Hollywood Park Card Room California

Hollywood Park Casino is a relatively recent card room compared to many other decades-old establishments scattered throughout Northern and Southern California. While it features a poker room and other casino activities, it began as an attachment to a horse racetrack and eventually grew into its own as one of the best card rooms in the state.

Now, with sports betting in California not happening until 2025 at the earliest, Hollywood Park Casino offers one of the state’s few legal in-person gambling options.

Poker Room Fact Table

What Popular Card Room Events Can You Find?

Currently, Hollywood Park offers tournaments six days a week (with some exceptions) and buy-ins range from $60 to $200.

Hollywood Park also hosts major promotions for its card room and greater casino. For example, the Poker Cash Stash promotion runs every Sunday through Thursday, giving poker players a chance to win a share of $50,000.

Alternative promotions include the End Zone Challenge or the Aces Cracked promotion, both of which offer prize pools of up to $100,000 for lucky poker players. Note that these aren’t specific tournaments, but are promotions you can enter by playing regular poker at the card room or enjoying other casino activities.

See our Complete Guide to California Card Rooms.

Poker Games at Hollywood Park

You’ll be able to find three major types of poker at Hollywood Park: Texas Hold’Em, Omaha Hi-Lo, and 7 Card Stud. Each of these is pretty common in California card rooms, although 7 Card Stud is by far the rarest. This makes Hollywood Park an excellent card room in terms of variety, particularly when you consider its collection of Cal games as well.

7 Card Stud is also notable since you’re more likely to find it in East Coast card rooms rather than West Coast card rooms. Omaha Hi-Lo is a fun poker variation that allows both the highest and lowest hands to win instead of just the highest.

Poker Tournaments at Hollywood Park

Aside from its sporadic regional tournaments, Hollywood Park also provides daily poker tournaments on most Mondays through Sundays. These are almost all No-Limit Texas Hold‘Em tournaments, although Saturday daily tournaments are usually Pot-Limit Omaha. Games normally take place at 12:00 pm.

Daily tournaments for NL Hold ‘Em run from Monday through Thursday and Sunday and begin at 7:00 pm.

Regardless of the daily tournament you prefer, you’ll find buy-ins that range between $60 and $200 and starting chip amounts between 10,000 and 30,000. 

Table Games At Hollywood Park

Aside from poker, players can also enjoy nine different Cal games, which are variations of traditional table card games that use modified rules so they still count as legal activities under California’s gambling legislation. The available Cal games include:

• No Bust Blackjack
• Pai Gow Poker
• Pai Gow Tiles
• Baccarat
• 3 Card Poker
• Ultimate Texas Hold ‘Em
• Pan-9
• 2-Way Winner
• Party Craps

Most of the card tables available throughout the casino are dedicated to Cal games, although the separate high-stakes areas are reserved for the three primary poker games mentioned above.

Hollywood Park’s Card Room Facility

The facilities at Hollywood Park are luxurious and well-designed. The casino underwent a massive renovation in 2016, and it now contains 125 tables for Cal games and poker. Most of the rooms benefit from chandelier lighting. There are tons of large HDTVs scattered throughout for visitor convenience.

There are separate rooms for celebrity poker tournaments and for high-stakes games, which are scheduled regularly on the website. You can also reserve these rooms if you want to set up a high-stakes game with you and your fellow poker enthusiasts.

The Raise Lounge offers an elegant semi-private section of the casino with a dedicated bar and plenty of comfortable seating areas. This lounge can also be reserved for private events like work get-togethers or parties, but you have to reserve the space in advance.

You’ll also find a decent eating establishment in the Century Bar & Grill. This bar serves American fare with a collection of cocktails and various craft beers.

Hollywood Park History

Hollywood Park was actually a casino originally attached to the Hollywood Park Race Track, formerly one of the most well-known horse racing tracks in California. Ownership has changed ever since its initial opening in 1994. The poker room has remained a staple feature since its opening.

However, the Hollywood Park Race Track was sold and shut down in December 2013. The owners thought that the casino still had the potential for profit and kept it open until 2016 when it underwent a major renovation.

The new casino opened in October 2016. There are still big developments under construction across the Hollywood Park property. A larger shopping center and business park are supposedly being added to the land. Notably, horse racing enthusiasts can still enjoy off-track horserace betting at Hollywood Park.

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