Bonita Springs Is Running the Hottest Small-Market Board in Florida

A poker room in Bonita Springs, Florida, population 57,000, just posted waitlist surges in three different games at once, and one of them is a $10/$20 Big O with a full kill.

Bonita Springs Poker Room lit up Bravo overnight and into May 23 with simultaneous demand spikes in $1/$2 NL Hold'em, $2/$5/$10 PLO, and 10-20 Big O High Low Full Kill. That last game is the one worth a double-take.

A $10/$20 Big O with a full kill, running one table in a Southwest Florida town most people know for its strip malls, drew a waitlist 12× its median.

The Big O Number

The 10-20 Big O High Low Full Kill game had one table running and six names waiting. Its median waitlist sits at 0.5, making that surge a 12× multiple. For context, a 12× ratio on any game, anywhere, is unusual. On a five-card high-low variant at a small-market Florida room, it borders on absurd.

This is not a game that just "goes" in most card rooms. Big O with a full kill requires a specific player pool: deep-pocketed locals who want action beyond PLO and know the split-pot math cold. Bonita Springs apparently has that pool.

PLO and NLH Followed the Same Pattern

The $2/$5/$10 PLO game showed six names waiting with zero tables open at 8:00 a.m. PT on May 23. That's pure demand with no supply yet. The median waitlist for that game is 1, so six names represents a 6× surge.

The $1/$2 NL Hold'em game posted the same six-deep waitlist against seven running tables. Its median waitlist is also 1, putting it at a 6× multiple. Seven tables of $1/$2 is already a healthy spread for a room this size. Six more players wanting in tells you the room is at capacity.

Why This Matters

Three simultaneous surges at a single room is uncommon anywhere. Three simultaneous surges at a room in a town smaller than most Las Vegas zip codes is genuinely rare.

Bonita Springs sits about 30 minutes south of Fort Myers on the Gulf Coast. The poker room competes with Seminole Immokalee and the Naples-Fort Myers corridor for players, but the data on May 23 suggests it's not just competing. It's pulling demand that those rooms aren't satisfying.

The Big O surge is the headline, but the PLO and NLH numbers tell a broader story: this room has a player base that spans stakes and game types. A $10/$20 mixed game, a mid-stakes PLO, and a full $1/$2 spread all popping at once points to a deep, diverse local ecosystem.

We'll be watching Bravo to see if Bonita Springs holds these numbers or if May 23 was a one-off spike. Either way, the board today belongs to Southwest Florida.