early on before they get set in their ways give them some help with what needs to be attended to.

I'll be in Scottsdale all of next week for work - anyone else on here going to be at the ICSC Proffesional Development Program?? Let me know and we can meet up and go to the casino together. It's only about 2 miles from where the event is.

Will probably try and get over to the casino a night or two to play the $3/5 game so just wanted to clarify that you are saying the max bet at any time is $500, not that the pot can't get bigger than $500 correct? Also, what's the rake on this game or is it a timed rake? Anything else quirky about how the game operates out there or other AZ specific rules? I live in FL and few places have BB on the button as guaranteed rake for each hand so is there anything awful like this?

Buzzer = Busser?

Keep in mind is the 3-5 game at CAZ is a LIMIT game( spread limit) and played by limit rules... half or more to reopen raising from an all-in, three raise cap.

The game uses "normally" placed blinds of 3 and 5 (1 "standard" straddle is allowed ) 5-500 bet structure(not pot maximum),IE i can bet 500 and be raised 3 times to a cap of 2K.

Raked game, $1 dropped preflop from small blind for Player Promotion Fund. (PPF)

$2 out of first $10 for the house, then and additional $1 for the PPF and $2 for the house on $30

I guess the cap might be having an effect if there are some frequent over-bettors in the game.


Mods can we PLEASE merge this with the general AZ poker and betting cap thread?

So where the hell are all the pictures! Lets see those new chips, more room pics, the snack area, etc, etc.

Guess I will have to drag myself out there sometime over the weekend... but I still want to see those pictures

I was going to mention when I saw that pic that the room seems smaller than the old one because of the huge tv's and high ceiling of the old room.

I played 2 hrs tonight and quite honestly I wasn't that impressed with the room, it's just kind of bland... the old room with the humongous big screen tv's on the far wall was better IMO, maybe that impression will change over time

the new reservation system is nice, had to get a player's card

the new chips are nice (and clean!), should've taken a pic but there was one on twitter today lemme find it

here it is

the chips are heavy, dunno what the gram weight is but its up there

oh and they STILL haven't gone to the decks with the bigger more visible suits and numbers, Fort McDowell uses em and I've gotten so used to em that playing with a "normal" deck makes them seem so small and hard to see

bad pic of the new room

me either, that's why I stay single so I can go play poker any damn time I please and not have to hear all the incessant nagging. yeah i was married once upon a time. never again. God gave us two hands for a good reason - in case one gets chopped off we can still hold our own. lol

And I am glad they haven't. Having played 98% of my live play at CAZ, everytime I go to Gila River, it feels like I have to expose my cards to my neighbors just to see the suit. I really prefer the smaller print for sure. The bigger ones feel like you are playing with your Grandma's Old Maid deck or something.

yah i figured that is the complaint about em... but seriously, it's not that hard to shield your peek from your neighbors... is it?

After some googling, I learned that the "big" cards are called "jumbo index", index being the term for the suit/number. CAZ is using "standard index". There's also something called "peek index" which has tiny suits in the very corners of the card. I played with these somewhere (can't remember where) and loved em, you literally can see your hand with just the tiniest raise of the corner of the cards and I didn't even have to worry about shielding them.

Yeah, that was one of many errors the Mohegan Sun in CT made. You have to peel some of them halfway up to see your suit and it's nearly impossible to protect all of the time.

Sad about the jumbo tv's. CAZ was/is one of the best places to watch a football game ever.

SOMEONE'S gotta straighten your tilty ass out when you are shooting off chips.


FWIW, I won the inaugural first 5-10 hand at the new casino, the first time pot, first to crack aces, and won the biggest pot(s) of the day in the game.

Then my wife lures me home with false promises. Rigged....

So like pope, let me preface this by saying I just had my worst CAZ session ever, by over $2000. So I might just be in a pissy mood:

Good:
Tables are bigger
Lots of room
Room is nice and big and open
New chips are awesome.
Having the bathroom just for us is nice

Bad:
-Announcements from within the room were garbled, announcements from the hotel made my ears bleed they were so loud
-pretty much everyone is complaining about the TVs. My buddy said management has basically been getting hammered by everyone about them. They are way to small and look ridiculous on the HUGE walls
-Food is for the most part pricier and smaller portions. For instance dishes that are staples for me like the sweet and sour chicken are WAY smaller.
-The orange chicken was terrible
-Most people were complaining about the chairs being too hard.
-The button system to summon servers/chips wasn't working, but that is an easy fix
- The bathroom in the poker room is TERRIBLE! hand operated sinks, the soap dispensers suck, there is just one towel thing in between the two sinks

Here's a pic I took, sorry my phone camera is crappy:



See everyone tomorrow...

Mark

so a few of the chips, lighting was bad, 1's are a bit whiter,and the 3's are brighter yellow



the 1's and 5's are the same on both sides, the 2's and 3's have a large index # on one side, and the "house of cards logo" on the other. The 25's 100's and 500's are styled like the 5's as i recall.

My perspective while dealing,things went pretty smoothly, there are some issues but nothing that cant be fixed or adjusted and i think the board/floor/runners staff busted their butts.

It's not about peeking at your hole cards, it's about flashing from the dealer and the prevention of cheating

Overall the new casino/poker room was nice. The poker room was way too hot though. Everyone was complaining about it - especially the dealers. I hope they get it sorted out quickly as each day is getting hotter & hotter here.

Pros

Bigger tables - more room
Nicer felt - slides better
Better table layout
Check in system is nice
Lighting is bright enough but not overwhelming
Cupholders in the tray tables
Chips are nice

Cons

Chairs suck
Too much brown coloring everywhere
Service was a joke - should get fixed quickly though
The food sucked today (yesterday)
Small bathrooms
Small TV's on giant walls looks stupid

I'll give this new room a B- with room for improvement over the next couple of weeks.

I'll miss the old room...

How long was the wait for a 3-5 game yesterday?

The first part is pretty funny... only because it seemed like EVERYONE used to arrive at the old poker room in the tents with jacket in hand, even tho it might be 105 degrees outside. LOL

The second part I agree with. I slept on my experience overnight, and I woke up this morning feeling sad and nostalgic that the old room is gone. My first impression of the new room last night was NOT good in most respects. Some here say it is "big and roomy" but I felt like I was locked in a box and I never felt that way in the tents. Oh well, I didn't want the new room to "take over" and stop me from going out to the Fort... so in the end I am grateful that I didn't like the new room more. I'll still make the longer drive out to Fort McDowell for the Saturday MegaStack tourney every week!

The $25 chips they were using for the 75 game that Mark took a picture of are BRIGHT green. They look almost like tournament chips from a table away and almost look fake. The other ones were much duller.

And I also agree about the portions. I ordered a hot dog with a cup of fruit. The hot dog was pretty much the same size, the bun was a better quality bun than in the past. The cup of fruit was like half the size it was in the past and can't imagine paying $1.50 to get this by itself when it has all of 10 pieces of fruit in it. And there was no cheese/onions that were usually in a side tray.

I guess I should have expected portions would be smaller when they are covering the food with a small metal lid compared to the huge plastic lids they used to have.

Well, I am off to get a haircut then giving it another go today.

Not sure why food portions would be affected by moving a poker room.

YOu may be right about the atmosphere. As I reference a lot, Foxwoods moved us in 2006 from a wide room with a 40' ceiling to a lower level one with a 9' ceiling. We call it "the dungeon" and the games had noticeable decline in action and morale. You can't just can't predict the intangibles.

Interesting, I left long island in 2005 and thus did not know foxwoods did this. Awful, same as this move by CAZ. That old foxwoods space was wonderful, big spacious and those tall tall windows.

What a shame. Speaking as an engineer however... I never trust architects to do the right thing. LOL. I think the architect who designed the new Talking Stick casino wasn't good at all. I went into the bathroom (not the one in the poker room) and the layout was the absolute worst I've ever seen - narrow aisle so people bump in each other coming and going... the towels are between the two sinks so that delays people wanting to wash because you have to stay there to grab towels... and then I realized the ONLY place to throw away the paper towels is... a small hole again right between the sinks... so I had to return to this tiny sink area yet again.

Just a terrible layout IMO by a illogical "form over function" architect group. Ho hum, what else is new? Totally standard. Sigh. I know I need to give it more time, but right now I feel the way I felt after playing the "new and improved" Papago Golf Course... awful. They ruined a great course IMO.

I'm going to give them a couple of weeks. They know there are issues. I briefly spoke w an upper manager, he's very good, and will be addressing issues quickly, if I know him.

Seems odd. We could mention Gila River. Their opening didn't 'fail' but it missed an opportunity to grab some business from CAZ. Mostly because the room was cramped with an annoying sign up system.