New Jersey finds ‘poker tourism’ increasing for online games

Julie Jacobson / AP

Casino industry representatives and exhibitors watch an online poker game during industry’s G2E conference, Tuesday, Oct. 4, 2011, in Las Vegas.

On any given Sunday, Mike Azzaro — or mikeycasino, as he's known online — will travel from his home in Yonkers, N.Y., to a Ramsey, N.J., hotel room for the night.

The reason is not glamorous, but it is profitable: Azzaro, 27, is a professional poker player.

Of the online players who have signed up to play in New Jersey at PartyPoker.com, 15 percent don't live in the state. You must be within New Jersey's borders to play, but residency isn't required. That so many out-of-state players are traveling to New Jersey — call it "poker tourism" — is an encouraging sign for the fledgling industry, which so far has been generating less than $2 million per month in tax revenue for the state budget.

That figure is less than a tenth of the projections made last year by Gov. Chris Christie's administration, but it is far closer to the amount anticipated by most industry analysts in the first year of play.

By crossing into New Jersey, Azzaro can engage in unlimited hours of legal online poker. New Jersey is one of three states that permit such play. The state's rollout of a variety of online games in November followed a similar move by Delaware a month earlier. Last spring Nevada — the state best known for gambling — became the first to offer online poker.

New Jersey benefits when Azzaro and friends cross the Hudson and pay for hotel rooms and room service. And Azzaro admits he has "splurged" on purchases in the state to celebrate wins, such as after he won more than $15,000 in PartyPoker's first two tournaments in December.

New Yorkers make up 4.4 percent of the online sign-ups on PartyPoker, with an additional 2.7 percent coming from Pennsylvania. The rest of the out-of-state players on the site hail from all over, with just under 1 percent residing in California and similar numbers in Florida, Texas and Connecticut.

Jamie Kerstetter, a native of Monroe Township, N.J., represents another group drawn by New Jersey's endorsement of online gambling: prodigal sons and, in Kerstetter's case, daughters. Kerstetter, who estimates that 5 percent of poker players are women, returned to New Jersey late last year after a two-year stint in Mexico, where, as in most countries, online gambling is legal.

Officials at Caesars, which operates four of the 11 casinos in Atlantic City, N.J., say they, too, are seeing substantial interest from out-of-state players. Caesars, with its World Series of Poker-backed WSOP.com website, is the chief rival to PartyPoker.

"Folks are going through the effort to sign up for this activity, either while visiting the Garden State or when they know they have future plans to be in the state and thus want to give themselves the option," Caesars spokesman Seth Palansky said. "For Atlantic City to rebound, we need to attract players from outside the state to have reason to come visit again. To get them to sign up for our Total Rewards program and start gaining loyalty points will pay off for both our land-based and online businesses over the long term."

Jeffrey Haas, the director of poker for PartyPoker, a subsidiary of the Gibraltar-based European gaming giant Bwin.party, said he and his colleagues had no way of knowing how many out-of-state players the site might attract. He said the 15 percent figure is promising for long-term growth.

"Of course it matters, because we already know that people in New Jersey can play on a far more regular basis," Haas said. Players from around the United States who are mulling trips to Atlantic City now know they can mix in regulated online play while they visit, he noted.

That's especially true for this month. The Borgata Spring Poker Open began April 8, and the World Poker Tour championships take place at the Borgata this week — the first time that event is being held outside Las Vegas.

To further entice the pros, wannabe pros and promising amateurs, the inaugural New Jersey Championship of Online Poker started Saturday with $600,000 at stake for players who are in the state. Mikeycasino is among those seeking to cash in, naturally.

At other times, with less money at stake, Azzaro and others cross into New Jersey for what they call "grinding sessions" — multiple consecutive hours of play, sometimes with six to eight games played simultaneously on the same laptop or tablet. The reason? Volume. The more time expert players put into competing, the more they can expect to win, as the occasional unlucky "bad beat" is superseded by superior play.

Azzaro said that on a visit to New Jersey on a Sunday — when online prizes typically are highest — he tends to play in "cash games" from about 1 p.m. until nearly 6 p.m., when the online tournaments begin.

"From then on, I'll play until about 3 a.m.," said Azzaro. He won't leave his hotel room: "You have something quick delivered, for the five-minute break every hour in tournaments."

So is it fun for Azzaro, or just another job?

"Obviously, when you win it feels like fun," Azzaro said. "Overall, I'd say it feels like a job, yet I love what I do."

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