"Poker has been explosive"

Tim Wade had just finished a game of poker Wednesday morning and was hanging out near one of the new poker tables in the Smoke-Free Room at the casino.

He's been playing poker about a year, after seeing the popular World Championship of Poker on the Discovery Channel, and rarely plays any other table game.

"I like the poker more," said Wade, of Fitchburg, Mass. "(I) compete against other people more than the dealer."

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Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun are taking in more money from players such as Wade. Mohegan Sun last week reported a 7.3 percent increase in quarterly revenue from blackjack, craps and other games involving green felt surfaces. Revenue was up 11 percent in the previous quarter.

Foxwoods Resort Casino will not release specific numbers on its table games, but says performance as a whole is up this year.

"Poker has been explosive," said Bruce MacDonald, a spokesman for the casino. "On the table games, we don't generally talk about their activity, but it's been solid here. It's been a good summer."

Percentage wise, the springtime growth for table games is higher than that of slot machines, which bring in about two-and-a-half times more revenue at the Sun than table games.

Mitchell Etess, Mohegan Sun's executive vice president of marketing, attributed the growth to a greater appreciation of the product.

"It seems to me a 7.3 percent increase is a matter of maturing markets, how things develop on a period-by-period basis," he said.

Table game revenue throughout the industry is extremely volatile, said Eugene Christiansen, founder and chairman of Christiansen Capital Advisors, a New York-based gambling and entertainment analysis firm. Table games do best where casinos dominate their markets, like Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun.

Cable television's new fondness for poker, said Christiansen, has made poker more popular -- "It would have been the same with tiddlywinks," he said -- and he expected Mohegan Sun, which closed its poker room last summer, to bring it back.

Etess, though, said there were no plans to do that.

"We still feel very comfortable about that decision," he said. "We continue to grow and be successful, and that reinforces our belief we made the right move."

Source: Brian Lyman, Norwich Bulletin