Rooms
Ten card rooms worth the trip
Words Shelley
From the Las Vegas Strip to a riverboat in Goa. Ten rooms every player should sit down in once.
Shelley Guest writer
/ 2 min read
A great card room is not just a place to play. It is a place with a history, a sound and a crowd of its own. These are ten we think every player should visit at least once. There are many more, and we will be visiting them in future issues.
1. Bellagio, Las Vegas
The most famous poker room in the world, and still one of the best run. Its private big-game room, long known as Bobby's Room after Bobby Baldwin, is where some of the biggest cash games ever played took place. You do not need to play there to feel the history walking past.
2. Wynn, Las Vegas
Bright, quiet and comfortable, with a calm that is rare on the Strip. Each December it hosts the World Poker Tour's championship festival, which fills the room with players from around the world.
3. ARIA, Las Vegas
The home of many of the game's high-roller events. On a big night, you can watch the best tournament players in the world from a few feet away.
4. Commerce Casino, Los Angeles
One of the largest card rooms anywhere, with games running around the clock. It is the home of the LA Poker Classic, one of the oldest stops on the tournament circuit.
5. Borgata, Atlantic City
The biggest poker room on the American East Coast and the place where many players first played a live tournament. Its series draw huge fields from New York and beyond.
6. The Hippodrome, London
In the middle of Leicester Square, in a Victorian theatre building. Playing cards above the noise of the West End is an experience no other city can give you.
7. King's Resort, Rozvadov
A small town on the Czech-German border with one of the biggest poker rooms in Europe. It hosted the World Series of Poker Europe for several years and still runs festivals that feel like a poker town taking over.
8. Casino Barcelona
A few steps from the beach, and the long-time home of the European Poker Tour's Barcelona stop, often the biggest of the year. Summer in Barcelona with a tournament on is hard to beat.
9. Crown Melbourne
The home of the Aussie Millions, the series that brought big-field poker to the Southern Hemisphere. It returned in 2026 after six years away, and is back again in April 2027.
10. Deltin Royale, Goa
India's best-known floating casino, on the Mandovi river in Panaji. Its poker room hosts the Deltin Poker Tournament, one of the country's longest-running series, and a night on the river is a rite of passage for Indian players.
Is your room missing? Tell us why it belongs here.
Every Friday
The Friday mail
One email a week. The best new stories, the tournaments coming up, and the rooms worth the trip.
Keep reading
People
Ten years at the table in Toronto
He left home games with friends for a nine-table club in Toronto. In his own words: what surprised him, what he misses, and the one outer he still remembers.
Nikkhil Mannocha
People
Jim Ramm and the long game
He came to poker through home games in the Caribbean and stayed to build the game across South Asia: on river boats in Goa, in a Colombo room with one table's worth of players, and through a casino licence carried all the way to a Ministry. The man behind Jim's Poker Room on trust, discipline and the night he never went home.
Nikkhil Mannocha
People
Joy Das: from a casino ship to the poker floor
He went to a ship for a steward's job and came out a dealer. Eighteen years later, the freelance floor manager talks about high-stakes games, family first and what makes a great floor.
Nikkhil Mannocha