I unfortunately don't get to play much on the weekend, but when I do the 2/5 is generally good action (with less risk/variance than 5/10), so I guess there it's just a personal game selection preference. I often find myself drooling over the PLO, but honestly have no idea what my skill assessment would be in that game and don't feel like risking $5-10k to (possibly) find out if I'm in over my head.

On weekdays it's rare for 5/10 to have a full table going, much less multiple tables or a juicy game. I'd love to see a 5/5, but with a 50-table room is it feasible?

I really don't think 5/10 is sustainable as is, and hopefully I'm wrong but I assume Maryland live will steal a decent chunk of players. From my limited frame of reference, most of the "old" 5/10 players seemed to have switched to PLO or dropped to 2/5.

If they kept the min the same, do you really think those who prefer a 300-500 BI would be scared off, rather than just buyin in for their usual amount? You know the temperature of the room much better than I do.

I promise u that this fish will happily buyin full... So u got at least one sucker u can get max value from...

The 10/25 game at Borgota rarely runs during the weekend but is a staple of weekend play, should that be killed off? Killing a game because it rarely runs on a weeknight when the room is at 30% capacity is shortsighted IMO. I'm not trying to attack you, but I completely disagree.

Re: the 2/5 game. The value that would be lost for good players isn't the fish not buying in full, etc... it is the dynamic of the game that would shift as it transitions from a 100bb game to a 200bb game. There are a number of aggressive players that have no problem "flipping" stacks etc... in the hope of building a larger stack and pushing the table around. This element will be removed, or hampered significantly, when all stacks at the table are deeper. This is one of the few things that make the game great/profitable.

I think CT should operate on one simple premise: do we have enough players, tables and dealers for this game? If yes, open it. Of course, there might be some details they might occasionally have to work out, but generally speaking, they should open games in demand to the degree logistics will allow. Obviously, they often mismanage their resources and thus often cannot run games, but that's a whole another issue.

CT 2/5 is such a great game for many reasons, including player pool, monopoly, and the fact that most people drive over an hour to get there. The last part I think is probably the most important factor.

Long commute + difficulty/cost of getting a room = people play longer.

As a result, stacks get pretty silly deep, and for a game that's been running for a few hours, the average stack is usually deep enough such that whether the buy-in should be 100BB vs 200BB becomes moot. That said, in poker, it's almost always the more the merrier, so I would support raising the max buy-in to 200BB. But I think there are significant risks associated with trying to convince management to make changes to something that, for the most part, has been working pretty well: it doesn't take much for them to **** up a good thing.

CT 5/10 action has been diminishing significantly due to a number of factors, including bad players being weeded out over time, migration to PLO, and some of the best players leaving CT (or never having come to CT in the first place) for better/bigger games at the Borgata and elsewhere where management treats players as if they were paying customers for well-defined services. However, I would be very hesitant about proposing any policy changes to management in order to improve 5/10 action, for the same reason I wouldn't want them to touch 2/5.

In short, I think we should let supply and demand run its natural course.

I haven't been in a few weeks but have been hearing the ridiculous wait-lists for Saturdays. Was thinking of heading after work (probably arrive around 6) to play some 2/5, but is Friday now a zoo as well? By zoo I mean having to wait over an hour for a seat.

A couple of months ago I arrived on a Friday night at around 8 and had no problem getting a seat within 15 minutes.

At the Taj, they used to run a 2/5 with a 500 cap and a 2/5 with a 1K cap. You could perhaps do something like that and let the market decide what works. I like the structure of the 2/5 and the 5/10, but there is quite a gap between the two. When the 5/10 was a 1500 cap, more 2/5 players would sometimes take a swing at the game, so I think people that pushed the room to bump it 2K kind of pushed out some of the 5/10 crowd. I'm not sure how many players actually busted out of 5/10 and how many just moved to 5/10, but I definitely have noticed the lack of the better players versus a year ago even when the game runs.

I also noticed a couple of nights ago that 5/10 had 2 tables going versus 1 for PLO, so its not dead completely.

Anyone know if they solved their Bravo issues relating to swiping people in? Both of my tables on Friday and Saturday were not working for this purpose. With their March hourly promotion/drawing starting Monday, just wanted to check.

Can anyone fill me in on required number of hours to qualify for the April 14 drawing?

1-2 PLO will never run @ CT while they have a monopoly (MAYBE when maryland live opens they'll spread it). We (at least 20+ of us) have asked/formally requested/done everything possible to try to spread it. The reasons given are usually gaming commission won't allow it, it will bust players, there's no plaque for it (they tape over plaques when they don't have 1 btw), etc. If they wanted to spread it they could have the gaming commission approve it for them since the mountaineer and other WV casinos spread it. (They also blame gaming commission for no reduced rake when in fact that is the general line their suppose to give and completely untrue). The actual reason is the floors/management of CT used to run a room in kansas or something and they spread 1-2 PLO there and it busted a lot of their player base. Their alternative of letting people play outside their rolls in 5-5 games probably will bust more people IMO. Anyways there was a lot of discussion about this thought id give my 2cents.

I'm glad to see people trying to take shots in the game though. I think it is more fun and profitable for a lot of 2-5 grinders. My only concern is that people will overextend themselves. (The game is a bigger jump than 2-5 to 5-10 IMO as its a 5-5-10 game really and always deep as well as PLO having more innate variance than NLHE). If people have questions on how to set up $ to take a shot in a game like this (that is what I did successfully) I'll be more than happy to talk about it.

This promotion started this morning (Monday, March 11) at 12:01 am. and runs through the end of the day on Sunday, April 7th. As with previous promotions, you need 60 hours of play for one ticket and you will get another ticket for each additional 10 hours. Thus, for example, 95 hours of play would get you four tickets.

The drawings, a week later (April 14), run from 10:00 am through 9:45 pm, every 15 minutes. That's 48 drawings. 46 of them are for $1000; 2 of them are for a Ford Mustang, valued at around $35k, or $25k cash.

There's a flyer at the check-in desk which has all the details on it and, iirc, if you choose the car they will send ~$35k to the Ford dealer for your purchase. I think this means you can pick any car and just apply this amount to the purchase.

if the card swiper at the table isn't working, they can enter you in the bravo system at the podium.

Wow, that'll be a disaster with this hourly promotion starting and all the other problems they have keeping things running smoothly. Specifically if not fixed by Friday. Imagine all the people trying to clock in/out (maybe) and the normal chaos of a weekend.

Still, great promotion for the regs.

didn't they have this EXACT same issue with their similar promotion in the fall and then end up cancelling it about a week or two in?

I suspect there are a decent number of players going busto at 5-5 PLO. Spreading 1-2 would benefit those players, even if it just slows their bleeding. Personally, I'd love to learn PLO but I realize starting out at 5-5 stakes would be a disaster.

I really believe this is just their way of saying it isn't profitable for the room to spread the game. It cannot make financial sense for a business to spread a pot raked game that expects to see 6-8 hands/down.

You might be right. But, if true, their reasoning is flawed/short-sighted on many levels. Who knows what kind of logic, if any, is used at the meetings of the poker gods. However, I can picture them casually glancing over their monthly income statements and high-fiving themselves over how they're crushing all the other rooms within a 2K mile radius (Borgata doesn't count because they rake less and give comps and free rooms...silly donks!), while voting on what color Mustangs they might graciously bestow upon an unsuspecting player or two.

They had the end of summer promo that got moved to october instead of september. But they have run this promo or type of promo 3 or 4 times already so nothing new. Just make sure you are swiped in and check your time once you clock out on the player pc to the right of the podium down the steps. If it doesn't register your time get it corrected right away as it is next to impossible after a couple days.

The BBJ hit for $230,490+? downstairs last night (Sunday). A table over by 9 dragons. A lot of loud cheers. I was too busy losing my chips at table 20 to go over and get anymore details. I know if you were even in the hand you got $5k+. I'm sure somebody will fill in the rest later.
Right day, wrong table for me.

I heard it was QQ vs 77. Flop was QQ7. Turn blank. Seven on the river.

Thanks, W0X0F!
I was wondering what the hand was. I knew it was due to hit soon. It usually hits when it gets over $200k.

Do you think they will be busy on Good Friday (daytime), some people get off work that day?

Yeah, it was on table 15 about 8pm (+/- an hour). It was a somewhat quiet reaction as these things go, but there weren't any hitches I saw and they got paid and were doing the happy dance :-) . I was a few tables away and we weren't sure it had hit for a moment until players from surrounding tables joined the noise.

It reset for ~$147k shortly after.

Pure speculation on my part, but it's entirely possible that CT's business plan, as soon as the Maryland gambling expansion passed, wouldn't involve much caring about the poker ecology.

Regardless of the degree to which CT is planning on attempting to stay competitive with forthcoming big Maryland poker rooms, they know that they're going to lose a generous portion of their current traffic. Therefore CT would not care very much if their game conditions were, say, going to bust half of their recreational players in the next several months.

CT would quite plausibly be correctly profit-maximizing by strongly skewing its poker room decisions towards short-term profit at the potential expense of long-term sustainability.

Or, at the very least, they can justify paying even less attention to their ecology now. They've already been operating in a state with gross (rather than net) tax levied on amateur poker winnings and seemingly doing nothing to attempt to address it. Sustainability can't have ever been a priority.

The floor was pretty fast getting me logged in manually at a table where the bravo wasn't working tonight. Down side: 4 or 5 tables where bravo is an issue. Plus side: Floor seemed prepared to deal with issue.

Can anyone tell me if the casino rooms are constantly full on weekends?

Might be heading over there from DC and want to stay at least one night, maybe two, but not really able to commit to anything until last minute.

thnks

The casino hotels pretty much always booked on weekends. There is a Hampton Inn (very nice actually) and Holiday Inn down the street (pretty nice).

Jeff

What was the name of that motel near CT that you mentioned tonight?

-Carlos