The Linq poker room becomes the latest Las Vegas Strip poker room to shut up shop at the bequest of its owners Caesars Entertainment.

The Imperial Palace in Las Vegas – those were the days. It was a right dump, but a popular dump. I remember being stuck in a queue a mile long waiting to go through reception. I had to switch my data roaming on to check my hotel confirmation e-mail and it cost me a fiver.

I didn’t worry about that lost fiver though. I was there to play live cash games. I was going to win big. A fiver? Don’t make me laugh. I had been told, that for a small time grinder like myself, The Imperial Palace was the perfect place to play poker. It was full of drunks handing out money with the speed at which Sheldon Adelson hands it out to presidential candidates.

It wasn’t full of drunks. It was full of small time grinders, like me. Nobody played a hand. Everybody was searching for the nuts. There were more folds than a Post Office. It’s not full of drunks today. It’s full of nobody. It’s deader than Roy Orbison.

A very large ball hit the Imperial Palace. I guess it wasn’t only me that thought it was a dump. In its place rose The Quad. That also looked like a dump – from the outside at least. I always though The Quad was a lackluster name for a Las Vegas Strip hotel. Caesars Entertainment eventually came to my way of thinking.

In Oct 2014, that battered old building became The Linq. A new casino/resorts complex that was accompanied by the world’s largest observation wheel. It twinkles in the night and reminds me of Blackpool. On Sunday afternoon, The Linq became the latest in a long list of Vegas casinos to close its poker room. Caesars may be making ground online – but they couldn’t find the bums to fill the seats in the 8-table poker room.

It is with great sorrow that we announce the closure of the Linq Poker Room. We want to thank you all for the years of patronage and support