Harrah's Winning Hand

With a record 8,773 players having entered the World Series of Poker this year, the event continues to be a big success for Harrah's Entertainment(HET Quote), which held the tournament at its Rio casino in Las Vegas.

Not only did the world's biggest poker tournament make the Rio the place to play poker on the Las Vegas Strip over the past month and a half, it also helped the property dominate all table game usage in Vegas.

The Rio had a 30.9% share of the Las Vegas Strip poker game usage during the June 25 to Aug. 11 period of the WSOP tournament. That's up from 22.3% the prior year, according to Majestic Research, an independent firm that uses proprietary data to forecast company revenue.

Excluding poker, Rio's table game usage increased 4% during the tournament, compared with a 3% decline for the rest of the Strip properties; this suggests that the Rio stole customers from other properties.

"In general we were very pleased with the incremental increase of traffic from the World Series of Poker," says David Strow, a Harrah's spokesman. "We saw more players and more spectators than any other poker tournament in history."

Strow declined to give specific numbers, since the company has yet to report third-quarter results.

Though poker is not necessarily a big revenue driver, casino operators have sought to take advantage of the game's growing popularity in recent years. Gone are the days when casinos shut down their poker rooms to make way for more slot machines and blackjack tables.