They are running $25 + $5 SNG Satellites....really fast structures mostly a luck fest...if you want play one and see what happens, but if you want to play better to just buy-in....otherwise you could end up play 3 or 4 satellites and still end up buying in....

4 x 30 = 120 + buy in 250 = 370 instead of 250....

If you want to play one just go to the podium and sign up then go play your cash game...they will call you when the SNG is ready to go....can sometimes take a while depending on the crowd.

So what you're saying is, that if I play 4 satellites and don't win a seat in any of them, and then I buy directly in to the tournament it will cost more than if I just buy in to the tournament in the first place? Fascinating!

Thanks for the info, I think I'm just going to buy in directly.

Just wanted to say that the B&M forum has been the most helpful one I've encountered on 2p2 so far. Thanks everybody!

Good info beaudog, I can only add (I have been on vacation all week) I haven't seen them run but they get going at night a lot because the one Pit really pushes them so your best bet for the sats are at night.

Does the Showboat ever spread any non-hold'em games?

I'll be heading up for the $50k guarantee as well. Looking for some other games to play Friday night.

Not so much. Although xxRodxx keeps teasing us with the thought of PLO games.

Easy, I said we will spread them if you get enough guys! We would love to be the house that has a niche like a regular PLO game or something I am sure just get a few guys together and the rest ill come and try it I am sure...like just walk next door and say hay who wants to play 1/2 PLO and I bet you can get a game going.

Okay, okay, I guess I have no grounds to bust your balls.

Not sure when I will make it to AC again, but if a 1/2PLO game ever gets going at the Boat and I am there, I will be the one shipping $200 at a time to as many other players as possible.

I cannot go without you cause nobody will likely start a list. I expect big things from you next time you make the trip imo.

FYP?

u would not b e first to get a regular PLO game going. 2/5 PLO 1k max is pretty regular at Borg. I would love a 1/2 PLO 500 max and I would really love a 1/2 PLO8 500 max. We had 1/2 PLO 500 max at Taj but it only ran like 2x (that I know of)

Rod,

Any answer on this?

Thanks!

Then stop by with rob (talk to eachother through PM's) and we will try and get one, the problem is you have to have enough people to start a game (5 or 6) and then people that will sustain the game. GL, we would really love to unique game like that to help improve things.

I am sorry I forgot to ask I will get on it.

Hey all. I visited AC last week, and did three sessions at the Showboat. It's a beautiful room - nice atmosphere, plenty of space around the tables, really comfortable chairs, too. So I decided to put in some time there.

One thing that was really disappointing was the quality of the dealers. Nearly all of them were slow, but several of them weren't even following the game. Fredrico the catatonic spent his time staring off into space (as did many others), and Luis the somnolent needed prompting whenever it was time for him to act. Then there was a woman dealer who was following the action quite well, but seemed too shy to run the game - meaning we all had to wait for the same two or three bozos every hand. Then the table got to five handed, and each hand was 4 minutes, so I just got up and walked around for an orbit. In the meantime, a few folks who wanted to play showed up, thankfully - I was getting tired of saying "where's the action?", "$10 to you", etc. One young dealer had a song in his heart, and he began singing "Bip Bip Bip ... Bip Bip ..." after every flop, turn or river. God, was it annoying.

Finally, in the third session, I ran into an actual quality dealer. She snapped the cards out, ran the game efficiently. It was like "Wow, what are you doing here???" Of course it turned out that she is usually a floor, and was just dealing for this one shift.

What a beautiful room the Showboat has - but whoever is running that place should be embarrassed. It's pretty damn funny that everybody is talking about how hard it is to get dealer positions, and here's a room that should be searching for anybody who can stay awake.

I am sorry for your bad experience with a few of the dealers at Showboat. However, not all of us should be lumped into your opinion. I am a dealer at Showboat too, and I took great offense to your post. As you know, we have a brand new poker room. With that in mind, our management hired a lot of new dealers to handle the larger crowds we have been seeing, many of them being break-in dealers. I will admit though, that as far as some of your complaints, you should be telling the floor about them, not just people on here. If you have a beef with something the dealer is doing wrong, then report it. That is the only way it can change. I have been dealing for a few years now, but I was a rookie once too (not that I am saying I am the greatest either..) but I remember it taking some time to get used to it.

Once again, sorry for your experience, but I hope that you can give our room another try. Many people have had great things to say about our staff.

Hey, I'm glad to see a Showboat dealer here. Thanks for responding with the background info - and you definitely should not take any personal offense at my post. I did not have a dealer named Mike (too bad I didn't run into you). So it sounds like what I saw was a bunch of break-in dealers. Surely they will get better over time. (Do dealers keep their own tips at Showboat?) Your room is beautiful, and I'll absolutely be back.

I posted only because it was really surprising to me; I simply didn't expect that the standards would be that low in a real casino town. I'm used to Wheeling and Mountaineer (WV cardrooms that filled with new dealers over the past year), and I was frankly expecting an upgrade. To be clear, the very worst dealers in those WV rooms are far below anything I saw at Showboat; but the WV rooms do have a fair mix of A, B and C dealers along with their D's, whereas Showboat seemed to lack the A's and B's (with the exception of that one great dealer, and maybe a very few B's). That's over 25 downs, too many to ignore the pattern.

I might say something to the floor if a dealer were doing something objectively wrong and correctable. But for something like general slowness and lack of interest, I've got to assume that the floor already knows that - or that the culture condones it.

But your post is encouraging. Hopefully, it's just a transition.

NJMike37 - Thinking about this a bit more - the thing that really stood out at Showboat was the general level of disinterest. I can't remember playing at any room where so many dealers seemed to be totally disengaged, looking off into the distance.

It was kind of weird, actually.

I wonder if it's an interesting view into the slots/casino, or the view of the boardwalk? You do see the occasional dealer watching TV, but here it was different.

Mike or Rod,
Do either of you know how big a field the Showboat is expecting for the $25k guarantee on Saturday? Is it going to be limited to 500 players? Thanks.
Ledge

I'd be interested to hear if you have the same experience again next time you go back. I've generally found the dealers to be more engaged in the play and the players than usual, almost as if their culture encourages it. There are some new dealers that are very tentative and disengaged at this point, but they seem to be in the minority in my experience. Maybe you just caught a bad night.

I'm not likely to be in AC very often, but I would be happy to go back.

However, this was about 12 hours spread over three days, so I did see quite a few dealers. Enough to know that there's plenty of room for improvement at the Showboat.

Yes, we have quite a few new dealers at Showboat. Seems like we have been getting 1 per week the last few months. Some of them will definitely need some time to improve, but some of them are already doing very well.

And yes, we do keep our own tips in the poker room. That is definitely motivation for the dealers in our room to get faster and better. If they choose to be slow/unresponsive, they won't last long and they are only hurting themselves.

Glad to hear that you will be back. You're right, the room is beautiful (I know, I'm probably biased.. lol) and we have lots of potential to grow. When I first started, we would be lucky to have 3 or 4 live games running during a weekday in the old room. We easily have 8 or 9 of them now. We're starting to spread different games now too. It used to be only 1/2NL and 2/4LHE. Now we get 2/5NL, 5/5NL, 3/6LHE, and lists of interest for higher games as well. If we could just get some people to come in that would start up a higher game, I know we would consistently spread higher games.

And as for the floor response, our culture definitely doesn't condone laziness and/or bad attitude. Since we are part of Harrah's Entertainment (now Caesar's Entertainment) we are trained from day one to give superior customer service. If there are people not doing that, they are not doing their job very well.

Hopefully you just caught us on a bad day. Most of the time, I notice the dealers doing a good job with paying attention and keeping the game going smooth (at least that is what I notice when I am walking to my next table every down.) The boardwalk has been a distraction for a few dealers and players, but if it comes to that, the floor will usually pull the blinds down.

As far as I have heard, it will be like the last tourney. It will be capped at 500 players, however, there will be alternate seats available once players get knocked out. We're not sure what to expect for this one, but there is a lot of buzz amongst the players coming in to play at Showboat, so I think it will be a great turnout. Oh, and the tourney is a $50k guarantee, not a 25k. 1st place is guaranteed 15k. Good luck and hope to see you there!

There are a TON of break in dealers over the last month or two for us. I think some of them you would never even know they were break ins because they really take pride in their work, but a lot didn't really get the attention they need and probably got a little too comfortable early. You just missed Mike and Rod Formaggio. I think we have a lot of A quality dealers (I don't consider myself one), you just caught a lot of new ones. Nice to see the Mike and Mike show on 2p2.

As far as Floor response, we are understaffed in that department. If you get enough players not complaining here and saying something to some form of management then maybe something will happen. I think if we were able to be well staffed in that department the service quality would improve in the room a lot.

And we got a 2/4 O8 game off yesterday and it seemed to run like 7-8 handed for about 4 hours before it broke. So maybe we can get the thing going more often.

I also have the structure for the 50K guarantee, sorry I couldnt get the scanner to work so I will type it out:

Levels are 25 mins, Breaks are 10 mins, you start with 10K in chips.

1- 25/50
2- 50/100
3- 100/200
break
4 100/200 25 ante
5 200/400 50 ante
6 300/600 75 ante
break race off green
7 400/800 100 ante
8 500/1000 100 ante
9 500/1000 200 ante
break
10 1k/2k 300 ante
11 1.5k/3k 400 ante
12 2k/4k 500 ante
race off black/dinner break (1 HOUR)
13 3k/6k 500 ante
14 4k/8k 1k ante
15 5k/10k 1k ante
Break race off purple
16 8k/16k 2k ante
17 10k/20k 3k ante
18 15k/30k 5k ante
break race of orange
19 20k/40k 5k ante
20 By Director, which I think will have to happen.

It is not as good as I thought it was going to be but remember it is a 1 day tourney, so it has to end at some point. Maybe in the future we can have a 2 day $500 event or something with a better structure and more chips. For what the usual Showboat player is used to playing, this is a pretty darn good structure though.

Gl to everyone is playing...Ima be late for work.

I played @ the new room for the first time yesterday from approximately 3:00p-1:00a. It was a wonderful experience.

I agree that there were two or three dealers who are simply going through the motions, but the majority were competent and a few were excellent. Allison and Marco stick out in my mind as top-notch, as does the older guy with the shaved head (Steve maybe?). Two other dealers even were able to control a completely hammered, toothless, and brainless big donator at our table before they finally had to kick him out for excessive profanity. So overall a job well done.

As for the TV watching, one of the dealers during the $125 tournament @ 7:00p actually requested that the floor put on the Mets/Phillies game at a particular TV so he could watch while he was dealing. That was disappointing to me for some reason, even though it didn't seem to affect his dealing; he was very competent.

First of all, Frommagio, I have no idea how you dodged all the Mikes in there. At one point, I had Mikes as dealers for literally three downs in a row. All of them were very competent, although one of them seemed a little too chatty and offended one of the other players because of the chattiness. I personally don't care about that stuff, so take that for what it's worth to you.

Second, regarding the floor, I'm surprised to hear that you had complaints in that area. I was thoroughly impressed with how the floor was managed yesterday. People were being called off the waiting lists constantly, new games were being started, shorthanded tables were being combined, interest lists were turning into games, etc. It seemed like a well-oiled machine.

In particular, Flavio handled an issue regarding two drunks arguing at our table with a lot of class and respect for the other players. Jaclyn did a great job turning the interest lists into games when appropriate. Kelli (Kelly?) kept a close eye on everything, as did Dave before her earlier in the day.

Finally, the 2/4 O8 game was a riot. The people who played it all were very fun and the dealers were great to us and vice versa. Because we did not qualify for the bad beat jackpot, we had the dealers take the bad beat jackpot drop anyway and made it into a high hand jackpot for each down. I hope to see that game or 3/6 O8 go more often, although I won't be able to rely on beginner's luck to ensure a profit like I did yesterday.