What Makes the Napa Valley Casino Unique?
Oh, wine country. How I miss you. If you’re headed out to Napa Valley, California or the Bay Area, you owe it to yourself to stop at the Napa Valley Casino. The homey poker room, which is located in American Canyon, California, will be bustling on Sunday, when poker players and football fans alike congregate for Week 7 of the NFL, watching the games unfold on the casino’s seven HDTVs equipped with NFL Sunday Ticket.
Napa Valley Casino offers a call-ahead wait list so your time spent waiting will be minimized. Moreover, it’s promoting CalShark.com, a network of California casinos pitching a free online poker site. To get players fired up to visit the Napa Valley Casino, PocketFives sat down with Tournament Director Chris Henderson to learn what it takes to operate a successful card room just outside of wine country.
PocketFives: Thanks for joining us. What makes the Napa Valley Casino unique?
Chris Henderson: What makes us unique are our variety of games and the action in them. If you go to a lot of Bay Area casinos, it’s pretty simple, straightforward, A-B-C poker. When you come to Napa Valley Casino, there are plenty of games and the action is always live. There are chips flying and big pots. If you buy into $3/$6 for $30 or $60, there’s a good possibility if you play well and the cards fall the right way, you can leave with $700 or $800 easily.
PocketFives: Why are your games so much different than others you’ll find around the Bay Area and around the United States?
Chris Henderson: Our players are different than other card rooms’ players. Our players like to play. Whatever hand they play, they’re confident in that hand and want to win. If it requires running a bluff, check-raising, or raising on a draw, they’ll do it.
PocketFives: Is the atmosphere in Napa Valley Casino’s tournamentsthe same as in its cash games?
Chris Henderson: All of our tournaments are designed to bring friendliness and camaraderie within the card room and our local area. We’re a small card room and our employees are friendly to our customers. Tournaments continue that relationship in that we can draw the same core of tournament players again and again. They are really friendly and really live, which helps bring other players in.
PocketFives: You offer free cash and free food to players. Why has such an emphasis been placed on player hospitality?
Chris Henderson: Poker players love anything free. They love free money, free food, and seeing free flops. When you’re playing poker, you’re spending your money and it’s not cheap. Our free money and free food are designed to reward and help all of our players who come in. We like to do that to keep them coming around and let them know they’re appreciated.
PocketFives: While most poker rooms have been contracting size-wise or cutting perks to players, the Napa Valley Casino has taken the opposite approach, then.
Chris Henderson: Correct. A lot of other casinos are bigger and don’t think they need to do anything extra because it won’t affect their pockets since they can pull from a large population. We don’t have that luxury, so we reward those who come and play. It’s hard economy-wise right now too. Everyone who comes and plays regularly or for the first time is appreciated. They’re not just a body or a number. We want them to come back.
PocketFives: Can you describe the layout of the Napa Valley Casino? How many tables do you have and how are they situated?
Chris Henderson: We have seven poker tables along with a Blackjack, Pai Gow, and Three-Card Poker table. They’re in a big open room surrounded by televisions. We’re in the process of expanding the room we have right now and building a bar and kitchen to provide a larger variety of food and alcohol.
PocketFives: You mentioned to us that Sundaysare quite lively at the Napa Valley Casino because of the NFL season. Talk about what poker players can expect on Sundays.
Chris Henderson: Sundays are exciting because we have our Sunday morning tournament and then there are usually three or four tables going. There are a lot of people in the casino at that point and once 10:00am comes around, you can see every football game. At most sports bars, you might have a selection of three games, but everywhere you look at our place, there’s a different football game. It’s a nice setup. It’s nice to have football all around you.
PocketFives: What future promotions are in the works?
Chris Henderson: We’re trying to push a player card system next. We’ll have a system where people can build up points for match play coupons, giant freeroll tournaments, cash, and tournament entries. That’s our next step.
Check out Napa Valley Casino’s websitefor more information.
