The eight-table poker room at Monte Carlo Resort and Casino closed early Tuesday morning, Card Player has learned.

The closing leaves the Las Vegas Strip area with 19 poker rooms and fewer than 270 tables. In 2007, which was the height of the poker boom in Nevada in terms of market size, there were 26 poker rooms on or around the Las Vegas Strip, with a combined 396 tables.

Monte Carlo, which opened in 1996, has 950 slot machines and 70 gaming tables, according to the Nevada Gaming Control Board.

The poker room had spread small-stakes limit hold’em, as well as $1-$2 no-limit hold’em.

The closing comes at a time of little growth for live poker in Las Vegas.

Over the 12 months prior to Feb. 28, 2016, poker revenue on or around the Strip was $77.1 million, less than a tenth of a percentage point better than the same period a year prior.

Statewide rake was a record $168 million in 2007, of which the Strip area had $97.1 million.

Monte Carlo is owned by MGM. The casino giant still has poker rooms at the likes of Aria (24 tables) and Bellagio (37 tables), among others.

Other Strip area casinos to close their respective poker rooms in recent years include the Palms, M Resort, Circus Circus and Tropicana. The Linq closed its six-table room in early 2015, but it eventually re-opened with four tables later that year.

 

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