Apparently Atlantic City poker players aren’t quite ready for poker to evolve. Trump Plaza has pulled its electronic poker tables, along with most of its East Tower casino. From the AC Press:
They were fast, mistake-proof and didn’t need to be tipped. But they had no personality. So now they’re gone.
Atlantic City’s experiment with electronic poker tables proved to be a resounding failure because it seems humans prefer other humans when it comes to dealing the cards.
“I’d rather have a human dealer. It’s a friendlier atmosphere,” Ira Cohen, a poker player from Brooklyn, N.Y., said Thursday at Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino.
Trump Plaza has removed Atlantic City’s only batch of automated poker tables after trying them out for a few months in hopes that they would attract a younger generation of gamblers.
The machines never came close to generating the revenue that Trump executives had anticipated. The goal was $1.8 million in annual revenue, but the best month was only $45,000, according to Jim Rigot, Trump Plaza’s general manager.
“For us, that was pretty discouraging, to say the least,” he said.
Trump Plaza introduced 14 of the PokerTek Inc. machines last June as the centerpiece of a refurbished gambling area in the casino’s East Tower. A dozen tables featured seating for as many as 10 players, while the other two were two-seaters for head-to-head competition.
So the score is poker dealers 1, cylons 0.