Pala Casino, Spa & Resort folds on poker during the pandemic — here’s the deal
Pala Casino, Spa & Resort has opened a new Asian gaming room offering pai gow and baccarat in a space previously anchored by its poker room.
The new smoke-free Asian Gaming Room opened Friday, Sept. 4, casino officials said, and has nine table games, including Mini Baccarat, Face Up Pai Gow Poker, Double Deck Blackjack and Queens Dragon Pai Gow Poker. The tables have a $25 minimum bet, but that can range higher or lower depending on demand.
Pala is no longer offering poker on property, Coley McAvoy, a spokesman for the resort, said in a telephone interview. He said that the poker games couldn’t accommodate the spacing required to keep people safely distanced during the novel coronavirus pandemic.
“More than that, we’ve just seen that there was more of a demand for the traditional table games than we saw in the poker product so we felt that it would be a better utilization of that space,” McAvoy said.
He said there had been an increased desire for games such as pai gow poker and baccarat and that that was precipitated by the closure of local card rooms that offer that kind of amenity.
Local card rooms and casinos that are not on sovereign land in Southern California have either been closed for months or are operating outdoors only due to the pandemic.
Though Pala offers pai gow and baccarat elsewhere on the gaming floor, one thing that will make the Asian Gaming Room different is that it’s non-smoking.
The room features Asian design elements, including bamboo green felts with pictures of lotus flowers and carpeting in bamboo and earth tones.
Coronavirus-related safety measures include spaced apart tables, seating limits at the games (four players for baccarat and three for all other games) and sanitizer stations. McAvoy said guests are required to wear a face coverings and have their temperature checked by passing through non-invasive thermal camera scanners at Pala’s entrance.
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