What Even Is A Casino Gauntlet Match?

This year’s All In is only days away. AEW’s biggest event of the year will include some huge matches, Will Ospreay vs. Kenny Omega for the AEW Title, and a championship clash between Cope & Cage and The Young Bucks among them. It will also mark the return of the Casino Gauntlet match, a match type that has been a part of every All In since 2024, but what is it, and how does it work?

The Casino Gauntlet Match

The main reason fans might be confused as to what exactly a Casino Gauntlet match is, along with its ruleset, because it is one of many Casino matches AEW has invented and used since its inception. The most famous is the Casino Battle Royale, in which new entrants enter the ring in waves based on the suit of the card they drew backstage. To eliminate someone, you have to throw them over the top rope.

The Casino Gauntlet match, like the battle royale, has 21 participants, but its rules and the way you win are very different. Two wrestlers start in the ring and, again, like the battle royale, they are joined by others at random intervals. However, wrestlers join the fray one at a time rather than in groups, usually at a faster pace since they aren’t being added five wrestlers at a time.

How You Win A Casino Gauntlet Match

If you get thrown over the top rope in a Casino Gauntlet match, that’s not your job done for the night. You simply climb back in the ring and pick up where you left off. In fact, there are no eliminations in a Casino Gauntlet match whatsoever. You win via pinfall or submission, but just like most other match types, this is a one-fall match. That means as soon as someone is covered for a three-count, or someone taps out, the match is over.

This isn’t a WarGames situation either, where the match can’t be won until everyone has entered the match. A Casino Gauntlet match can end at any time, even if there are still people backstage waiting to enter the match. It could be over before the third participant has even walked through the curtain. That means, unlike a Royal Rumble where the higher the number you draw, the better, the later you’re slated to enter the match, the bigger the risk that you might not see any action whatsoever.

The Casino Gauntlet match at All In this Sunday will be the 12th in AEW history. That means there have already been more Casino Gauntlet matches than Casino Battle Royales, even though the former didn’t debut until 2024. The winner will earn a future AEW World Title shot at a time and place of their choosing.