The Sunshine State has an endless supply of ways to keep you occupied. Gambling is among the up and coming forerunners.

A fully integrated, energized, local's casino experience. 2,000 Las Vegas-style slots. 70 live table games with blackjack, baccarat, poker & more. Seven dining options plus two lounges and a 1,200-seat entertainment venue. A massage therapist was working on a guy two seats to my right, looked at me, and asked if I had ever played at Coconut Creek before. I replied to the massage therapist, “Yeah. A few years ago when the poker room was upstairs.” Crazy Eyes: “WHERE ARE YOU FROM?!” “Jeez,” I replied.

• Coral Springs, Florida (19 February 2019) - The final ring of the WSOP Circuit series at Coconut Creek was awarded on Monday, and it went to Boston-area poker pro Zachary Donovan. Donovan's win was worth $243,916 and brought him his second career gold Circuit ring.
• The Seminole Coconut Creek Casino’s Poker room used to be a tightly-cramped room on the second floor, where ten tables seating ten players were stationed amongst a thick cloud of second-hand smoke. That was 18 years ago, when I first started playing $1/$2 Limit Hold ‘Em.

If you’re over the Disney resorts and have had your fill of sand getting in all the wrong places, check out these seven best casinos for gambling in Florida.

1 – Seminole Hard Rock Casino

The Hard Rock brand was launched in the 1970s. It was the 90s when the brand hit its peak level of popularity.

While the brand isn’t the juggernaut it once was, it still holds enough weight to draw in the crowds.

Visitors to Tampa can enjoy a unique partnership between the Hard Rock brand and the Seminole Tribe. The result of the collaboration is the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino.

The luxurious hotel-casino offers guests well-appointed rooms to recharge after a long day and night of gambling fun. Of course, there are several bars and restaurants to choose from aligning with the brand’s principle area of operations.

The casino at the Hard Rock is a true standout. The impressive gaming floor has nearly 50 tables for gamblers to enjoy games like Mississippi Stud, baccarat, and Texas Hold’Em.

If you’re not into card games, you’ll be happy to hear about the casino’s slot machines. The casino recently expanded the casino to make room for over 100 new machines.

However, I encourage you to take advantage of brilliant rooms after a long night. The Rock Spa offers a full-service experience for visitors.

You can receive services ranging from a complete barbershop to the latest in spa therapy treatments.

If you’re in the Tampa area and looking to party like a rockstar, the Hard Rock definitely fits the bill.

2 – Dania Jai-Alai

Jai-Alai is not at the forefront of most casino gamblers in the U.S. I imagine it’s not top of mind for many Americans at all.

Despite that, the sport is alive and thriving in South Florida. The Miami establishment offers jai-alai matches every day of the week.

Bettors crowd the facility to place their wagers on the forgotten sport. Weekends are especially busy at Dania, with multiple matches taking place.

Visitors are also able to place simulcast bets on harness racing, thoroughbreds, and jai-alai.

The gambling no longer stops there, though. The Dania has added a traditional casino to its repertoire, and the games have made an immediate impression.

The casino has over 900 slot machines for gaming enthusiasts to pick from. Gamblers also have their choice of the most popular table games.

The standards like blackjack, craps, and roulette all sit at the ready. If you’re a poker aficionado, you’ll be right at home on any of the two dozen poker tables.

Poker is the Dania casino star, and you can choose from Texas Hold’Em, Omaha, and 7-Card Stud.

If you’re expecting a Las Vegas experience at Dania Jai-Alai, you’ll be disappointed. However, it’s proving to be a great place for locals and tourists to get their gambling fix in Florida.

3 – Seminole Casino, Brighton

The Seminole Casino Brighton is an entertainment mecca in the heart of Florida. The casino draws large crowds from both Tampa and Orlando year after year.

Gamblers at the Seminole Casino can enjoy over 400 different slot machines during their visit. From classic games to the latest video slots, Seminole has it all.

If you’re not having fun on one game, take a stroll around the 28,000 square feet of real money slots, and you’re sure to find a game you like.

From penny slots to $5 per spin, the Seminole can keep you gambling all night regardless of your bankroll.

If you’re in the mood for table games, you’re in luck. Table games are where the Seminole truly shines. Players gather around the blackjack and poker tables well into the morning hours.

Be sure to sign up for the Seminole’s Wild Card. The Wild Card is a tier-based rewards program and is accepted at several different Floridian casinos.

You can earn player bonuses and comp dollars to spend on food, hotel rooms, and even merchandise in the gift shop.

4 – Magic City Casino

Magic City Casino is on the cutting edge of casino gambling. Magic City transitioned from a Greyhound racing complex to Jai-Alai back in 2018.

So, if you’re traveling to Florida in search of the elusive jai-alai, you can find matches Wednesday-Sunday. Of course, jai-alai doesn’t really qualify as cutting edge casino play.

However, electronic table games are some of the latest in casino technology. In fact, all 40 of the casino’s table games are electronic.

That means virtual dealers for games like blackjack and a virtual wheel for roulette. When you enter the gaming area at Magic City, it’s easy to mistake the electronic games for slot machines.

The entire floor resembles a massive arcade, and players gather around the machines to play and out of general curiosity.

The slot machine selection at Magic City is large enough to impress almost any critic. The casino has over 800 slot machines to choose from and plenty of variety to boot.

Poker is king at Magic City. The poker room has 18 tables with action going into the wee hours of the morning seven nights a week.

The poker room has daily promotions for rewards members to earn bonuses. There are massive poker jackpots that can instantly turn a player’s luck around.

The Big Mouth Buffet is worth mentioning. I’m not a buffet connoisseur by any means, but if you’ve drained the battery and in need of a recharge, this buffet has you covered and smothered.

5 – Victory Casino Cruises

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Victory Casino Cruises makes a list for many reasons, but I’ll be real. Ingenuity is at the top of the list.

While it’s illegal to gamble in many parts of Florida, Victory has found a massive loophole and exploited it.

You see, by taking the casino 12 miles out to sea, the vessel is no longer bound to federal or state laws. Maritime law becomes the authority aboard the vessel, and gambling is fair play.

Victory Casino Cruises take passengers on their open water adventures twice a day, seven days a week. The length of the excursions varies between five and six hours, and you’ll have your pick of the time.

Sports bettors often crowd the ships on their trips to the sea. Sports bettors are able to find competitive lines on everything from MMA to golf.

Victory Casino Cruises definitely gets the win for ingenuity, but they also boast an impressive table gaming experience.

6 – Seminole Coconut Creek Casino

Seminole Coconut Creek is one of the biggest casinos in the state of Florida, and it has plenty of casino games.

For starters, the poker room at Coconut Creek has 15 Poler tables. This means reduced wait times when looking for a table. Still, it also means the Seminole Coconut Creek can host some of the state’s largest poker tournaments.

Also, Coconut Creek offers an impressive 70 table games. Including a dozen electronic roulette tables.

Rounding it all out are the 1500 slot machines for players to spin the hours away on.

So, by the numbers, the Coconut Creek has nearly 1600 available games to be played at any given time. This amount of action makes Seminole Coconut Creek one of the most action-packed casinos in Florida.

7 – The Big Easy

The Big Easy took the place of the Mardi Gras Casino after storms damaged it, this is Florida.

You won’t find any table games at the Big Easy, but the casino does offer over 30 poker tables.

Slot machines are a popular attraction at the Big Easy, and players have hundreds to choose from, 1300 to be exact. You can even enjoy slots on the casino’s designated outdoor smoking patio.

The Big Easy’s claim to fame is the video poker machines. The casino claims to have more of these games than any casino in Florida.

If playing video poker is your favorite casino activity, load up the family and take a trip to The Big Easy, Florida.

Conclusion

You don’t have to battle the traffic or cold weather in Atlantic City for your casino getaway on the east coast. Nor do you need to make a Clark Griswold-Esque pilgrimage through middle America to Las Vegas.

You can find all the casino fun you’re looking for and perhaps even learn a thing about jai-alai in the sunshine state. The seven best casinos in Florida may not have all of the bells and whistles of the Strip, but you’re sure to have a great story to tell.

Our trip through South Florida was a whirlwind. It included a three night stay in Miami, followed by two nights in Key West, and finished with four nights in Hollywood Beach. The Miami and Hollywood Beach days included a lot of poker. In fact, we played at seven different poker rooms in seven days. We cover our experience of the Miami area lifestyle (as well as our Key West diversion) elsewhere. Here we want to share our experience with South Florida poker rooms. You can also find individual reviews of each of the seven rooms we played – Seminole Hard Rock Hollywood, Seminole Coconut Creek, The Big Easy, Pompano Park, Magic City, Gulfstream Park, and Dania Beach – in our Room Review category.

We recently ranked the Top 5 poker rooms in New England (our home turf). However, with such limited experience of the South Florida rooms (a single visit for all but Seminole Coconut Creek), we do not feel qualified to create such a ranking. Rather, we thought we would share key elements of the South Florida poker scene overall, including a few standout aspects of various rooms.

Dealers in South Florida Poker Rooms are Very Strong

Most dealers were fast, professional, and friendly. Perhaps the healthy and consistent activity (see Cash Game section below) makes dealing in South Florida a desirable job. Whatever the reason, the dealer quality was strong. Not quite Turning Stone strong, but always solid to excellent.

Players are Generally Friendly

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The player mix varied from room to room, with Seminole Coconut Creek skewing older and The Big Easy offering great diversity in age, gender, and ethnicity. Players at most rooms were generally friendly. Seminole Coconut Creek stood out most in this regard, and this was one of the reasons we played there twice. Coconut Creek’s Crazy Pineapple tournament was fun partly due to the openness and patience of the players. Understandably, dealers occasionally forgot to collect discards before starting to deal the turn. These moments were met with laughter and good cheer rather than irritation. Gulfstream had the most serious players among all the venues we played, and therefore felt the least welcoming.

The number of women playing poker varied from a low at Magic City (Heather was one of 3 women in the entire room, tournament or cash) to a high at The Big Easy where there were a healthy number of women. Gulfstream Park also had only a handful of women playing either the tournament or at the cash tables.

Tournament Structures are Insane

If you love rebuys and innumerable, complicated add-ons, you’ll love playing poker in South Florida. Some rooms, like Magic City, feature tournaments with very short stacks and quick blind levels, encouraging fast action and repeated rebuys. Gulfstream Park offers unlimited rebuys to the end of registration and 3 different add-on options. The Big Easy’s “free” tournament offered 500 chips followed by a variety of add-on options from the get-go. Blind levels were 15 to 20 minutes in most tournaments, so the combination of rebuys/add-ons and short levels made for a lot of crazy play. The gambling end of the poker playing spectrum will love this; others, like ourselves, not so much.

Dania Beach offered the craziest structure we have ever seen. The original buy-in was $60 for 10,000 chips, and whenever you fell below 5,000 chips you could add on $20 for 5,000 more. Many players availed themselves of this option repeatedly during the early stages. At break, there was an add-on of 50,000 chips for $80. Yes, an add-on 5x the starting stack! The tournament had nine players alive at break. Then eleven new players bought in for $140 and 60,000 chips apiece. Suffice it to say, the tenor of play completely changed. This was Dania Beach’s Monday tournament, and the exact structure of other tournaments vary. However, the 50K add-on is generally a part of most of their structures.

Tournament Rakes are More Insane than the Structures

If you navigate the gauntlet of South Florida tournament structures and manage to cash, you might be disappointed by the pot at the end of the rainbow. You’ll often hear poker professionals harp on the importance of knowing the rake. “Anything over 15% is impossible to profit!” some will shout. However, those of us playing local tournaments with entries below $200 know that the rakes will be higher, and we live with that. Poker is more pastime than profit opportunity when small tournaments are your base.

However, a pastime should not bankrupt you. Many of the South Florida poker rooms had rakes far beyond what we have seen before. Gulfstream’s tournament rake was 37%! Coconut Creek punched in in the low 30% range. Pompano Park seemed to offer a rake around 25% which we would usually balk at, but it felt like a welcome respite in the South Florida poker landscape. We breathed a sigh of relief when we returned to New England with typical rakes in the low 20s.

Due to the complicated rebuy and add-on structures, some South Florida tournament rakes were hard to calculate. Also, frankly, we stopped wanting to know exactly what was being pulled from the prize pool. Our fiscally conservative sides would have called an end to poker tournaments on this poker vacation had we looked too closely. How so many South Florida poker regulars can afford to play tournaments with such brutal rakes is beyond us. It seems like you would need to be a top 1% player to break even. To be fair, some rooms featured monthly point system awards and included tournament players in room-wide high hands. So that must help.

Poker Is Valued Differently Across South Florida Venues

Unsurprisingly, South Florida poker rooms are valued very differently by their venues. At the two Seminole casinos, Hard Rock Hollywood and Coconut Creek, the poker room is considered an important part of a larger, profitable gambling complex. At the other extreme, Gulfstream Park’s bell cow is their beautiful racetrack. The casino clearly falls behind both live and simulcast racing in importance. And the poker room – dark, dingy, and tucked in the back – falls at the bottom of the heap of Gulfstream’s offerings.

At The Big Easy, the poker room seems a key element of the entire casino. It was even more active and vibrant than the slot areas. Magic City gives the poker room its own space altogether. The Magic City poker room feels like its own freestanding entity in a larger complex housing various activities. Dania Beach offers an attractive midsize casino with a nicely designed poker room, but not a lot of action beyond tournament regulars. Pompano Park is another midsize casino featuring more healthy cash and tournament volume.

Cash Games are Very Active in Most South Florida Poker Rooms

We spent a few weeks tracking both the cash and tournament activity across South Florida poker rooms. Most South Florida rooms have vibrant cash games, with the exception of Dania Beach. On a typical Saturday night, there may be 10 to 30 tables (with Seminole Hard Rock Hollywood at the high end) of cash going in a given room. About half of those tables will be $1/$2 NLH. While most rooms, especially the larger ones, fall off during weeknights, cash activity remains high. At some place like The Big Easy the drop off is negligible; they may average 15-16 tables on a Saturday night, and only be down to 12-13 tables on a Tuesday evening. The nightly “free” 7pm tournament may help to keep the volume steady. We have detailed activity for each individual room in that room’s Poker Room Review.

So there you have it: the pros and cons of the South Florida poker scene. We were surprised to find our poker experience in South Florida so different from what we see in New England. It was a great place to visit, but not quite our style for tournament play long-term.

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