Poker Player Eric Persson’s Maverick Gaming Shutters Two Washington Casinos

Maverick Gaming has filed a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification with the state of Washington disclosing plans to close the Great American Casino and the Riverside Casino in Tukwila, according to Card Player. The closures, set for November 1, will eliminate 238 jobs including cashiers, dealers, bartenders, cooks and management.

Maverick, based in Kirkland, Washington, operates casinos and poker rooms across Washington, Colorado and Nevada. The company was co-founded by Eric Persson, a familiar face at high-stakes cash games who has appeared on Bally Live Poker, High Stakes Poker and Hustler Casino Live, including a widely watched heads-up match against Phil Hellmuth. Persson has not appeared in a live-streamed poker game since Maverick’s bankruptcy filing, Card Player reports, citing High Roll Poker.

The Tukwila closures follow Maverick’s Chapter 11 filing, which came after the company restructured its debt in 2024. In the bankruptcy filing, Maverick listed between $100 million and $500 million in both assets and liabilities. A Bloomberg report cited by Card Player pointed to a weaker local economy, layoffs in the technology sector that thinned the customer base, and high operating costs including rent as factors behind the company’s financial strain. S&P Global withdrew all of its ratings on Maverick in June 2025, citing a lack of sufficient information.

Other Washington Closures Since the Chapter 11 Filing

Four of Maverick’s cardrooms had already shut down by the time the company entered Chapter 11. The state also barred Maverick from using a centralized surveillance system across its properties. In May, the company filed additional WARN notices covering the Crazy Moose Mountlake Casino in Mountlake Terrace, the Silver Dollar Mill Creek Casino in Bothell and the Silver Dollar SeaTac Casino in Seattle. Those closures and the associated layoffs took effect July 31. With the Tukwila properties set to follow, Maverick will operate around 20 gaming properties going forward.

Chief Restructuring Officer Jeff Seery addressed the company’s situation in the bankruptcy filing.

“Despite successes in turning around many of the gaming assets it has acquired, the company has faced a variety of factors that have severely limited its growth in the last few years, precipitating the current financial distress and inability to address its capital structure that have led to commencement of these Chapter 11 cases,” Seery said.

Persson, who serves as Maverick’s CEO, has been outspoken about how Washington regulates non-tribal gaming operators. At a May 8 meeting of the Washington State Gambling Commission, he and other cardroom operators and workers argued that non-tribal gaming in the state faces heavier scrutiny than tribal operations. Maverick’s business model has centered on buying undervalued gaming properties and tightening operations to improve margins, a strategy Card Player notes has struggled amid the company’s mounting financial pressure over the past several years.