Los Angeles, which is named for “the Angels” ranks as the second largest city in America, only behind New York City. The population of the city of Los Angeles is roughly 3.8 million. Spanning nearly 500 square miles in Southern California, the city was founded in 1781 by a Spanish governor. Los Angeles is well known for it’s center of business, international trade, entertainment, media, fashion and much much more. Los Angeles has also emerged as a hot bed for the game of poker. There are eight casino’s in the city of Los Angeles that have operating poker rooms. Each one of them varies in it’s own way, but they all continue to be occupied to capacity a great majority of the time.
Popular Casinos
The eight casino’s in the city of Los Angeles that feature a poker room are: Bicycle Casino, Commerce Casino, Crystal Casino, Club Caribe, Hustler Casino, Normandie Casino, Hawaiian Gardens and Hollywood Park. Within an hour’s drive there are three other city’s that offer poker: Lake Elsinore, Pechanga and San Manuel. The largest of the poker room’s within these casinos is at Commerce Casino, where they boast over 200 tables to play at. Some of the casino’s offer free meals for players that play certain amounts of time, while others allow players to earn comp. dollars. Each of these poker rooms are smoke free, due to the California law, and all have bad beat jackpots.
Professional Players
Two names that come to mind when discussing professional poker players from Los Angeles are Kevin Kim and Phong Lu. Kevin Kim’s name continues to show up across the events. Kim won his first major poker tournament in 2000, and has won just shy of $400,000 in his career. Phong Lu is another poker player that calls Los Angeles home. His best known performance came in 2006 when he finished 37th in the World Series of Poker that took place in Las Vegas.