To get an idea of what's running at Final Table, you can check out the online feed of their shootout screen at finaltable.club. It's updated in pretty much real time. It won't tell you how much is on the table, but you can figure the minimum. I think Meadows will probably have something similar in the future.

I'm mostly a tournament player, but when I was at Portland Meadows a couple Saturdays ago, I dusted off a couple hundred of my tournament win playing 1/2 Big O there. There were 2-3 Big O tables running, and my loss looked pretty paltry compared to the guys who'd been there a while.

Just my 20,000 cents.

"Hidden gem?" Other than Final Table (and maybe including Final Table, I don't go there), Meadows is the biggest room in town, with tons of tournament players and quite a few shoot outs.

Yeah dude, people don't have an issue with your question, it's you asking for information but acting like a total douche nozzle. I get your concern, but he could have legitimately not known exactly what you meant; if you had said, "thanks, but what I meant was how big are the stack sizes generally?" or even "How big does it play?"

To answer the question, in my limited experience playing but more expansive experience observing the tables recently, the Big O games play way bigger than a 1-2, generally with multiple stack sizes over $500. That's after it's been running for a bit, obviously, but players seem to buy in for $300 or even $400 quite a bit. Every time I've been there in the evening there have been at least two Big O games going.

The 1-2 Hold Em plays similar, in my experience. Sat down after the freeze out a couple weekends ago and at least four players bought in for $400.

Occasionally, this deep, apparently (reds $5, greens $25, white/yellow $1):

Hey Porter's power rankings of Portland area cardrooms? (for NL cash)

Cardrooms or games? It depends on what you're looking for.

Overall experience, meaning quality room, quality dealers, and solid action, is Portland Meadows. By far. They're getting a good thing going up there, and the bar in the room and improved food are nice extras.

Final Table might be next, but I admit there is something about that place that I can't stand. Not a fan of the dealers overall, the atmosphere, or the stupid rules that (I think) they still have while others (e.g., Meadows) have put aside. A lot of people love it, but whenever I talk myself into giving it another chance, I end up cashing out after an hour or two. The one benefit they have is they get multiple cash games going earlier than the other rooms (although The Game, discussed below, almost always has at least one table going at 11:30). They also have bigger games apparently, and nearly always a 2-5, but in my small sample size, the 2-5 game can actually run smaller than the 1-2, with much less action. Players who play there more regularly than I have confirmed.

I'm fond of The Game on Barbur (former Ace of Spades) mostly because I'm nostalgic for the 2-5 game that used to run there that infamously had a player lose ~$22k (I was at the table and personally witnessed that amount lost; I only won a couple grand and it felt like a giant loss).

A couple months ago I would have put Rialto up there, as they were consistently getting multiple tables with good action, but for whatever reason it seems to have dried up pretty bad.


Those are the card rooms. Best action games in town in my experience have been and remain the strip club games (Lucky Devil and Boom Boom Room), and the after hours games. If you can put up with actually being at Boom Boom Room, the Wednesday night game always, ALWAYS has great action, with huge stacks.

I saw on poker atlas today that the Last Frontier is running a 2-300 spread on Sundays and Wednesdays! I highly suggest someone check it out and report back!

Why leave town to go play a game with a rake?

He lives in Seattle

Poor guy

I fantasize that since the game is played at the Frontier it will be filled primarily with limit players. But who knows.

Just FYI for today (Turkey Day) since I was recently at both places listed below and got the info.

Claudia's does NOT have any poker today.

Rialto (at 4th and Alder) will have a game at 6 pm. Woo hoo! It's NLHE with 50 cent / one dollar blinds.

The big o game that is played at Meadows, is that high only?

It is a Hi/Lo game.

At 7 pm last night, there were three PL-Big-O8 games running, one NLH, and the HE tourney.

Who plays Big O high only? It's a degenerate's game, and degenerates want to play high/low.

My latest weekly calendar planner for Portland players is up at mutantpoker.com.

In what appears to be fact and not rumor, Portland Meadows recently received a letter of infractions plus a fine from the City. City apparently sent in a "spy" player to check things out, and found a bunch of infractions (unsurprisingly). Letter said to fix the issues, or they're going to get fined again and lose their license. Sounds like only "fix" acceptable to the city on the dealer front (the source of the main infractions) is to FORCE players to rotate deal, and play in the game. Since that seems pretty unworkable to Meadows, expectation is they might close up shop.

I feel pretty confident about that information. The rumors on top of that are Meadows is closing January 11 (who knows why that date?), and that "every other club" received a similar letter. Death to tourney poker in Portland?

Maybe because they think people won't want to pay the daily membership if they are "doing the work" of dealing themselves? I still would since it is minuscule compared to a rake, of course. Just spitballing.

I think everyone already knew the door fee didn't go to the dealers anyway.

I don't know for sure, but I imagine the door fee might be one of the issues as well (I didn't mention it because it wasn't mentioned by the dealer who passed along the info). I know that around five years ago Anne Holm, the city employee in charge of social gaming (and a whole bunch of other things) took the position that if the door fees were clearly just to play poker and not to take part in other non-poker club offerings, e.g., pool, a bar, TVs and lounge areas, etc., they couldn't actually charge a door fee. That never made much sense to me since these places are self-labeled as poker clubs, but it could very well she had no real idea, and the whole business was way down her list of priorities. But if an enforcement agent had walked into Meadows, it would be pretty darn clear what you're paying for is poker (especially since they don't even charge you until you sit in the game).

My initial reaction is I don't want to deal and there are a ton of players I don't want dealing either and it seems like a cluster **** but with that said if it seems like it's working I'll check it out

Player-dealt would annoy the hell out of me, and I'd most likely search out places that don't do it, even if that's home games. I'm almost exclusively a cash player, and I don't think a lot of the places I like to play are going to change much.

One thing that will never work: player-dealt Big O. Game is slow enough as it is, it would move to a crawl.

Here's a solution. The dealers just deal themselves in, then fold every hand without looking. Some solution for the dealer having to pay blinds should be easy enough to implement amongst the players. Throw him his blind back as an extra tip if you win the pot when he's in the blind.

I would never play in such a circumstance! So you've got really old people trying to deal from the 2/8 seat? I can't even imagine how that would go!

Literally thousands per month

I wouldn't play as often. More about the other players dealing than me though.

You've got to buy the service contracts that go with them if youre operating on a pro level. They break a lot