https://www.pacbiztimes.com/2021/04/...no-in-ventura/
Players Casino was a small poker room located in Ventura, CA. In case you're wondering, Ventura is a medium-sized suburban city, about 30 miles southeast of Santa Barbara, in the direction of Los Angeles.
Eric Bensamochan was a fan of Players Casino, despite not living all that close to it. He would go there sometimes, and invited him to join him in late 2018, after I had stopped playing live poker due to my severe psychological issues at the time. As I was just starting to see some minor improvement, I decided to take him up on it, and went to Players for the first time. LA doesn't have any small, low-key poker rooms to my knowledge, so this was a nice place to test my ability to set foot in a cardroom again.
While I had some moments when it felt uncomfortable, I was indeed able to get used to playing again, and this was my first foray back into "real life" again, after essentially 2 months of hell. After a few more visits to Players, and some rapid improvement in my condition by early November, I was able to return to Commerce and play my normal games again.
They actually had a fairly fun 1/2 Big O/PLO game (half and half), which had a lot of deep stacks and played bigger than you'd think. That's what I played there. I can't stand live NL cash.
So given my own personal history with the place, I'm sad to see it go, even though I don't really have a use for it anymore.
Players has all of its stuff in storage, and may move elsewhere, but they haven't decided where yet. They claim that they currently can't operate profitably with only 25% capacity allowed. COVID destroyed it -- at least for now.
It is possible they will return to Ventura, where they are still licensed.
The city of Ventura took a hit from this, as $2 million of their $120 million budget came from a tax on Players. They had to rapidly cut $2 million from their budget when the news broke that Players was closing.