News broke this week that the Bally’s Twin River Casino in Providence, Rhode Island is partnering with Maverick Gaming to refresh and rebrand its poker room.
The collaboration between the Ballys casino brand and Maverick Gaming, led by CEO Eric Persson, will see the room operate under a new name: the Bally’s Maverick Poker Room.
Persson’s name and face will be familiar to many poker fans, especially after his appearances in televised cash games such as High Stakes Poker and No Gamble, No Future, in which he played one of the largest pots ever seen on US TV. The hand involved Persson and poker pro Patrick Antonius, who ultimately took down the $1.78M pot.
Antonius is one name we can expect to hear more of when it comes to Maverick Gaming moving forwards. PokerOrg's Craig Tapscott spoke to Persson about this, the new poker room at Bally’s Twin Rivers and other plans for the future.
'The largest poker room on the East Coast'
“At first we intended to bring a Maverick room to Las Vegas, at the Tropicana,” Persson tells us, “And then, of course, that changed when the Oakland As decided to relocate from Oakland to Las Vegas. They’re going to implode the Tropicana, so it didn’t really make much sense to start construction on a new room. So we quickly shifted to Providence, Rhode Island.”
The region around Boston is not starved for options when it comes to live poker, but for Persson that forms part of the appeal.
“Our intention is to go directly at all the poker rooms in the region,” Persson says, “Foxwoods, Mohegan, Wynn, MGM… We're sure we're going to have the best product, whether you're a cash game player, a daily tournament player, whether you're looking for promos or you're just a rec player. We’ll also be part of the tournament circuit. We can’t talk about that just yet, but we’re going to be doing large-scale tournaments at Bally’s Twin river.
“We think that when it's fully built, we will probably have the largest poker room on the East Coast.”
Persson certainly knows poker, from both sides of the table, and his land-based ambitions are not limited to Rhode Island.
“For operators, poker can be very profitable but also challenging. It’s labor-intensive, it takes niche expertise. Our position is, we will manage poker with you: we will bring our team, our expertise, some of the big star names that are part of Maverick, and we will make poker pain-free for you.
“We'll either manage the room, or we'll collaborate with you as consultants to help you think about marketing, tournaments, bad beat jackpots, what your rake should be, what your daily tournament schedule should look like.”
The Antonius connection and brand ambitions
Persson first met Finnish poker pro Patrick Antonius at the poker table, in a televised cash game that also featured Phil Ivey, Tom Dwan, Garret Adelstein and Bryn Kenney. The two have since become good friends and business partners, and Persson says Antonius will play a big part in Maverick’s future plans. Antonius is co-founder of FLOP (First Land of Poker), an app that provides digital solutions for players and cardroom operators.
“He’s the first person I’m announcing as part of the Maverick brand. We are the brand for poker. We’re looking at lifestyle brands, and might start with apparel.”
If Persson’s grand plans come to fruition, we might start seeing the Maverick brand cross over to the mainstream in a similar way to how Vans, for example, have brought skate culture to the mass market.
Persson has some rough and ready numbers to justify these ambitions.
“Only eight million Americans a year skateboard,” he says, “Something like 40 million Americans play golf, right? But 60 million Americans a year play poker.
“The problem is, poker's been fractured,” he continues, “Only hardcore fans will know who won the WSOP last year. And so our goal is to take our team and bring much larger awareness to the general population, because we think poker's a lifestyle just like soccer is - which only 20 million Americans play, you know? So the Maverick strategy is to take that approach to poker.
“Our team has a lot of expertise, and so our goal is really to go out and breathe life into poker all over the world. Wherever poker can be dealt but isn’t, Maverick wants to be there. We want to be the brand that people think of when they think of land-based poker.”
