Bonita Springs Has 11 Names on a PLO List and Zero Tables Open

The Phantom List in Southwest Florida

Bonita Springs, Florida, has 57,000 residents and, as of 1 a.m. on May 24, 11 people waiting to play $1/$2/$5 PLO at a poker room that hadn't dealt a single hand of pot-limit Omaha all night.

Zero tables running. Eleven names deep. At Bonita Springs Poker Room, the Bravo board showed a waitlist-to-table ratio that is, technically, infinite: 11 divided by zero.

Eleven names deep, zero tables running: Bonita Springs Poker Room posted a waitlist-to-table ratio that is, technically, infinite.

What the Numbers Say

The median waitlist for $1/$2/$5 PLO at Bonita Springs sits at 1.5 names. Eleven is more than seven times that median. Bravo's snapshot captured the surge at 3 a.m. ET on May 24, and the list had already ballooned well past anything the room typically generates for this game.

For context, that 7.3x ratio above median is not a minor blip. It signals a cluster of PLO players who showed up expecting action and found none. Whether the room couldn't staff the table, didn't have the chips broken down, or simply lacked the critical mass of nine to open remains unclear from the data alone. What is clear: demand outstripped supply by a wide margin.

Why a Phantom List Matters

A waitlist with no corresponding table is a specific kind of signal. It means players walked in, put their names up, and waited. In a metro like Miami or Tampa, an 11-deep PLO list gets absorbed fast because multiple rooms compete for the same player pool. In a town the size of Bonita Springs, those 11 names represent a significant share of the local PLO-interested population all converging at once.

Small-market phantom lists also tend to be stickier than big-city ones. Players in southwest Florida don't have a Seminole Hard Rock down the street as a backup. If the game doesn't go at Bonita Springs, they drive home.

The Broader Florida Picture

Florida's PLO scene has historically clustered around the big South Florida rooms and the Hard Rock properties. A room in Lee County posting double-digit PLO demand, even once, is unusual enough to note. Whether Bonita Springs Poker Room opens a table to meet the next surge or lets it evaporate again is worth watching the next time Bravo lights up in that zip code.

Eleven names is a table and two alternates. The players showed up. The game didn't.