Look into the 4th Street N(Gateway) area of St. Pete. I just moved out of a community that I believe has small 2br (900sq/ft) for around 1200. Its a good area with access to both bridges, close to beaches, both downtowns, minutes from Derby and a half hour from HR. Grocery stores and restaurants galore. You will have to stick with the older buildings tho cuz the newer ones are $1650+/month for a 2br.

Look at Vierra Bayside, Tamerind Bay, Lincoln Shores, Inlet Bay, and the others in that cluster. Those might fall within your budget.

seminole heights is 15-20 min away from THR and within your price point. Up and coming area with lots to do.

Check out these apartments in Clearwater:

http://burtoncarol.com/florida/grande-bay

Just built. Near the bridges, so travel times to the poker rooms aren't bad (during normal traffic times):

Hard Rock: 30 minutes
Derby: 20 minutes
Silks: 20 minutes

Easy access to shopping, restaurants, entertainment, etc. Neighborhood crime will probably show up worse than it actually is when you look online - the north side of Gulf to Bay Blvd. in that area is worse than the south side (where the apartments are), and the road is pretty commercial but the apartments are nestled off the roadway along the bay. It's not a beachy area, but the bay views are probably worth the extra rent for a waterfront view - especially the spectacular sunrises and sunsets.

I'm updating my tracker file and it's been years since I've played Tampa.

Did the 2/5 NL games use to be 10 handed? I seem to recall they were but now I'm getting confused bc Hollywood is 9 handed?

This would have been 2013-15 time frame.

Also I guess I'm curious if it's 9 handed now with the new room.

$2/5 at Tampa Hard Rock is 9-handed, $200-$1k cap - really the only place in the area that gets regular $2/5 games going.

Tyty,

Do you recall if it has been 9 handed for the past few years? I could have sworn it was 10 handed when I played there but perhaps am getting mixed up.

(I've noticed a pretty telling outlier in my 10 handed game win rates and am now backtracking previous data)

oops, my bad - meant to add that. Yes, the THR games are 9-handed.

Thanks for the apartment recs everybody. Grande Bay looks pretty decent for the price. It's a bit farther from HR than I would like but not a big deal as I tend to play 10+ hour sessions. Will definitely check it out.

How is Derby Lane and Silks compared to HR? Player pools, how nice the poker room is, etc. Probably going to DL tomorrow.

So far I've played about 14 hours at HR. Players have been really really bad so far. Lots of action junkies playing huge pots with second pair and the like. Haven't had any obviously good players show up yet. Also hit my first significant winning session last night. Maybe I can and my 7.5 BI downswong. Almost ended it yesterday when I had 1000 on the table and a bad LAG with about 500 got heads up with me and I flopped the nut straight. He piled in the money with bottom two and hit his boat out unfortunately. Oh well...I'll run good eventually.

Game selection and regular bigger action will only be found at THR. Silks is very meh and I haven't stepped foot in Derby in 5 years (and haven't seen a need to)

Just got back from Tampa. I played at HR five/six sessions with the remaining one session of 1/3 at DL. The players at the 1/3 game seemed pretty bad, though there was one guy there who I'm pretty sure was a winning grinder, as he showed zero emotional reaction to losing and winning big pots, and ultimately left the night up about a thousand. I left that game up 200. All my sessions were winning, though, with the best my last session at HR for 700.

Since my first 50 hours I was on the losing end of an epic suckout/cooler fest, it feels very good for my results to be in the black now. I am of course aware that results over a duration < 100 hours are mostly noise, but I was starting to feel cursed after the third time I lost a 200+ pot as a 97% favorite to some idiot whose only out is runner-runner flush. Good to see I can sometimes win coinflips and my cards can actually hold up when ahead.

So I haven't completely decided yet where to move...need to systematically weigh the pros and cons, but I'm like 90% sure it will be Tampa. The only pro of the local option (Winstar) is it's closer to family, but that seems far outweighed by the fact there's literally nothing in Thackerville but the casino. Also the weekday action at Winstar is rather weak, but I played a couple weekdays at HR and action was good at all times, though best on Friday night.

Nice that you had a good experience. There are pro grinders around, of course, like you described. You'll run into more of them at HR at other times of the year as some are away in LV for the WSOP currently. But you also came off-season (summertime), so didn't get to see the snowbirds with money to burn.

Hope you continue to run into idiots willing to put it all in with runner-runner flush their only out. You'll win a lot off of them eventually, obv.

One Eyed Jacks in Sarasota has 2/5 going whenever I'm there (closes 2 am to 9 am), about an hour south of Tampa Hard Rock.

Sarasota =/= Tampa

Sarasota = Tampa area

They had a couple 2/5 tables going at Derby Lane when I was there (Sunday night). HR seems better though as it has deeper buy-in (1k vs 800).

Do they really have 1/1 at Derby Lane?? It's listed on pokeratlas but I didn't see it running when I was there. They had 1/2 going but the max buy-in was $120 so I passed and played 1/3. There was a 1/2 game going on behind us though and it looked super wild. Very loud table, people going all in very often, etc. Anybody played the 1/1 or 1/2 there? Are these games worthwhile?

They discontinued the 1/1 recently. Both 1/2 and 1/3 can be very active. Just depends on the table you get. But I haven't played the 1/2 there since they discontinued the 1/1, so maybe it's gotten wilder.

Yup. This thread covers the general region not just Tampa proper.

1/2 @ derby is hit or miss, depends off course on your table, still good promotions there. This month they cancelled some of them only a few days into the month there was straight and better wins $25 on saturdays and flush fridays $25 for flush or better

Yeah I was there June 4 and they had good high hand promotions and some others. The dealer at my table was talking about how the person who came up with that month's promotions was probably getting fired because it was costing them so much money. Maybe they just cancelled the most expensive ones instead.

So do they consider the jackpot-drop money theirs?

Hmm...don't know. Can't remember the exact conversation but it went on several minutes. Just seemed like management was pissed they were giving away too much money on promotions. Maybe someone worked out the math wrong and they were having to dip into the actual rake? I have no idea how the promotions work to be honest.

Thanks for the response, although my question was actually meant to be rhetorical. You are new to the Hard Rock and this thread, so you aren't aware that they didn't even post the daily jackpot balances until I reported them to the federal agency that oversees Indian gaming. They also used to pay all poker player comps out of the jackpot drop - which changed only last year. IIRC, they still take a big chunk of the jackpot drop "for future promotions", whatever that means.

It's just interesting to hear that a dealer could get fired for proposing a jackpot promotion that is "costing them too much." Maybe they had to dip into actual rake, or maybe their attitude is that the jackpot drop is an additional rake that belongs to them, spendable at their discretion, and the new monthly promotions cut into their "future promotions" siphoning funding. The Seminole poker rooms are not subject to Florida state laws, which require all Florida-licensed cardrooms to return all jackpot drop funds to be returned to the players.

Ah. That's shady...but maybe not unusual. I've only been to a handful of casinos but Winstar for instance only pays out part of the jackpot drop to the BBJ and just keep the rest. They straight up told me that.

So you're like a poker superhero eh? Fighting the good fight vs. the casinos. Awesome.

Gawrsh. Thanks.

got a mailer for the July Promotions in the hard rock
Every 50hr you play you get $500
High hands Sunday - Thursday noon -11.59pm $500
Friday noon -11.59 pm $700
Sunday 2pm-11.59 pm $1000