Borgata Atlantic City Poker Room Rate
Borgata Hotel borgata atlantic city poker room rate Casino - Spa, Poker Wiki, Fandom powered by Wikia Venue Type Hotel & Casino Rewards Program My Borgata Rewards Comps & Promotions $1.00-$4.00/hour comp rate. MGM Resorts International's Borgata Hotel Casino U Spa in Atlantic City is reopening 'The Poker Room' will open on Oct. 21, with 30 socially distanced tables. The Poker Room was closed earlier.
- The East Coast's premier Poker Room is waiting for you! Welcome to the tables of the Borgata Poker Room. Where great cards, lucky seats and high hands bring excitement to every player. Try your hand at Hold'Em, Stud, Omaha or any of the many variations of Poker. You can find it all right here! Excitement is waiting.
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- The Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa is the home of Atlantic City's premier poker room with 85 tables spread across 21,500 square feet. The atmosphere is generally more upscale than its main rival, the Taj Mahal, and the clientele tends to be younger.The new poker room opened on June 30, 2006 as part of phase 1 ($200 million) of a half-billion dollar development.
New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy (D) gave the green light for Atlantic City casinos to reopen over the July 4 weekend. That didn’t include poker and players speculated rooms would soon follow with limited capacity.
It’s now August and all poker rooms remain closed. Online poker has boomed in the state, but many players are asking when live games will return.
A look at the Atlantic City poker scene
Atlantic city currently has five live poker rooms: Harrahs, Borgata, Tropicana, Golden Nugget, and Caesars. All five casinos have reopened but have not released any information on reopening the poker rooms.
USPoker reached out to the properties but didn’t receive any information on poker room reopening plans. Poker player Jamie Giunta recently visited the reopened Borgata shared a video on Twitter of the normally bustling poker room.
“I teared up, felt lost, like it wasn’t real,” she says. “It was really sad to see no bodies in chairs and no faces. Borgata poker was the forefront of poker in Atlantic City. It was disheartening to see.”
😭 pic.twitter.com/wXDmgqCoEL
— Jamie Giunta (@JamieVGiunta) July 28, 2020
Poker rooms face several requirements before reopening
On July 2, Murphy released updated executive orders regarding the casino industry. Atlantic City’s guidelines allowed for poker rooms to be reopen with the following rules in place:
- All table games must have Plexiglas or glass barriers between dealers and guests.
- Casinos must adhere additional cleaning and disinfecting protocols.
- Casinos are subject to the state’s gathering limits. These currently restrict indoor capacity at 100 people or 25% of a room’s capacity.
- Properties must promote social distancing and hygiene by establishing spacing and appropriate signage.
- Casinos must place sanitizer stations throughout the property.
- Players must wear masks in all public areas. However, guests must briefly lower masks for cage transactions for surveillance purposes.
Many poker rooms in other states, including Nevada, have already opened poker rooms. At properties like Bellagio in Las Vegas, players can expect to wear masks and see Plexiglass dividers at the tables.
A waiting game for live poker in New Jersey
New Jersey online casino numbers have skyrocketed, but Atlantic City casinos are feeling the pain of the financial downswing. According to MarketScreener, Atlantic City got hit the hardest with the worst unemployment rate in the country at 34.3%.
Live poker dealers account for some of these numbers. Pennsylvania poker rooms and Delaware poker rooms are also closed.
Maryland Live! and MGM National Harbor are the closest open poker rooms for New Jersey players. However, there’s a 14-day quarantine travel restriction to Maryland.
For the time being, NJ poker players will have to enjoy playing online. Joe Shinn of Cherry Hill, NJ, plays both online and live, but is ready to head back to the real felt.
“Online poker is nowhere near as enjoyable, so the sooner the AC poker rooms can safely open, the better,” he says.
Others aren’t interested in state guidelines for short-handed play even if live poker does return.
“As much as I miss the juicy tourist cash games in the summer, I’m not sure I would enjoy playing four-handed,” Atlantic City cash grinder Charles Powell IV said.
When it comes to Atlantic City, poker tournament regular Marguerite Spagnuolo takes a libertarian approach.
“Get those dealers and floor people back to work,” she says. “Let the people choose to play or not.”
Atlantic City has a storied poker past.
There’s little doubt there were underground games in America’s Playground when political boss Nucky Johnson ran the city in the 1920s.
Legalized casino gambling came to Atlantic City in 1976, but that didn’t bring the poker games out of the back rooms.
In fact, the state didn’t allow poker games at Atlantic City casinos until the summer of 1993.
The debate rages on to this day as to which casino dealt the first poker hand in AC. It was either the Atlantic City Sands or the Showboat Casino, both of which have since ceased operations.
The backstory of poker rooms in AC
Regardless, poker in Atlantic City immediately became all about Trump Taj Mahal, which opened 50-table room around that time and lead the market by a long shot.
No one could touch the Taj. In fact, it was the biggest and best room in town until 1998, when another contender for the AC poker room crown emerged.
A 40-table poker room opened at the Tropicana and the two properties spent the next few years embroiled in a rivalry for the top spot in the city. Like Coke and Pepsi, you were either Trop or Taj.
That is, until 2003, when the Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa opened up with a 34-table poker room and became the center of the entire East Coast’s poker universe. Borgata soon underwent an expansion of up to 85 tables and cornered the market.
The Taj shut down and has since re-emerged as Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Atlantic City but without a poker room. The Trop shut down its room and built a new one. At 18 tables, its nowhere near the size of what it once was and isn’t even really trying to compete with Borgata.
When it comes to the best poker rooms in Atlantic City these days, all discussions begin and end with Borgata Casino. However, there’s still plenty of poker elsewhere, and at least two rooms are trying to give Borgata a run for its money.
Here’s a look at the top three poker rooms in Atlantic City, starting with the king of the hill:
Borgata
The 85-table poker room at the Borgata in Atlantic City’s Marina District is the premier poker destination on the East Coast.
It is more than double the size of any AC competitor and offers the largest variety of cash games, tournaments, and poker promotions around.
It was once the home of the World Poker Tour season-ending championship event. To this day, it hosts massive seasonal tournament series and an annual WPT stop that continues to break entry records.
The Borgata offers the full Las Vegas casino and poker room experience in Atlantic City. It’s always packed and the action is legendary.
It spreads all kinds of games at stakes as high as a player wants. Borgata also runs its own online poker room (Borgata Poker) using GVC Holdings software.
Bally’s Atlantic City
Bally’s Atlantic City is hone to a 42-table World Series of Poker-branded poker room that delivers on its promise to bring the WSOP experience east.
It spreads Hold’em and Omaha cash games, daily tournaments, and has played host to the WSOP Circuit National Championship and other WSOP Circuit events in the past.
The WSOP poker room also hosts its own annual Bally’s Poker Classic tournament series.
While it doesn’t come close to the size of Borgata, Bally’s does have the second biggest room in the city. The use of WSOP branding certainly helps keep the room busy. Its Boardwalk location doesn’t hurt either.
In the end, however, Bally’s is really more about low-limit games and tourists than poker purists who really have very little reason to ever leave Borgata.
Parent company Caesars Entertainment also runs a WSOP-branded online poker room in New Jersey (WSOP NJ).
Golden Nugget Atlantic City
TheGolden Nugget NJ casinoin Atlantic City runs the poker room for the little guy, and it does a great job of it.
It appears to be going after a completely different customer than Marina District neighbor Borgata and finds success doing so.
There are just 10 tables, so right away it has a more intimate feel. Plus, it runs a variety of great promotions designed to make the players feel special.
Cheap Rooms Borgata Atlantic City
It’s all relatively low limit Omaha and Hold’em cash games and tournaments. However, with one of the best comping and rake back systems in the business, there’s a lot of added value in playing there.
Players can earn double and triple comps most weekdays, and a free buffet for just a few hours of play. Plus, the poker room recently moved into its new home on the fourth floor. (In its old place will reportedly be a sportsbook.)
You won’t become the next WPT or WSOP champ playing at Golden Nugget, but you’ll sure enjoy the experience.