“When it debuts in mid-December, the enhanced offerings will include dedicated slot banks where players can be some of the first in Las Vegas to play the newest test games from top gaming content providers,” said Sahara’s GM Paul Hobson in a statement. 

“More details about this latest Sahara innovation will be announced soon.”

The Closures 

The Sahara opened in 1952, and included a poker room in its opening list of features. The original room stayed in the same spot — with a few cosmetic upgrades — until 2011, when the casino resort closed and reopened as SLS Las Vegas.

However, that venture was not to have a long run. In 2017, the SLS Las Vegas changed ownership, and rumors began swirling that the Sahara could see a return. In 2019, it did.

The new resort returned the poker room to the site, as well as some vintage features, but changed to a modern, updated look. Five years later, amid a climate of poker rooms closing across the Las Vegas Strip since the pandemic, the Sahara poker room once again bit the dust. 

Other nearby major casino resorts to close their poker rooms since 2019 include The Excalibur, Harrah’s, Rio, Planet Hollywood, and The Flamingo. Neither the Mirage nor the Tropicana had a poker room when they closed for good earlier in 2024.

Outside of the Las Vegas Strip, The Cannery, Silver Sevens, and Club Fortune all closed their poker rooms in this period. Even the legendary poker room at Binion’s in downtown, for many decades the home of the World Series of Poker, did not return after pandemic shutdowns. 

The closures of poker rooms in Las Vegas comes at a time when interest in tournament poker is booming. There were a record number of entries to the WSOP 2024 main event held at Horseshoe Las Vegas, which led to a $10 million main prize for eventual winner Daniel Tamayo. 

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