I was trying to check the lists yesterday every now and then and there was a noticeable slow down both in the app and website to the point where the room list wouldn't load. Im guessing the new traffic on the app was too much for PA to handle and for now Encore is throttling it back until they can speed things up, hence no signing up for the most popular games. At least that's what I'm hoping.

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Random questions, that I'll find out for myself soon but just curious about while I hype up.

So no backpacks allowed? That's confirmed I'm assuming?
Smoking areas? How close/far are they away from the room?
Do tables have phone chargers, and how about cup holder situation (built in/side tables)?
Do they allow eating at the table? (kinda hope not but whatever)
Straddles. Anywhere or just UTG?

and finally, the biggest question I have.. Is there a Dunkin anywhere inside the casino? Or how good is the house coffee? (MGM's is terrible imo)

Thanks to anyone who leaves a trip report, they have been helpful and have me pumped up! Special thanks to whoever put up every games max buy-in info. Appreciated.

There is a large DD under the poker room. I don't drink coffee so can't speak to the quality of house blend.

Chargers at every table.

All reports I've seen is no backpacks, but no idea what the restriction criteria is (satchels, fanny packs, laptop bags...)

Cup holders in rail and small tables on wheels for food. Eating at table ok, designated grill for poker room with all day breakfast.

I don't smoke so can't say how far the outdoor smoking area is but it didn't seem far when we walked past one.

We aren't mind readers and I'm only aware of the cost of Bravo but I think it's safe to assume that with an 88 table room that is expected to be close to capacity much of the time the online sign-up feature that PokerAtlas provides was the clincher.

The problem of course is that whenever I'd use the app to signup on my way to a Chasers trip it was not always functioning so this gripe about being unable to sign in is certainly legit.

I've never had a problem signing up for a list at Chasers or Hampton, until yesterday, so there may be more unknown variables.

Trip Report from a tourist.

TX guy came up to visit a lady friend (free room and board), did some tourist stuff with her and went to casino today. As someone who doesn’t live around pub transport, I had a good experience coming from Lynn area, taking buses to blue line then orange line to Wellington and took the casino shuttles. Total travel time was about 2 hrs, leaving at 2:30ish and getting to casino about 4:30. Casino shuttles moving quick and were packed both coming and going.

Casino looks good, poker room looked great, I didn’t snoop around much but they seem to def be focused on creating the VIP/high limits “atmosphere” if you will for the bigger games which I’m sure is good for that population. The people at cage were the bottleneck along with slow brush, I play 1/3, sat down with $200 on an extremely nitty game where people were folding for $2 in the sb, and checking big hands on flop and turn (2pair/better). After losing $80 switched to a table with much more action, watched KQ AIPF against Aces ($400 pot) and suck out. I ended up getting ~$100 AIPF in a 60/40 spot, player called it off with QJo after a $15 raises (just to give some insight into the 1/3 action from my short session). I would say 50% of the players I interacted with at 2 separate tables are def regular players.

Dealers are clearly a mix of new and experienced (multiple tables that were short $1-$5), had one lady from FW who was good, and others who were sweating like an amateur stripper.

I will come back and play more seems like there should be plenty of action and based on the demographic and style of play at the 1/3 tables, I foresee the tourney market to be good moving forward.

thx tex

You might be on to something. I too noticed the slow down on the app. I wonder if it’s something PA was dealing with or due to increase usage because of Encores opening.

No backpacks cuz bombs, it is Boston
Smoking area is right by the burger place there is a balcony you can share with too many other people.
Yes to both charger and Cup holder.
Yes you can order from a simple menu and they have carts for food
Straddles utg low stakes (not sure if they bend rules for high stakes but probably)

Sorry guvna missed your response

Lat I was literally going to post this yesterday to please make a new rule for this forum.

It takes 5 seconds ffs.

My sister wanted to check out the grand opening, so I met up with her and her. My thoughts agree with a lot of what's been said, but I'll repeat them for those interested:

I live on the Green Line and thought traffic would be atrocious, so I took the T to Wellington and caught a shuttle. It was obviously tight, but it won't be at capacity forever. Then I felt like a fish when my sister and her friends and everyone in this thread said they drove in with no problem.

I was expecting the casino to be cold like every other casino I've been in, but I was actually hot at times. I was comfortable for most of my trip. Not sure how much the size of the crowd impacted that.

The situation at the cage was atrocious. The line goes straight back to the escalator and cuts through a heavily walked area, so they had to staff someone to hold a gap. The cashiers were learning on the job. They were very deliberate with every move they made, and they made each move two or three times.

This naturally created a market for chips before the gap. I ended up taking my chips home at the end of the night knowing I'll be back. The throughput at the cage would not have been adequate even on a non-opening night. It needs some work.

I asked the desk for a $1/3 game, and she told me it was open and to just ask a suit in that area. I opted to just take a seat at a table that looked like and ended up being a lot of fun.

I haven't seen anyone mention this yet, so I wonder if it was just my experience, but multiple dealers were using "Locked" buttons to indicate open seats. To me, that's not what "Locked" means. I wondered if we were missing out on new blood by mistakenly being seen as full or if all dealers had been trained to follow that procedure. And if that is their correct procedure, then how do they indicate an actually locked seat?

The dealers were okay. They seem timid to verbally call the floor if they have their light on even when a floor is in earshot. We sat for two downs with the light on looking for a second deck so we could use the auto-shuffler and get some hands in. I finally waved down a floor myself.

I will say that once we did have the floor's attention, he was very friendly and responsive. If he is representative of the floors in the room, then they seem to prioritize customer care and fun over some strict set of procedures. It was a good sign.

There were a few misdeals and a mis-placed button, but it was not terrible for an opening weekend. Someone mentioned that the drink service was good, and I agree. The servers were fast and frequent, not too disrupting, cheerful when you do engage with them. Everyone at the Encore was so nice. There's a great energy among everyone who works there, which is promising when you consider that they were still figuring it out during such a crazy day.

I took the shuttle back to Wellington. There was no queueing system outside of the casino, so it was a mad rush for buses that were still in motion. That could use some improvements.

Those are the items I think might be of interest.

So I asked about the “locked” button, and the reason they are using this. Explained to me that they are being used to prevent players already seated at the table to move INTO the open seat once a player bust. Framed to me, that the new players get the actual open seat, instead of big stacks having the ability to move into new seat for better position etc. This should be confirmed by someone who interacts with floor next.

I've literally driven in/out of the main parking garage 6 times in 2 days since I had to run out for errands/real life duties and I've even hung out just for drinks/food with friends who were there who are locals/not poker players and it has been zero issues with parking. Today was a complete 180 from yesterday. Felt borderline empty walking around a bit.

Yes to all the logistical issues all over the place not just the poker room. Buffet was a joke. Every table had plates piling up and no one refreshing your drinks. My person seemed like they had never worked at a restaurant before much less a nice high end place to eat. Everyone felt confused as to their duties, even the guy who's only job is to slice the prime rib was having major problems. My belief was that their interview process allowed them to hire the best of the best out there. They were supposed to be able to find the best bartenders, hostesses, security guards, etc... but so far they're like most other places when they first open. I've eaten at quite a few buffets in my life and I felt the food was of very good quality, just a little bland.

I am always curious why they just don't have a push cart with $100/$500 chips and two cashiers and a security guard so they can go around the room exchanging cash for chips with one counting your cash and one counting the chips they hand you while the security guard makes sure no one pushes the cart down the escalator, through the main casino floor, to the valet, waits for their car, and puts it in the trunk... ha but you get what I mean. The fact that chip runners would not be back with your chips right away is a very big hassle. But all in all this is the growing pains. I'm sure most large huge poker rooms experienced this kinda stuff when they first opened.

I just can't believe how so many issues were not fixed with so much prep time. The boxes, the wireless sucks, the TVs are so small and far away, Poker Atlas not working, everyone giving wrong answers to questions way too often goes to show that not only was training not adequate but not a big concern. I understand that a lot of the employees from the sign up desk to the chip runners to other random employees are actually like guidance counselors on summer vacation or like some local they had to employ as some kind of agreement with Everett and they're probably in an union or something.

The major pet peeve of all my poker friends so far is they hardly fill the tables. Some 1-3 games were 5-6 handed for extended periods of time and I don't get that. Don't get me wrong, I've never run a poker room and I'm sure it is very difficult but it seems like things could've been a little better at opening but I am optimistic things will trend up soon.

There was a good discussion today about having one or more 20/40 Limit Hold'em games or to add a kill to it or to try and start a 40/80 game but it was consensus that 40/80 prob won't last/survive so best to do a few 20/40 or add a kill. Things like that are healthy for a poker room to discuss and implement based on the players.

Met up with a buddy who gambled quite a bit in Vegas Wynn at Bacarrat and was offered a few nights comped at Encore. His room had the worst view ever of the side away from the Harbor and all you saw was the roof of the casino floor which is so stupid that they didn't put some plants or paint it a nice color or install solar panels or whatever, it was such an eye sore. Then all you could see after that was a MBTA garage, a parking lot across the street, and some random ugly looking scenes. TV, bathroom, bed, mini-bar, desk/chair, iPad control center, etc... all looked very nice.

How can that market not be able to healthily sustain a 40/80 limit game? That seems quite sad to me. I mean I don't know why anyone would wanna play just straight LHE but that game was running at foxwoods at times so obv they are out there. I really hope some interest gets shown for mixed games in the 20/40+ range, haven't seen any interest lists on pokeratlas yet.

Now 2/5 is available for registration. Moving in the right direction!

Poker Atlas works great for Chasers. There's an occasional bad beat, but usually works fine. There was an adjustment period. Guessing softwares interfaces had to be customized and tweaked, possible for every new client with similar software. The longer Chaser's has been using PA, the less bad beats. Probably some sort of concurrency issue. If you try again a few minutes later, it usually works.

EBH obviously has more volume. But it's still tiny numbers. The software should work fine after some tweaking.

Low limit games not allowing for PA registration must be a EBH limitation, since it's allowed for Chaser's. It's similar to Foxwoods not allowing calls ins for low limit games.

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What's really sad is that I've been dealing with bad poker software for the past few weeks and I've become an unwilling expert on this.

In Vegas for the WSOP the past few weeks, came home to visit family/friends and Encore opening and the WSOP.com client might be the worst piece of software I've ever used. Everyone was complaining and even myself I had tons of issues. It seems they have spent zero effort to update/modernize and fix bugs and their FAQ answers makes you crack up and how incompetent they are. The biggest joke was you can't play the PLO bracelet event except on a laptop/desktop, there is no functionality in their tablet/phone app.

Bravo was written many, many years ago and they again literally hardly made any attempts to update anything from the interface to backend etc... This is just what I learned from sitting with hundreds of poker players who all use Bravo all over the world but in particular poker room managers and tournament directors. It seems that once the $ started coming in they think they can just keep charging forever and no one will compete with them which is sort of true since there is only Poker Atlas etc...

Poker Atlas also has its own issues and it could be just a capacity issue if all kinds of updating and real time transactions don't work for sign up/refresh/etc... This is 2019 and software/apps/IT etc... mostly work very well if you just pay someone to keep updating/fixing/improving so hopefully simply investing some funds/efforts can put forth newer better working versions asap.

Then when I hear horror stories about how I can't help you, you have to go here where they have the screen to do this, or how this doesn't work because we've only had 6 months to try and iron things out or many other sad excuses it makes me think there is a market for someone who wants to design a brand new app/website that works well.

This reminds me of how someone I play poker with who worked at a small company was in charge of purchasing and they used to spend 10 hours a week simply ordering things from a dozen places. Once they found out that Staples sold everything they needed and for even cheaper than what he was paying currently those duties went to like 2 hours a week. In IT everyone has recently been moving their stuff to the cloud and there are all these experts who can help you fix your app/software/program/website to work super fast and without glitches and you don't have to worry about that stuff anymore because they're charging you and it can scale to be bigger and bigger so you're not constantly adding stuff to your self-managed data center which is a super pain. I'm sure Bravo and Poker Atlas are making $, let's hope they'll improve their product which will help all poker rooms improve and make playing more fun for recreational players and that is what will make all of us more happy.

Poker Atlas now says 1-3 NLH will be available for online registration soon.

In town for a week from Montreal visiting my girlfriend who was working during the day. My frame of reference for ‘nearby’ rooms are MGM Springfield from being in school in Amherst last year and then Playground at home. Drove from Allston at 11 a.m. since I read parking was free for the time being which took half an hour and went straight into p2 and got a spot right next to the West elevators that led directly to the casino floor with the security not checking ID. Signs weren’t great for the poker room but I knew it was upstairs so went straight to the escalators.

Since I already had a red card from Vegas, I put my name on the lists and went to the cage to get chips for the $3k I brought. I had 1.5k in 50s which the cashier counted very awkwardly by the 100 that she laid out by 800 and then 700 that led to her losing count and struggling to figure out how much I had with her getting 3.5k and then 2.5k before getting it right at which point she carded me cuz she said I look young (I’m 32). The supervisor who she had to call over to verify chewed her out a bit for the way she laid the bills out saying that’s not the way we do it and you should count by the thousand as he also struggled to count.

I got immediate seating for a new 5-10nl that had most seats locked up but only 2 others were at the table and the set up seemed like it was gonna take a while so I switched to 2-5nl which I got a seat on right away. The table seemed very reg filled and was super nitty in the 40 mins I was there with with several walks and lots of limping or very small raises pre. I doubled up some guy when I opened AK utg for 20 and he called next to act. The flop was A32 and he called 25, the turn a J and I bet 60. He threw in 4 greens so was forced to min raise and I put him in for his 350 effective and he called. I showed my hand, the river was a 2 and he turned over A3. Dealers were average to poor and I caught one taking $2 for the jackpot (which isn’t in effect yet to build it up) drop which I called her out on that it should just be $1 and she’s like oh ya. In the same hand she had only placed $2 for rake and when there was a bet of 20, a raise to 60 and a fold she didn’t take any more despite it being 10% max $5 and I obv didn’t say anything about it. I barely had any service on AT&T and was unable to log on to the wifi or use data.

I got called for a new 2-2plo after that but also for 5-5plo a minute later and it was unclear if the 2-2 was gonna get started since several of the players were on the 5-5 list and since the 2-2 was only 500 max which I find too short I elected to sit at the 5-5 w 1k to start. I was able to connect to the wifi from the table in the middle mid-stakes area which again seemed very reg filled and was pretty nitty (only UTG is allowed). Our second dealer seemed brand new to cards and was shaking a ton and flashed or flipped over at least 1 card every single deal of his down including 2 misdeals which rly sucks in a time game ($9/half hour; FYI they don’t do half time when the table is short with the reasoning being you get more hands). Fortunately he said they told him not to take time since it was in the first 2 downs of the game which obv ended up being wrong but we didn’t mind.

The process for taking time was highly inefficient in general with the floor sometimes coming around every 30 mins but other times doing it when there was a push even though that could be 45 mins or an hour which sometimes caused us to pay twice in 15 mins but then only once for a an hour. I wanted a snack and ordered a clam chowder that was $10 which and came within minutes (as did most food people ordered to the table) and was worse than the similar $6 one at Springfield. The comp system wasn’t working yet so who knows if hours right now are getting logged right now.

Another 5-5plo opened which wasn’t made a must move since the floor said Atlas wasn’t working properly yet to be able to do so. At one point a number of players at my table tried to switch to the other since they spotted a fish but the floor wouldn’t allow switching while both tables had several empty seats. A few guys got fed up at my table and quit which left us 4-handed and the other table 7-handed so myself and the other guy who weren’t on the list to switch asked if we could do so and since we were at the table longest we got priority (this priority is also how switching seats works).

The action was much better at the new table with some straddles (no button straddle allowed) and tons of raises and reraises pre. My girlfriend who works in South Boston was planning on taking public transport to come but ended up taking a $10 Uber pool from South station which took around 35 mins at 5 p.m. She wasn’t asked about her small backpack which had a laptop in it and made her way up to the room where she was IDd. We were able to grab a spare chair from an unused table for her to sit behind. The cocktail waitress wasn’t allowed to serve her and I was only able to order one drink at a time with mixed drinks coming in very small glasses with way too much ice.

I ended up being in for 1.5k and didn’t play many big hands and quit at 8pm for about a $400 loss. The cashier line only had a 1 person wait at that point which was fortunate as it had 5+ which took a while most times throughout the day. The parking gates were open as expected so I didn’t have to pay for that.

TLDR;
Slow service at the cage
Nitty reg filled games at 2-5nl & 5-5plo
Mediocre to poor dealers
Service & wifi spotty/unavailable in certain areas
Atlas not working properly yet making must move & poker comps unavailable
Very fast table side food service but expensive and not good
Nitty drink service

Some more things I thought of since my TR. Some is kind of a repeat of what others have said but I think sometimes it helps to have multiple reports to corroborate things

-All tables are 9 handed, as in 9 cup holders built into the rail that everyone squares up to. The tables are big enough they could sit 10 handed if they wanted to, I'd reckon. It's possible they have some seats with 8 cupholders for stud games perhaps, but I wasn't looking for that.

-There is a USB charger under every single in-rail cupholder! The ones at my table were supposedly not working (I didn't try out mine) but I saw people using them around the room.

-They also have little wheeled carts all around the room to use for food and drinks, like in most Vegas rooms. However there is a huge issue with these, and that is the wheels are too stiff, so during the 4 hours I played I heard/saw one get knocked over FOUR different times. They can fix this by making the wheels way looser so if you bump one, it just rolls away rather than topples over.

-Straddling is ONLY allowed under the gun and 2xBB only that I saw, but of course in the high stakes games it could be different.

-The music in the casino was kind of generic and bad from what I heard, though the nice thing is in the poker room, unless you're on an outside table perhaps, there's so much background noise you don't really hear it. This is SO refreshing compared to Twin River where they play a short playlist of bad 80s music on a loop, and at such a high volume players (and dealers) start singing along to this terrible music. The announcements in the room about new tables or whatever were WAY too loud IMO.

-The locked seat button issue is a bit strange. The end up putting Locked Seat buttons on completely empty seats, and putting NOTHING on seats where if a guy busts and says "hold my seat, I'll be back" when he goes to the ATM or whatever. It should be the other way around... like every other casino in the world!

-There is a Dunkins on the property, no Starbucks though. Didn't try any coffee or anything other than the food at Garden Cafe which was great

-There were women around the room holding food menus just waiting for anyone who wanted food, one guy at my table ordered as I was being seated around 11 and got his food pretty quick. It looked and smelled pretty good but I never got a look at the menu so don't know which restaurant they use for the room.

-The cocktail waitresses were pretty much all really hot, and their cocktail dresses are the nuts being slim fitting with boob windows. I ordered a water and a Jack&Ginger from one and she gave me water right away, and came back with my drink extremely quickly.

-Rake at $2/5 was $5 max ($1 for every $10 in the pot), no flop no drop. On top of that, there WAS A jackpot drop too, one dealer I talked to about it said they were collecting immediately to begin the pools, and once they get $150k in the pool they are going to have bad beat jackpots. The strange part was that he said there was going to 14 different pools for each losing hand. He said one pool for quad 2s losing, another pool for quad 3s losing, etc all the way up to a final pool for a straight flush losing. Obviously this doesn't make much sense, but that's what he said. I honestly can't remember if they were doing $1 or $2 jackpot drop, but it was definitely $1 at the first $10.

- The entire casino is smoke free, you have to go outside to smoke. I saw two different "smoking terrace"s listed on a map I saw. I think one is relatively close to the poker room. This also means when you go to leave out a main entrance, you'll be blasted with smoke from tons of people smoking there instead of going to a terrace

- The men's bathroom in the poker room is bar far the nicest bathroom I've ever been in a poker room in my life

- The cashier situation was indeed the nut low. I had zero issues getting chips when I first arrived, because it was a brand new game and the chip runners returned with everyone's chips right away. So cashing out was the only experience I had at the window, and I couldn't believe how bad it was. First was just the insane long line, which I couldn't understand... until I got up to the window. I had the simplest cash out in the world: 3 rows of reds, and 4 green singles. $400 even. She took one stack of red and put it on some special tray with a laser line of some kind and broke it down into 4 stracks of 5 chips each to confirm it's a full $100. No problem there. But then, instead of knowing that the other 2 rows were good because they were identical in size and form-fit in the tray, she took each one out one at a time and broke and counted them too! THEN took the greens and counted it out and put it on the tray too, then was looking at I assume some screen to verify whatever the laser line was telling her. Then double checked everything all over again. Then finally slowly grabbed fuor $100 bills and counted them out, then counted them again, then finally gave them too me. Insane. I can only imagine how bad it would have been if I had all kinds of mixed denominations and uneven stacks!


Anyways, most issues are very likely opening day/month issues and will get sorted out. I can't think of any downsides at all that seem like they'll persist.

Any idea if they will run 5 card omaha? It's obviously been a huge success at MGM National Harbor

What it a dealer, floor, or supervisor who explained this to you? This has been confirmed incorrect on several levels at least in 5/10 and 2/5NL by both a floor and supervisor.

* The seat should only be locked up if there is a shorter game running or the player notifies dealer he will be returning in which case he has a minimal amount of time (10 min is standard forgot to confirm this part).

* There are no seat change buttons. Anyone can request to move if there is no resistance however if another player(s) also wants the seat it will go to the player who is actively logged in at that table the longest (your time does not accumulate when in lobby). Once you move you do NOT lose your time slot for future order of preference.

* Dinner/break time is limited to 30 minutes with Dinner Reseating extended to 90 min. When you go on DR you are supposed to log in your stack size should it exceed the table max of your game and return to table with full stack if you return within 90 minutes.

* Not a single USB charger was working at my table. Maybe this was to make the Foxwoods clientele feel at home. :-)

Those are good points.

The seat change situation was explained the same way at my table too.

I also got a confirmation lunch break was limited to 30 minutes. When the dealer confirmed it was only 30 minutes instead of 1 hour like at most casinos, I was going to just pull my whole stack off the table and get seated at a different game when I came back from lunch. However every said eh, just leave it there, they probably won't pull it on opening day. Sure enough after lunch (which took probably a little more than an hour), my stack was still there.

I must say it's so nice and refreshing that dealers can swipe you in for your points right at the table, and that you can glance at the screen to see how much you've collected. Twin River's system is the nut low I hate it

How long are they doing the free parking for? Think I’ve heard first week and first two weeks so would like to confirm.