Borgata Booms: The Story Behind the East Coast’s Premier Poker Destination

In the year 2000, poker was all but dead.

Sure, you could find a game at The Mirage in Las Vegas, or at any number of small above-board and underground card rooms around the United States, but in a place like Atlantic City, despite a slight uptick in interest in the game after the 1998 film Rounders made the Trump Taj Mahal the home of poker on the East Coast, the number of poker tables in rooms on the aging Boardwalk was steadily declining.

In fact, Atlantic City gaming revenues were on a downswing across the board.

The latest plan to revitalize the city’s gaming industry was still being bandied about. Casino mogul Steve Wynn was promising to build a modern casino property in the city’s marina area and was backing the government’s plan to build a tunnel from the Atlantic City Expressway to the soon-to-be-developed land.

Some residents and Atlantic City casino owner and now presidential candidate Donald Trump opposed the project, and Wynn’s plans eventually changed, but the construction of the Atlantic City-Brigantine Connector did go ahead.

Trump agreed to drop his opposition to the project when an exit ramp leading to his own Trump Marina property was added, and Wynn was bought out by MGM Grand Inc., creating the MGM Mirage company. That’s when MGM went to work on an idea that would prove to be a game changer.

In the Spring of 2003, Chris Moneymaker, an accountant and amateur poker player from Tennessee, won the World Series of Poker Main Event, igniting the poker boom. But before Moneymaker’s story had time to grip the American public the way it eventually would, and despite the fact Atlantic City poker rooms were shrinking and most casinos were replacing table games with slots in an attempt to hold on to what was left of declining gaming revenues, in July of 2003, MGM, in partnership with Boyd Gaming, opened the doors to a massive Las Vegas-style hotel, casino, and spa with 200 table games, an array of top-quality nightlife, entertainment, and restaurant options and a 34-table poker room on the marina land.

“When Borgata opened its doors in 2003, Atlantic City was introduced to its first Las Vegas-style casino property; offering a first-class hotel, great restaurants, an award-winning spa, and A-list entertainers and deejays the likes of which hadn’t been seen in this city,” said Borgata Senior Vice President of Operations, Joe Lupo.

Borgata was an immediate success, becoming the top-grossing casino in Atlantic City right out of the gate and holding on to that position to this day.

The property really bucked the trends. In 2002, The Sands pulled the last of its table games and was moving towards being a slot-only facility. Borgata took a different approach altogether, trying to rejuvenate table games in Atlantic City.

When they opened the doors, poker hadn’t really taken off yet. Still, Borgata opened 34 tables at the same time most of the competition was pulling out of poker. Popular thinking at the time was that poker was a good resting place for the guy who wanted to sit back and smoke a cigar while his wife pulled the arm on a slot machine inside the casino. From 1994-2002 there were about 124 poker tables in operation in Atlantic City. Borgata came out of nowhere with a room 25 percent of the size of the existing market. It was almost as if they knew what lay ahead.

Borgata’s poker room

It has been well documented that over the next few years poker boomed immensely, and Borgata was right at the forefront if it all. Hole-card cameras made the game watchable on TV, and ratings began to soar for the burgeoning World Poker Tour broadcast.

Borgata jumped on board …

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