Live poker rooms remain a major draw in the United States. Most major U.S. casinos have a dedicated poker room near you. The best tribal casinos operated games of Texas Hold’em, Omaha, and Seven-Card Stud, too. Even places without the luck to have a major casino often have a private poker club.

Finding good up-to-date information on the legal card playing venues in your area can be difficult. Most poker information blogs focus so much on online and mobile poker sites. While it’s helpful to provide reviews of desktop and mobile poker, land-based players need to know the name, address, contact information, and number of poker tables a site near them has. This section of our site offers the live poker information you seek and answers the question of “Are there any poker rooms near me?“.

United States Poker Rooms Near You

Poker is a huge draw in most US casinos, though very small poker rooms often have a difficult time surviving. Larger poker rooms can offer tournaments and more cash game variety, which attracts more players and enables the room to thrive.

Live poker rooms remain a major draw in the United States. Casinos have a dedicated poker room near you. The best tribal casinos operated games of Texas Hold’em, Omaha, and Seven-Card Stud, too. Even places without the luck to have a major casino often have a private poker club. Finding good up-to-date information on the legal card playing venues in your area can be difficult. Meet local Poker faces to test your hand against in games and tournaments of Texas Hold 'em, seven-card stud and other popular variants. Skip to content. Poker groups near you. More local groups. Seattle Rounders. After you read this, you will understand that poker is not a game of luck, as many thinks, but it’s a game of technique and thought that would separate the men/women from the boys/girls If you think the game is confusing, this book will have you understanding it immediately, starting with the very basics that should know.

Casinos in some cities have struggled, such as in Atlantic City, but it is not a result of poker issues. Poker does not make or break a larger casino; it only enhances the offerings if the space is available.

In recent years, casinos in New Jersey and Pennsylvania have been able to link with online poker and casino game operators to offer internet gambling. These states have laws that allow online poker and online casino games if operators and land-based casinos partner and obtain licenses together. This has been helpful to land-based casinos in Atlantic City, especially, because of the ability to cross-promote and use online gambling to bring new players to the casinos. The online sites also provide significant revenue on their own.

Poker rooms vary from state to state in America. In California, casinos are only permitted on tribal lands, but card rooms operate across the state. These rooms typically offer some table games and almost always offer poker. Card rooms like the Bicycle Casino and Commerce Casino in Los Angeles and Bay 101 in the Bay area have been very successful in the past decade or so, partially due to notoriety garnered from partnerships with poker tours like the World Poker Tour and World Series of Poker.

Assuming you can find a game with the right pay table and you can play it with perfect strategy, you might be able to make a little bit of money playing this game. Let's say you can find a game where you can play for a quarter, or $1.25 per hand. (You're betting.

Since Legal US Poker Sites is primarily dedicated to online poker options for US players, we do not provide a comprehensive list of casinos and poker rooms across America.

However, we do provide some updated overviews of the largest poker states in America.

Nevada Poker Rooms

All Free Poker Games

Las Vegas is perhaps the best-known gambling city in the world. It is also famous for its poker rooms, from Binion’s where the World Series of Poker began to the Bellagio where some of the highest stakes poker games in the world occur frequently.

As of January 202, there are 19 poker rooms located on or near the Las Vegas Strip, and only one (Golden Nugget) remains in Downtown Las Vegas. There are also off-strip poker rooms at casinos like Red Rock Casino and Green Valley Ranch.

Reno has significantly downsized its poker options in recent years, though there are still rooms in casinos like the Peppermill, Boomtown, and the Atlantis.

Find A Poker Game Near Me

California Poker Rooms

As of January 2021, there are approximately 85 card rooms offering poker in California. This includes Indian casinos that offer poker as well.

The most well-known of the poker rooms are in the Los Angeles area, with the Bicycle Casino, Hustler Casino, and Gardens Casino as ones frequented by players from around the country. The best known is Commerce Casino, which is the largest poker room in the world with 270 tables and always adding more to the 91,000-square-foot casino floor.

Farther north in California takes players to Bay 101 in San Jose and Thunder Valley near Sacramento. And areas a few hours outside of Los Angeles also offer some poker rooms in Native American casinos like Pechanga, Morongo, and San Manuel.

New Jersey Poker Rooms

The only city currently allowed to host casinos is Atlantic City, where casinos have long made the city famous around the world. Tough times in the past few decades prompted several casinos to close, but some of them remain open and offer thriving online poker scenes. The most popular is the Borgata, but there is also poker at casinos like the Golden Nugget, Harrah’s, and Resorts.

Several casinos are also linked with online poker sites, such as Borgata with PartyPoker, Harrah’s with WSOP/888, and Resorts with PokerStars. This has improved their live poker rooms through online poker tournaments.

Pennsylvania Poker Rooms

Pennsylvania has become a state with numerous casinos and poker rooms, and attendance is so high that the number of games offered often rivals Las Vegas. Parx Casino in Bensalem is one of the most popular, but there are also Harrah’s and Rivers in Philadelphia, Hollywood Casino, Mount Airy Casino, and Mohegan Sun Pocono. There are nearly one dozen poker rooms now in Pennsylvania.

This state also legalized online poker several years ago, and PokerStars was the first to launch its site in conjunction with Mount Airy. As with New Jersey, online poker and casino sites must partner with land-based casinos, and more have done so. There are about seven casino sites operational in the state, and at least one more online poker room (WSOP) expected to join PokerStars for online poker this year.

Sure, many of us love casino poker. It’s convenient and for a fee known as the “rake” or “drop,” the house takes care of all the details of running the game, recruiting players, providing chips, a nice table, cards, a dealer, a cashier, and often convenient food and beverage service. Similarly, there are a lot of advantages to playing online.

But for me, my favorite form of poker is the old fashioned kind, the type played in living rooms, kitchens, basements, and dens at home — “home games.” And I am an expert at them.

Let’s be clear. I’m not talking here about “house games,” that is, games that are really much like the casino game, only played out of an apartment, hotel room, or even someone’s home. Those games often run very much like a casino game, with house dealers, casino-style cards, chips, and tables, and a casino-like rake (or even a higher one).

Poker Games Near Me

There’s surely a place under the vast poker sun to talk about “house games” as well, but I’m focusing on the amateur affair — the type of games our parents and grandparents played back in the day. As such, I will be looking at a type of poker that is still immensely popular but rarely addressed in the many books and articles published today on the subject of poker.

These home games are often “dealer’s choice” games, where each player deals and calls the game. These games include varieties of poker that we see in casinos, like hold’em and Omaha, but also many non-standard variations that you rarely if ever see in a public poker room. These “home game” variations could include such games as Double-board Omaha, Hold’em High-Low, 7-card stud high-low declare, Boston Stud, Miami, and 3-card Hold’em, as well as games with replacements, extra cards, twists, and all sorts of extra flops, turns, and rivers. They sometimes even include wild card games like Baseball, Low Hole Card Wild, and 5-card draw, deuces wild.

The purpose of this column will be to present articles that address that game — home game poker (though I will tend to set aside, at least at first, the crazier games and the wild card games). This column is interested in helping you get an edge in those popular but rarely written about games, showing how to adjust your strategy to win in the different setting of a home game. In so doing we’ll look at strategy considerations for games with unusual variations, and also general considerations for playing in a home game environment.

But before we start discussing home game strategy, we need to address one other matter first. How do you find a good home game?

Finding a Home Game

Finding a home game is not always easy. In fact, it has been made more difficult by the expansion of public poker rooms around the country, at the expense of home games.

In the old days, the only public poker that was readily available were games in California, Nevada, and some parts of Washington state. If you lived anywhere else, before 1992 or so, you played poker in a home game. There were more games available then — and they were easier to find. But with the enormous expansion of legal, public poker venues came the demise of private games. Why spend the time and energy organizing a game at home when a good poker game is conveniently located near you?

Find Poker Home Games

Today, finding a good home game can be tough. So let me give you a primer on how to find one.

Online sites can be a first step to try. There are a few sites on the web devoted to home poker games that list games by geographic region — search around, they aren’t hard to find. There’s also Craig’s List and other similar sites. Check them out. You might find something that is nearby and that has been posted relatively recently.

However, my experience lately has been that the chances of finding a game this way are slim, which is understandable as folks are concerned about letting strangers into their games. So if that doesn’t work, let me suggest the following tips:

1. Ask friends, coworkers, acquaintances, neighbors, and family

Explain to them that you love to play poker and that you’d like to find a nice friendly game nearby. Keep track of what they say. Don’t turn away any suggestions they make — even if they say that the stakes are very small or very big. One game leads to another, and one person leads to another.

2. Visit nearby organizations

I’m referring to fraternal, ethnic, neighborhood, business, professional, military, and religious organizations. These can be especially good resources if someone from your initial list of contacts is connected in some way.

Examples of these places are the Elks, Moose, Lions, Rotary, Knights of Columbus, Eagles, AmVets, VFW, Kiwanis, Polish American, Hibernian, Greek American, Jewish Community Center, Sons of Italy, country clubs, labor hiring halls, firefighters’ unions, police groups, churches, synagogues, and any other group or association you can think of.

I found my best game by visiting a downtown businessman’s club — the Union Club of Boston — and just asking if they had regular card games for members. They told me that they had a poker game and then gave me the contact information. You should do the same.

3. Go to the local library

There are often clubs that meet at libraries for card games like bridge, cribbage, pitch, or euchre. Find out about who organizes them. Check out other non-card games like chess, backgammon, scrabble, or checkers. Organizers of those games may well know of some poker game. I’ve even seen a poker game advertised at the library — it was a discussion group more than a game, but still, it was a starting place.

4. Visit other local gathering places

If none of the above pans out, or if you want to track every possible source, you can visit the bars, hotels, motels, restaurants, pool halls, nightclubs, bingo halls, racetracks, or other places that might have some connections for you.

I once found a poker game in Atlanta by talking with my desk clerk at the motel at which I was staying. Another time I found a poker game in Nashville by speaking with the woman who seated me at the hotel restaurant. And in Hawaii once I found a poker game by asking the concierge of my resort.

5. Try your personal networks

If you are visiting a city and want to find a game before you arrive, I’ve found that it is helpful to start with your own personal networks. I’m Jewish, so when I wanted a game in Lynchburg, Virginia — a place with no public poker rooms — I called the synagogue. I asked for a service and I asked for a poker game. Believe it or not, they didn’t have a daily service but they put me in touch with a local merchant who knew of a game, and it turned out to be both fun and profitable.

6. Accept an invitation to ANY game, no matter how big or small

I once got an invitation to the perfect $5/$10 pot -imit game from a guy I met in a game played with a nickel ante. The nickel ante game was a social affair for this guy who played much larger when he wanted serious poker. I met him in the small game, and he brought me to the larger game.

7. Keep track of what you learn in some organized way

It’s easy to forget contacts, phone numbers, emails, and the like. So write them down or enter them on the computer and get back to them occasionally to see if they have turned up any useful information.

8. Don’t get discouraged

It took me a couple of years of asking around before I found a game I really liked in the Boston area where I’m from. But once I found a game I learned of dozens more. I now know of many dozens of games, played just about every night of the week, for stakes that range from $1 limit to $5,000 buy-in games.

^{Photo: “Ma Première Partie de Poker,” Olivier Duperray. Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic.}

Ashley Adams has been playing poker for 50 years and writing about it since 2000. He is the author of hundreds of articles and two books, Winning 7-Card Stud (Kensington 2003) and Winning No-Limit Hold’em (Lighthouse 2012). He is also the host of poker radio show House of Cards. See www.houseofcardsradio.com for broadcast times, stations, and podcasts.

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