It’s usually only online where you’ll find a tournament of more than a couple of thousand players, but this week the Palm Beach Kennel Club in Florida was setting records for attendance as 2,607 players walked through its doors.

Players from across the state and beyond lined up outside from as early as 4am for the 11am start to secure a seat in the event, which topped the previous best figure of 1,600 players set in August, according to the local Sun-Sentinel newspaper.

The field may not top fields in Las Vegas during the World Series but are further evidence that the poker boom continues to echo across North America. Denied the opportunity to play online, players are finding more and more venues to play live, and Florida is proving the ideal playground.
“It was way beyond what we were expecting, and we were expecting a lot,” said Theresa Hume, director of publicity at the kennel club.

The event came almost 80 years to the day that the Kennel Club opened for greyhound racing. The 64 table poker room (the largest in the state) made history two years ago when it became the first non-casino to host a World Series of Poker Circuit event. The room itself was opened in 2007 as new laws across the state permitted larger multi-table tournaments. 

It’s not just tournament staff appreciating the surge in popularity, with the economic impact of thousands of poker players flying in to the area to play being significant, as President of the Chamber of Commerce of the Palm Beaches, Dennis Grady, pointed out: 

“The hotel bed tax and sales tax revenue that comes into the county and state helps the county and state's economies,” he said.