Poker fans coming to Las Vegas in the 2000s and 2010s used to have dozens of room options to patronize — small rooms with a few games a day, mid-sized rooms on the Strip and large rooms that have long drawn in the best card players. Today, they have 19.

A mid-2000s boon for poker brought 70 cardrooms to the region by 2010, but a drop to about 20 rooms — many shuttered as a cost-saving measure post-pandemic — shows how much operating the game has changed for casinos and what it could be in the future.

John Mehaffey tracked poker room closures throughout the pandemic for VegasAdvantage.com, a website he co-publishes with his wife Kristina.