Every casino is in a different position. Places like Foxwoods, with an abundance of available square footage, plenty of parking, tons of hotel rooms and a necessity to attract players from competition in any way possible, can easily justify poker.
Other places that are smaller, have nearby competition (AC) or other limitations can't always justify it.

What is not justifiable is building a $2.5b structure in Everett and not having the foresight to understand the amount of traffic that'll bring in. And instead of fixing the issue they just eliminate services. Shame on Wynn and how they handled this whole thing.

Feels like the central planners failed here

The Encore was conceived as a high end casino. The parking garage was to be like a LV strip casino where there was a charge to use. High rollers and hotel guests that would pay $750/night would get the parking comped and the masses were supposed to use mass transit if they wanted to play minimum $50 blackjack. Slot players would get bussed in. Therefore, they only "needed" a small parking area, which is all they could build on the property.

The poker room management realized that most poker players wouldn't come if they had to pay for parking, so they decided to comp it as well. Initially, they would check to see how long you played but towards the end they would comp anyone coming up to the desk. Revenues weren't what they projected for the rest of the casino, so they started opening it up until eventually it was all free. Like all free things, people started using it more until the capacity was quickly overrun.

Encore is now basically acknowledging they likely will never bring back poker.

I think people should complain right to the gaming commission. The reason is that they applied for, and obtained a license, with the representation that they would offer poker, among other things. On the basis of their proposals they were awarded a casino license. They were granted a privilege, not a right. As far as I am considered they are operating in violation of the spirit of their license grant.

I’m not holding out hope that the state will force a casino to offer poker if they don’t want to. But maybe the state will realize the public good is not served by this and they will allow another party to operate poker; or perhaps allow online poker down the road…if enough people complain.

I’m sure the gaming commission/state doesn’t give a flip as they know Encore will pull in more revenue with less (or no space) dedicated to poker which will sit just fine with them.

We the players are the only entity that cares about poker. Sad but true.

Before it gets that far that someone else is given a license, they'll stick 6 tables in some corner of the bottom floor and say, "see, we have poker."

I spoke to a guy at the rewards desk who told me basically the same thing this afternoon.

Might bring poker tables into the sports book, maybe a dozen tables or so, would know more definitively in August.

Could the Encore possibly have the chutzpah to raise the rake?

I think it was $6 when the Poker room closed ??

Google reviews. They work. Not sure how many people you all know, and how many poker group chats you're part of, but I'd say get a public embarrassment campaign going, start loading them up with 1* reviews due to their lack of support for what the public wants.

Politicians are slow to do anything, but companies are much quicker to react to a torrent of bad publicity.

We organized one in Toronto for a major new casino set to open any day, and they initially said they weren't going to offer poker (no poker at all in a metropolitan area of 7M people). We've been Google bombing them, have their rating down to 2.7* before they've even opened. How's that for a grand opening gift? The locals keep responding with 5* reviews, but we're outpacing them so far.

Some guy today indicated he saw something on the news about them potentially adding poker in 2022, if true would be awesome, not sure yet tho.

https://www.google.com/search?q=pick...e7e7837af51c,1,,,

Tons of 1* reviews from poker players.

This crossed my mind, maybe one way to get around the inevitable 100+ person wait list would be to triple/quadruple the rake.

Also wondering what stakes they will run, i.e., will bigger games get preference?

I really doubt the rake is something 90% of the players consider and/or even know much about. Look at Florida. If you want less wait, the reality is to raise the minimum buy-in and/or the lowest stakes. No more 1/2, maybe even skip 1/3 and start with 2/5.

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Why even have 2/5? If they want to blast out the low-rollers, only have a high-limit room of 10 tables with 5/10 being the lowest of stakes

I feel like the demand at the 2/5 level is low enough to be manageable for "limited space" while sporting a higher ratio of splashy gamblers willing to run downstairs for a roulette spin or few hands of blackjack on the way out compared to the higher stakes players.

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I'm clearly a minority here as I patrol 2p2.

But the rake increase at encore drove me away pre covid. I just went elsewhere, but I also don't live within the 128 belt so I have flexibility with which room gets my play.

I expect a 15-25 table room as part of the Sports Book once they eventually come to an agreement on that. Their most recent announcement is easy to read between the lines.

Not sure what Florida reference means as 1/2 is the most popular game in nearly every room and have some of the lowest buy-in offerings you’ll find anywhere.

It was in reference to the rake which is some of the highest around and, as you mentioned, traffic isn't impacted at all by it.

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This thread is depressing. So if covid had never happened we'd still have the amazing Encore poker room running strong, but now we might be lucky to maybe one day possible have a small 20 table room tucked into a sports book?

Blech. Man was this place great while it lasted - I would have gone more frequently if I knew it would be so short-lived...

Wouldn't be so sure it would be there without COVID, and certainly not at the level it was. They were already cutting back on offerings and there were mumblings of more to come back in the beginning of 2020.

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I love this idea. We should also contact gaming commission to voice our displeasure and suggest a poker room open somewhere independent of MGM and Encore.

Poker parlors aren't up to the commission, that would require a legislative change so there would need to be pressure put on politicians to craft/modify and pass a law allowing for it.

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What does "cutting back on offerings" mean?

Agree, I don't think poker will disappear from EBH forever. Wynn operates properties in Macau, Las Vegas and Boston. They run poker games in Macau when their neighbors do not. In Las Vegas, they just completed their biggest marketing push for poker ever with their "Wynn Millions" tournament, a $10 million guarantee tournament attempting to fill the void left by the delayed WPT Main Event. However, the business reasons cited earlier for delaying the staffing of EBH poker at this time sound very compelling.

I think putting poker next to the sportsbook is a great idea. They could make secondary money off otherwise low profit poker players by enticing them with sports betting on the side, like Keno does for other degenerates. My skepticism with the alleged plan is that sports betting is still not legal in Massachusetts, and I have doubts that it would be legalized with an approved day one before year end 2021, much less August. Tying poker to sportsbetting seems like it would delay the return of poker rather than expedite it.

EBH is doing very well without poker. It is doing better than it ever has (https://everettindependent.com/2021/...o-set-records/). How much of that is really because they have been soaking in people's government stimulus and "free rent" money for the moment or from temporarily taking business from the CT tribal casinos (i.e., lack of CT casino shuttle bus services, fear of getting on buses for hours at a time, higher gas prices changing the commuter equation, etc.) or whether it is 100% the new normal remains to be seen.

For the parking situation, I don't know if I've mentioned it here before, but, short of buying up walking-distance land and erecting a multi-level parking structure, my suggestion would be to incentivize poker players into parking at the Rivergreen lot. Validate their parking after 3 hours of play, give them some credits for munchies, threaten to kidnap their firstborns if they don't do so, whatever. The Rivergreen lot is better for people who will stay a while, like poker players tend to do. That shuttle ride back and forth is a real PITA. Getting more poker players to park there will free up the underground garage, which is of course a much better experience, for the more profitable customers.

They cut back on the quality and variety of the drinks that were offered.

Hmmm, the plot thickens

https://www.masslive.com/politics/20...this-week.html