The iconic Caesars Palace at the heart of the Las Vegas Strip will be without poker for the next 60 to 90 days amid renovations in the part of the casino where the open-air room is located. Caesars took to social media late on Saturday to confirm that live poker will be going on temporary hiatus:
The renovation of Caesars Palace's high-limit slots area, which is nearby the poker room, forced Caesars to opt to temporarily remove poker. News of the room's temporary closure was emailed to employees several weeks ago, and that news became public almost immediately.
The high-limit slots are a marquee draw for Caesars and almost certainly generate significantly more revenue than poker on a dollars-per-square-foot basis. Use of the space technically also lowers labor expense related to poker, though dealers and other staff are likely to be distributed to other card games and perhaps other Caesars properties in the short term.
As can be seen, the shutdown notice hopes to drive Caesars' poker traffic across the Strip to the new World Series of Poker room at Caesars Horseshoe, which has the space to absorb the traffic with the 2024 WSOP in the books.
Caesars Palace has lowered poker profile in recent years
Since the removal of the original Caesars Palace poker room some years ago, live poker has had a more limited presence at the venue. Live poker once occupied two large rooms at Caesars, but in 2014, management converted that space into an expansion of the casino's primary nightclub, which was then known as Pure and was rebranded as Omnia.
Poker reappeared at Caesars a short while later in the open-air room just a couple of hundred feet away, with extra space available in one small adjacent area. The nightclub expansion, however, ended Caesers LV's days as a home to major poker tournaments. Since that relocation and downsizing, Caesars was only able to offer small daily tourneys in addition to its traditional cash-game action.
In 2021, rumors surfaced that the Caesars Palace poker room might be shuttered temporarily during the WSOP's seven-week run, with dealers and staff temporarily reassigned to WSOP duties across the Strip. Two other Caesars properties were also involved in the rumors, which never came to fruition. From the company's viewpoint, finding a way to move all live-poker traffic, year-round, to the Horseshoe likely represents a more efficient use of resources. However, the long tradition of live poker at Caesars Palace has made such a transition slow to occur.
