The Ontario Lottery and Gaming commission (OLG) sure shook up Ontario citizens today, especially those in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). Ontario Provincial Finance Minister Dwight Duncan announced that in co-ordination with the OLG, the GTA will have its own casino by 2017. OLG chair Paul Godfrey will be restructuring the OLG in a good way by improving how lottery and gaming are delivered in Ontario. This new enterprise will create around 2,300 net new industry jobs and about 4,000 jobs in the service sector.  The OLG will also plan to introduce online gambling including online poker much like the other provinces of the Canadian Poker Network Espace Jeux and PlayNow of Quebec and British Columbia.

No location has been announced yet but the usual list of potential locations for the Toronto Casino include; Canadian National Exhibition (CNE where current temporary casino is held), Woodbine Racetracks, Man-made island in Lake Ontario (Harbourfront), Richmond Hill, Markham, Mississauga.

In 5 years GTA poker players will no longer have to travel to Port Perry, Niagara Falls, Brantford, Sarnia, Orillia, Windsor, or Thousand Islands to play poker in Ontario.  With a megacity like Toronto with a casino, it will be just a matter of time before the biggest of online poker tournaments such as the WPT, WSOP, or even smaller ones such as the CPT, HPT or DSPT come to the Tdot for a mega Toronto Poker Tournament.