Poker Rooms in Mississippi

Mississippi legalized commercial gambling in 1990 via the Mississippi Gaming Control Act, originally limited to riverboat casinos moored on the Mississippi River and Gulf Coast. After Hurricane Katrina destroyed most Gulf Coast properties in 2005, the legislature amended the act to permit dockside construction — land-based casinos within a defined distance of navigable water — which enabled the modern Gulf Coast resort cluster.

The Gulf Coast (Biloxi, Gulfport, Bay St. Louis) is the state's primary poker market. Beau Rivage Resort & Casino in Biloxi is the flagship room and has hosted multiple World Poker Tour events historically — the WPT Southern Poker Championship ran annually at Beau Rivage and produced a $1.93M prize pool with Hoyt Corkins as 2010 champion. The Heater Series and Gulf Coast Poker Championship now run there annually with multi-million-dollar guaranteed prize pools. IP Casino Biloxi, Hard Rock Biloxi (small 6-table room), and Hollywood Casino Gulf Coast in Bay St. Louis round out the Gulf Coast cluster.

Tunica, in the northwest near Memphis, was the third-largest US gaming market in the early 2000s but has contracted significantly since 2013 — multiple casino closures left only a handful of properties operating. Horseshoe Tunica still spreads poker as the largest remaining Tunica room.

Mississippi's only tribal poker venue is Pearl River Resort (Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians) in Philadelphia, MS, which operates poker as a small slice of a much larger tribal-gaming footprint. Magnolia Bluffs in Natchez and Ameristar Vicksburg cover the river-side market.

Use the bankroll calculator to plan a multi-room Gulf Coast trip across the Beau Rivage and IP cluster.