Yeah, sounds like they take the path of least resistance. "yup there's 20 comp dollars" vs "hmmm not enough comp dollars, let me dig deeper, ah poker comp!"

That's what I thought was going on for a second, since I'm not sure that I'd ever been at the valet for more than six hours before. But it was just that the buffet took the wrong comp points. The buffet manager seemed to think that the whole mess wasn't a problem and that I could just use 1 poker comp dollar to pay for the valet. Kinda bad when I have to explain to them how their own convoluted system works.

Anyway, I wasn't going to complain on 2+2, but I figure I'm not the only person around here who dabbles in the pits and the slots and might be creeping up on the 20 point mark, and they could almost go *poof* on you too if you aren't careful!

Is that true? Seems crazy to think they’d fly 6 hours past Vegas for one casino in an otherwise unexciting east coast city. Or maybe not 6 hours due to the polar route, but hard to imagine it’s closer.

Rumor at Twin $5/$10. Can’t possibly be true, but “no more tournaments at Encoré.”

I heard no more weekend tournaments due to parking situation

I've heard this from reliable source as well. Thursday-Saturday, no tourneys.

The March schedule is up on Poker Atlas. Monday to Thursday two tournaments a day at 12:15 and 7:15. Friday at 12:15 and Sunday at 5:15. What is out is Friday night, Saturday, and Sunday morning.

Noooooo, hopefully not permanent

Encore will be adding a hh promo for Wednesdays. $1500 every 30 mins

This is of course tantamount to no tournaments at all for those who work during the week, and a major bummer.

My wife has been playing the Saturday or Sunday day events, and then I play cash; then, when she's done, we'd get a big meal, then she'd play slots or table games while I played more cash until past midnight. I'm not saying we'll boycott the place, but our visits will plummet by maybe 75% I'd guess, as we'll need to find a new place to go for her to play tournaments.

Disappointing for sure (that they canceled the sat/sun day tournies). Need to wake up early during the week for work so there's no way I can play any of their other ones since they probably go to 1 or 2am.

Friday at 12:15?? Come on at least make the late reg until 5:00pm or something.

They were getting like 130 people in the Saturday tournament. Even if all 130 drive, are 130 of the 3k spots really too many to have to cancel tournaments lol?

It probably has more to do with the bigger buyin tournaments that have been running. The $600 and $1100 tournaments were running over the weekend and had 400+ entries. I’m guessing they just decided to lump the weekend dailies along with this.

The no tournaments during the week-end thing is silly. Why can't they just enforce some good rules for their parking first (you give business to encore, you get free parking).
Needless to say, the tournaments during the week are bad value. The sat one was the only really decent one. the other ones are a crap shoot.
That, plus the increased rake in cash game will surely limit my visits.

Even with those large multi flight events, you have to consider that with people carpooling to the event, or taking other modes of transport, and with some people rebuying multiple times, an event with 450 entries had far less than 450 vehicles in the garage. The parking explanation makes little sense — it’s really a baffling FU to the local fans of quality tournament.

Leave it to the nit wits that run a casino to "cancel something because its to successful" I swear to god it must be a prerequisite to have your resume state that you have "zero common sense" to get hired by a casino

Here they are cancelling tournaments due to parking and they have literally have half of level 2 in the garage blocked off from anyone parking there besides cops and a few odd vehicles of high rollers (<--- guessing the high roller part). I have never seen more than a few customer cars in the new blocked off area just mostly cop cars.


Heres a pro tip for Encore: Why don't you spend as much energy figuring out a way to stop people from leaving their cars there when they are going to Logan, the Garden, Fenway, or anywhere else in Boston as you did cancelling super successful tournamensts and you might have your problem solved without eliminating tourneys that crushed it!!

Heres a pro tip for Chaser and/or Seabrook: promote and run some weekend tourneys with a great structure and good rake and you will likely steal some customers back from Encore on the weekends that want to play tournament poker... Bonus: It will probably help your cash games on the weekends also as players will usually play cash after they get eliminated. Hopefully the NH roomas actually have some common sense and will seize this chance to strike back a little at Encores own short sighted ways.

I asked for a lemonade and the waitress said they don't have that anymore. I then asked for an ice tea and ditto. This was Fri night. I did the same Sat night and got the same response from a few waitresses. This is getting a little out of control. I went to Bru around 5am Sun morning and while they're technically open 24 hours on the weekends they had almost no food. You couldn't order 80%+ of the menu and they had half the ice-cream empty too.

Cancelling weekend tourneys seems like somebody high up just decided to do it w/o thinking at all. The place is falling apart and so disappointing.

What type of efforts were these? I recall hearing something last year about Encore waiting until they ironed out the kinks before attacking the overseas market for whales.

I'm with those on the ridiculousness of purposely driving away (pun intended) the larger tournament players. Those are the ones staying to play cash, roaming downstairs to table games, and spending money dining. The issue isn't parking.....such a bogus excuse....as you have the lot adjacent to casino that is available for parking (and charge $20 on weekends). This is another example of decisions being made by suits who don't understand the market sitting in an office reading spreadsheets and/or hearing about one complaint from a whale then overreacting.

Gonna be there Thur thru Sat if anyone wants to get mixed games going. As high as 100/200 is fine depending on the mix but I'd even just mess around at low stakes tbh, live nlhe is too boring and slow. Happy to start the game hu or shorthanded.

On Thursday and Friday there will probably be an 80 mix going, but the same core group also plays 150. There are two key starters that will play HU; if you don't already have their numbers PM me.

Exactly. Tournaments players are good for everyone as they usually aren't the best players. Cash game players love to see them coming at their tables after busting a tournament. They do venture in the pits, use the restaurants because of tournament long hours, and pay a substantial rake (see my post on previous page). I really do not understand this decision. Their tournaments seemed like a win for everyone...

This has been discussed since this post started about how the higher ups just have zero clue about making the process of people giving them money as frictionless as possible. Whenever a person enters your casino, almost all the time they'll spend a little $ on dining, gaming, or poker all of which yields profits for them but any hindrance for people to have a good time handing over that $ is just plain stupid. I think so many companies out there wish they had something as valuable as a gaming license which is equivalent to printing $ and they don't wish to fix the parking situation, cheaper/better food options, and good poker value to bring all the games there.

Quite a few players have gone back to private games or NH/RI/FWoods/MSun and the room is starting to be pretty quiet except for promotion/high hand/tourney days.

I would love to see this place succeed and become the go to hangout for everyone for poker and more. Before this place opened I envisioned many friends just meeting up at Encore and then figuring out what we could do from drinking, clubbing, eating, watching a game/fight, poker, etc... but none of my friends go there because of multiple reasons we have discussed left and right here. What a huge disappointment so far and while they put up a good PR campaign to say they're working/fixing things, everything is just falling apart.

On the complete flip side. Let's say they lowered the rake to $3/hand and time was $5/half hour or something like that would we suddenly see a bunch more stud games, O8, maybe even stud8, and mix games and would there be even more NLHE tables at 1/2 and 2/5 or the rake is not even a factor?

Generally curious: what % of the casino's income is from poker? I wonder if it's like 5% or 0.5% or 0.05%, etc. Genuinely have no clue. The last time I played blackjack there was a guy sitting at the $500 table with ~$800k worth of chips in front of him betting $25k+ a hand. I assume he alone stood to earn the place more $ than a week of the entire poker room. But again, no visibility into this so interested to hear others' thoughts.

No iced tea? Well . I don’t drink alcohol or soda so that’s what I drink there.

I think everyone knows that I was one of the more outspoken Encore cheerleaders and I feel stupid. I just don’t understand these changes. Since opening, I’ve played there 2-3xs a week(basically all hours I set aside for poker) but since the rake increase, I’ve only been there twice. I probably will only be playing on Wednesdays from here on and playing at Mohegan the rest of the time. It’s just so disappointing
These people need to pull their heads out of their asses and realize that they’re alienating their customer base

Limit Hold'em plays faster than NLH. I think you get almost twice the hands in an hour. If you reduce the rake to $4 on the limit games they would still make more money than the $6 raked 1-2 & 2-5 tables. If I was running the room I'd do that and promote the hell out of 4-8, 8-16 & 20-40 Hold'em.