The 24-hour poker room at Apex Casino took to Twitter last Friday to announce it will be putting away its chips for good.
“Unfortunately, yes. We will be closing our doors near the end of January. We are sad to see it go too, it will be missed,” the message from the Apex Poker Room read on Jan. 20.
Casino co-owner Bruce McPherson confirmed the news Tuesday, saying the room had not lived up to its financial expectations after being open for a full year.
“We instigated that thing a year ago and we said when we did that we would take a look at the performance of the room in one year and decide at that point if it’s financially viable and it hasn’t been,” McPherson said.
While the casino has not yet announced the specific date the room will shut its doors, McPherson expects it will be sometime in early February.
“It’s just basically a simple business decision, it’s a department that’s not making any money.”
McPherson credited the room’s lack of business to several factors. He said most serious poker players already have tables at different casinos at which they prefer to play and Apex hasn’t been able to lure those players to its room.
“People get established where they go to play poker at and it’s very difficult to pry them away from their existing facilities.”
Apex was also one of the last casinos in the region to open a 24-hour poker room, McPherson said, which made finding players hard.
“We tried it and we were the last casino around this neighbourhood to open a 24-hour poker room and it just hasn’t turned out to be viable.”
Apex is not alone in closing the doors to its 24-hour poker room, but unlike some casinos that have simply decided to keep their poker tables running during regular gaming hours, Apex will be getting out of the poker business all together.
“We’re going to withdraw the poker completely,” McPherson said.
There are also no firm plans on what the casino will do with the space. McPherson said he and his staff have discussed ideas from filling it with slot machines to transforming it into a small-sized meeting room or banquet room. The casino already operates one large banquet room and one smaller room for family dinners or business meetings. He said the casino could add a second small room if demand is high enough.
“If it gets fairly busy that might be another option to book that kind of thing into that. We have no commitment to anything yet,” McPherson said.
