At a press conference in late May preceding the start of the 53rd annual World Series of Poker, Lon McEachern, the television voice of the event for the last two decades, compared the casinos that have hosted the game’s trademark tournament series to famous ballparks.

Binion’s Horseshoe, the original home of the WSOP in downtown Las Vegas, was “the Wrigley Field of poker,” McEachern said. He equated the Rio, which took over in 2005 as the game exploded post-Moneymaker and continued to house the WSOP through last fall, to San Francisco’s beloved but now defunct Candlestick Park.

The 2022 edition gets underway this week at not just one new venue but two, with Bally’s and Paris on the Vegas Strip sharing the honor – and McEachern calling them collectively “poker’s new Yankee Stadium.”