Wynn Casino To Re-open But Without Poker

Predictions that live poker action will be lessened when casinos reopen in the wake of the COVID-19 shutdown appear to have merit, as Wynn Las Vegas has confirmed that it will not be offering live poker when it reopens in early June.

News of Wynn Las Vegas’s decision to omit poker, along with certain other table games such as craps, appears to resolve differences between Wynn’s in-house reopening guidelines published last month and health-and-safety guidelines issued more recently by the Nevada Gaming Commission. Wynn Las Vegas’s plans originally included poker as Section 11 of this detailed reopening document. However, the NGC’s rules limiting poker to four players per table likely made the casino’s reversal easier.

As noted at Bloomberg, which broke the story, poker itself represents a much lower profit source than most other forms of gambling, when measured on a square-foot or square-meter basis. Poker also requires relatively higher levels of employees to operate and oversee the games, another factor in Wynn’s reversal.

The news also appears to assure that there will be no 2020 edition of the Wynn Summer Classic, which in recent years has offered dozens of events in a time slot roughly paralleling the World Series of Poker at the nearby Rio. Wynn’s Summer Classic is among the half dozen largest summer poker series in Las Vegas. Though Wynn previously announced the series’ postponement, it has not made any subsequent announcements besides the casino-wide disclosure to Bloomberg. Instead, it’s social-media presence has been upselling its future reopenings, such as its golf course, which reopened on May 18th:

Wynn joins the Aria in cancelling its summer offering, which at the Aria was the Summer High Roller Series. All other major poker series in Las Vegas remain under long-term postponement.