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The Den Poker Lounge is set to open in Rowlett, Texas, on Nov. 12, positioning itself as a membership-based poker club with an explicit focus on making the game more welcoming to women. Doors are scheduled to open at 3 p.m. local time, followed by a 4 p.m. ribbon-cutting ceremony.

PokerNews described the venue as Texas’s first women-only owned poker room. Its own team page identifies Jamie Kempf and Marjorie Bradford as co-founders and owners, with Kempf serving as assistant general manager and Bradford as director of compliance. The page also lists Rick Bradford, Quaint Kempf and Gregg Bothwell as co-founders in operational, security and talent roles.

The club will be open to all players, while putting more emphasis on bringing women into poker. Kempf said the project had taken more than two years to develop and grew from her and Bradford’s desire to build something different in a traditionally male-dominated game.

The planned room will have 15 tables. Its cash-game offering is expected to include no-limit hold’em from $1/$2 to potentially $50/$100, with pot-limit Omaha, mixed games and bomb pots added according to player demand. The Den also advertises daily tournaments, with details directed to PokerAtlas.

The women-focused approach comes against a wider participation gap. A Las Vegas Review-Journal report cited estimates that women made up “about 5 percent of poker-room players”:https://www.reviewjournal.com/sports/poker/women-make-up-a-tiny-part-of-the-competitive-poker-world-heres-why-2391898/; women accounted for 350 of 8,569 entrants, or 4.1 percent, in the 2019 WSOP Main Event. That report also noted that some women cited hostile or vulgar cardroom environments as a deterrent, while women-only events could provide a more comfortable introduction to the game.

The Den is entering an established Dallas-Fort Worth poker market, where Texas Card House and Palace Poker are among the competing rooms. The area has about 8.5 million residents. Kempf previously finished runner-up for a WSOP Circuit ring in 2024.

Like other Texas private poker clubs, The Den plans to use a social-club membership model. The Texas State Law Library says playing and betting for money at a card game is generally a criminal offense, although statutory defenses can apply when three elements are met. It also says the legality of private poker clubs remains under debate: clubs contend that membership fees and dues, rather than taking a percentage of pots, keep them compliant, while critics argue that model exploits a loophole.

The Den says it wants to become part of Rowlett’s local community, a city along Lake Ray Hubbard east of Dallas.