Spin Cycle: Poker Room Fold, Casino Smoking Fight Highlight Week In Gambling

Welcome to “Spin Cycle,” Casino Reports’ weekly Friday roundup of all things impactful, intriguing, impressive, or idiotic in the gambling industry. Pull up a chair, grab a stack of chips and a glass of your beverage of choice, and take a spin with us through this week’s news cycle …

Say goodbye to Hollywood

It was just before the 2025 World Series of Poker last May that Planet Hollywood in Las Vegas reopened its poker room for the first time since COVID. And in a less-than-stellar sign for the health of live poker, owner Caesars announced this week that the 23-table room is already closing again, effective Saturday.

The Planet Hollywood poker room hosted a successful WSOP Circuit tournament series this month, but reports from Las Vegas indicate it never got rolling as a cash game destination — both because of the popularity of other longer-tenured, nearby poker rooms on the Strip, and because the new poker room was not centrally located within Planet Hollywood.

This will leave just 18 active poker rooms in Las Vegas casinos.

On the bright side, as PokerNews reported, there will be no layoffs as a result of the closure. Rather, the Planet Hollywood poker staff will be reassigned to either Caesars Palace or Horseshoe Las Vegas.

Where there’s smoke …

There’s no snuffing out the debate over whether smoking should be allowed in casinos, and this week, the topic made news in both New Jersey and Iowa.

In Iowa, home to 23 casinos, senators in a subcommittee declined Monday to advance Senate File 2051, which sought to eliminate the exemption in the Iowa Smokefree Air Act that permit smoking in gambling structures despite it being banned in other public indoor venues.

Iowa state Sen. Tony Bisignano was among those who did not vote to advance the bill, but he told the Iowa Capital Dispatch that was strictly because he knew the bill had no chance of passing yet but he believes a ban on smoking in casinos will succeed “relatively soon.”

In New Jersey, meanwhile, also on Monday, a three-judge state appeals court panel ordered a lower court to rehear a complaint dismissed in 2024 over whether the casino exemption in the indoor smoking ban violates the state’s constitution. The appeals panel found procedural flaws in the initial dismissing of the complaint, breathing a little new life into the push to ban smoking in Atlantic City’s casinos.

Quick hits: Minnesota, Mississippi, and Vermont

• The long-running dispute in Minnesota between the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community and Running Aces Hotel, Casino & Racetrack over “dealer assist” electronic table games was settled Monday by the Minnesota Supreme Court, which found in favor of Running Aces. The casino in Columbus, Minn., is permitted to continue to use the tables. The tribe released a statement that it is “deeply disappointed” by the decision and still considers the table games “a clear violation of Minnesota law.”
• In sweepstakes gaming ban news, the Mississippi Senate Judiciary Division B Committee amended and approved Senate Bill 2104 on Wednesday, sending it to its next committee assignment. The amendments exempt companies such as internet service providers, cable operators, or streaming networks from being liable if their products are used for sweepstakes-style gambling. The bill, if passed, will make sweepstakes sites using the dual-currency model illegal in Mississippi.
• Will Vermont soon cross itself off the list of states with no commercial casinos? Vermont state Sen. Christopher Mattos introduced legislation Tuesday that would authorize the Board of Liquor and Lottery to issue up to two casino licenses, with each license costing $5 million. S 318 had its first reading Tuesday and was referred to the Committee on Economic Development, Housing, and General Affairs.

House Rules: Insights from around our network

NEW DOMINION: Virginia iGaming bill advances out of subcommittee after tweaks [by Chris Altruda]

LOTTA LOMBARDI LOOT: AGA projects $1.76 billion to be wagered on Super Bowl [by Jill R. Dorson]

SCRATCHING THE SURFACE: Online lottery expansion is ‘path of least resistance’ in gaming, Citizens Bank says [by Eric Raskin]

MINING FOR A WINNER: Eureka! Casino gold at last [by Mitch Malherbe]

COLD CASH: National December iGaming gross revenue tops $1 billion [by Chris Altruda]

WHO YA GONNA CALL?: National Council on Problem Gambling launches new 800 helpline number [by Jeff Edelstein]

FUN IN THE SUN: Casino legislation, gaming study, illegal gambling crackdown happening all at once in Hawaii [by Eric Raskin]

FROM SHAVING TO SAVING: He was a McDonald’s All-American — then he became prisoner 01044748 [by Brant James]

IN THE BLOOD: If a family member has a gambling problem, you could too [by Jeff Edelstein]

QUITTIN’ TIME: AGA evolution continues as OpenBet, Sportradar drop memberships [by Jill R. Dorson]

DEEP IN THE HEART: Former Lottery.com officials face SEC complaint over Lotto Texas controversy [by Jeff Edelstein]

MUDDY TRACK: Financial mess at Hawthorne could scuttle potential Illinois racino [by Chris Altruda]

Small stakes and hot takes

This week on the Casino Reports podcast Low Rollers, I welcomed veteran gambling journalist Steve Ruddock, the man behind the Straight to the Point Substack, for a discussion of the impact of Maine legalizing iCasino, Massachusetts as a trend-setter for blocking prediction markets, his Patriots’ unlikely run to the Super Bowl, and more.

I also offer my analysis of the Zero Latency podcast’s conversation about online operators sometimes being able to assess a customer’s lifetime value based on a single wager, plus I hook my listeners up with the official Low Rollers Super Bowl SGP.

Full episode:

The Shuffle: Other news and views

CHANGING THEIR TUNE: Nevada regulators to consider removing Italian crooner from Black Book so he can perform in casinos [CDC Gaming]

GARDEN STATE GAMBLE: New Jersey lawmakers push casino at Meadowlands Racetrack as New York competition looms [WRAT]

LOOT IT GO: Austrian Supreme Court rules loot boxes do not constitute gambling [NEXT.io]

ABLE TO TABLE: Big change coming to Parx Casino Shippensburg [PennLive]

VANDER-PUMP THE BRAKES: Boutique Strip casino-hotel to stop taking reservations during rebrand, renovations [Las Vegas Review-Journal]

EXPANDING EMPIRE: Owner of Riverside Casino finalizes deal to buy another Iowa casino [CBS2Iowa]

ONE STEP AT A TIME: Chairman says Bally’s Las Vegas plans will tilt toward retail before casino [iGaming Business]

AH, WISCONSIN: Beloit’s Ho-Chunk Casino targets September opening date [MyStateline.com]

The Bonus Round

Completing the Spin Cycle with some odds and ends and our favorite social media posts of the week.

• In news that should surprise nobody, the worlds of prediction markets and poker are overlapping. Kalshi has a market posted on the number of entries for the 2026 WSOP Main Event, with a yes/no option on more than 10,000 players. And when someone asked Poker Hall of Famer and Kalshi partner Daniel Negreanu on X whether Kalshi will have more poker prediction markets in the future, “Kid Poker” replied, “Working on it!”

• The National Association Against iGaming is at it again. In October, we wrote about the NAAiG engaging in “push polling” to support its agenda, and, waddaya know, on Wednesday, a press release went out declaring that new polling “finds broad resistance to online gambling expansion among Mississippi voters” — and that new polling happened to be commissioned by the NAAiG. We’re sensing a pattern here …

• It’s always fun to end Spin Cycle with some big winners. At Santa Fe Station in Las Vegas last Thursday, a local player decked out in Chicago Bears gear heaved up a Caleb Williams-esque Hail Mary and hit a seven-card straight flush on a table game for a $445,388 progressive jackpot. And at 4:35 a.m. Sunday morning at Thunder Valley Casino Resort near Sacramento, Calif., a player in the high-limit slots area scored a $136,158 progressive jackpot, proving that getting to bed at a reasonable hour is severely overrated.