Turning Stone was the first legal casino in the state, opening in 1993. Del Lago uses the InTurn app by Bally Technologies. Tribal casinos are allowed to have smoking areas inside the buildings.Īll offer daily or weekly tournaments and NLHE all except the five-table Akwesasne room also deal Omaha and occasionally a stud game when there’s enough interest.įive rooms are listed on the Bravo phone app: Turning Stone, Resorts World, Rivers, Tioga Downs and Seneca Niagara. New York law requires commercial casinos – Tioga Downs, del Lago, Rivers and Resorts World Catskills – to be smoke-free throughout. “There’s a big poker community in the capital region.”įor example, to counter the August grand opening of MGM Springfield in Massachusetts, about 100 miles away, his room will offer an hourly $1,000 high-hand bonus for six days.Īll the casino poker rooms in New York are smoke-free.

“We’re still growing our room and brand,” says Dave Grubb of the poker room at Rivers Hotel and Casino. Tribal casinos with poker rooms are at Turning Stone in Verona, Seneca Niagara in Niagara Falls, Seneca Allegany in Salamanca, and Akwesasne in Hogansburg, which is so close to the Canadian border that some slot machines accept Canadian currency.Ĭompetition for players has picked up as players get more choices.

Other commercial casinos are in Schenectady, Waterloo, and Nichols. Legal poker rooms and full-fledged casino gaming haven’t cracked the New York City metro market yet, but players looking for a Hold’em or Omaha game have a variety of options elsewhere in the state.Ī state law allowing commercial casinos targeted areas that needed an economic boost, says Dave Urie, poker room manager at the $1.2 billion Resorts World Catskills, which had a grand opening in May 2018 in Monticello. Poker players in upstate New York have more choices of where to play, with four commercial casinos opening since late 2016 to join four tribal casinos offering live games.

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