Explore Pennsylvania USA: A Hub for Poker Enthusiasts

Pennsylvania is an important gambling center in the US. It produces the second most in annual commercial land casino revenue among the 50 states, only behind – naturally – Nevada.

This is despite the fact the worldcasinodirectory.com lists “only” 31 casinos in PA. That is not even in the top 10, according to the site’s numbers regarding venues per state, yet those couple dozens of casinos manage to outperform states like California (173 land casinos) or Montana (a whopping 500+ casinos).

The Rivers Casino in Pittsburgh has a special significance in poker history. This is where both Brains vs. AI poker challenges were held. These were experiments where elite poker pros battled the Carnegie Mellon University computer science department’s creations in heads-up NLHE.

In 2015, when the human team’s line-up featured Doug Polk, Jason Les, Dong Kim, and Bjorn Li, the humans defeated the poker bot named Claudico. In 2017, however, the new and improved AI named Libratus bested the team of Les, Kim, Jimmy Chou, and Daniel McAulay in a 120,000-hand sample. This was the first time artificial intelligence was able to beat people in the game of poker – a historic moment often likened to Deep Blue’s victory over Garry Kasparov in chess in 1997.

The state of Pennsylvania started making headlines in the poker media in late 2016. A bill was proposed in the state’s House of Representatives which would make them the 4th state in the Union – beside Nevada, New Jersey, and Delaware – to offer legal and regulated online poker to their residents.

After about a year of anticipation, the bill was finally passed in October 2017. The first ever online poker room licenced by the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board was PokerStars PA which launched in November 2019.

Famous Pennsylvanian Poker Players

Joe McKeehen won the WSOP Main Event for $7.683 million in 2015. He went on to win two more WSOP gold bracelets, one in the $10,000 Limit Hold’em event for $311,817 in 2017; and another in the $3,200 No Limit Hold’em High Roller online event for $352,985 in 2020.

McKeehen is recognizable for his scruffy look as well as his habit of wearing sports gear in highly publicized poker events.

Jake Schindler, born and raised in Bryn Mawr, PA, sits on top of Pennsylvania’s all time money list on Hendon with $25.270 million in live tournament earnings. In May 2017, he came in 2nd in the $300,000 Aria Super High Roller Bowl for $3.6 million. That is the biggest single live tournament cash of his career to date. He lost the heads-up battle for the title to German poker pro Christoph Vogelsang.