I’m definitely playing...winning the first ever tournament in the history of Encore has to be worth something in terms of bragging rights equity.

I'm sure the prize pool will be north of 50k easily.. I really hope it goes smoothly and becomes a weekly thing. 250 entries is an easy +10K for encore from one tournament

Time lowered to $8 for 5/10 and 5/5 plo!

No more news of lowering the time charge at 20/40 Stud/Mix/LHE? 20/40 O8 hasn't run in forever.

Played for about seven hours Thursday evening. Overall, I’d give the room about a 7/10 with the following sub ratings:

- Aesthetics = 8/10 - clean, spacious, loved the little seating areas to wait. The TVs are too small / too high on the wall to see easily and the configuration of the tables for some reason makes it pretty easy to see the five seat’s cards if they aren’t super careful to protect them.

- Food & Bev = 8/10 - much better than I had heard. Drink service was super frequent (like every 20 mins on average), ordered food with no hiccups (rice bowl + steak tips) and it was decent for a casino. Only complaint is that I ordered a beverage a couple times and the person didn’t remember to bring it on one of her frequent trips back.

- Table signup / game selection / floor admin = 8/10 - app signup worked great, floors were good about calling new games, filling seats was ok. Only complaint is that a couple people swapped seats (eg between PLO and PLO/8) or jumped into an open game with a list when their game broke and the floor didn’t do anything.

- Dealer (game flow, player mgmt and rules enforcement) = 2/10 - this is where it fell down for me. Second hand at the table, player A best $380 otr, player B is thinking, player C folds out of turn, player B snaps off a bluff with a weak hand. Player A flips out and dealers says nothing. Player A (action player) leaves the table and game breaks. That sort of thing happened all night long - players exposing cards to people still in the hand, moving seats away from the button and not posting, acting out of turn, etc. And the worst part was that when another player at the table tried to get the dealer to enforce the rules, the offender would shout down the other player and the dealer refused to call the floor.

- Dealer (technical mechanics and game flow) = 6/10 - they were actually pretty competent, although I would say about a third had trouble counting the pot in PLO. But generally few mistakes, missdeals, incorrect button movements, etc.

- Promos & comps = 5/10 - there was nothing when I was there, other than the $1/hr for playing. This was super surprising for a new room that should be subsidized with the casino. I didn’t even bother getting a players card as a result.

Overall would definitely go back. My hope is that they train / empower the dealers to enforce the rules, otherwise new players are going to get scared away by regs who essentially run the games.

-hf

I almost always speak up when a rule is not being enforced. If the dealer does nothing about it, if it’s egregious enough I will speak with the floor away from the table.

Of course - but eventually the dealers need to take a stronger hand at running the game otherwise it is going to turn into a **** show.

Here is another example. Four ways on the turn, probably $250 in the pot. Player A bets $150, player B calls, player C shows his hand to player D (who has cards and is yet to act. Player D says “well you have a shot”, player C calls, player D folds, player B says “hey you can’t show him your cards”. Player C apologizes. River comes out, player A checks, player B pots, player C calls AI and immediately turns over his cards showing the nuts. Player B is like “wtf there is still action”, player A folds and player B also shows the nuts.

Stuff like that happened all night, the dealer never intervened and the floor was never called. The only time that the floor was called was when an action player / donator wanted to short buy for $100 after busting and the dealer said no, but then dealt her in anyway. The floor was called and he let it slide - pitiful.

I have found that the floors seem appreciative of being told of significant dealer error.
I threw out the suggestion once that dealers who are brand new should have a 2-3 hour “continuing education” class that meets once a week for a bit. I think there are situations that come up that maybe were not covered in class or not covered enough

That is indifference/ignorance/inexperience at it's worst!!

and entitlement

Today's 1st tourney at Encore is off the hook. 420 entries at $240 and counting. So way over the $20k guarantee. Floor handled the mob well, at most a 10 min wait for re-entry line. Even a couple of floors dealing!
Anyhow a big turnout. Good job by all involved so far...

Final tourney totals posted:
447 entries
$89,400 prize pool
$19,665 for first
Pays to 54th
Min Cash $447

Be interesting to see how this impacts FW
Pretty impressive turnout given the short notice and Pats game conflict.

And multiple players from my Thursday night table and my Saturday table were talking about there being an overlay

Anyone play in it that can give us a report?

They are on the bubble right now. I know one person from here who played it. Don’t want to out him though incase he doesn’t want to share that info

Quick trip report from the tournament at Encore today.

Was packed today with nearly 450 players and it was incredibly smooth and well run, hard to believe it was their first tournament. Lot of familiar faces from Foxwoods and other rooms in the area. They roped off the tournament area once we got close to the money which was a nice touch. Only area that could really be improved is speed at the cage on cash-out, took a pretty long time for only ~10 people in the line. Nice thing about the Poker Atlas app is that you see entries, payouts, and clock info so even if you're in a seat where you can't see one of the screens (as I was today, only screens in view were showing the Pats scrimmage against their JV team) you can still track what's going on in the tournament.

Will be interesting to see how much the NH rooms and Foxwoods are impacted. Encore's running a $30K, 360 GTD on Saturdays and the $240 20K GTD on Sunday through the rest of the month and then re-evaluating for October. Won't be able to make next weekend's tourneys but curious to see how well the $360 buy-in does. Will be playing that pretty regularly especially during football season.

Tournament Trip Report:
Arrived 10:30 to be sure I got a seat!
Parked on level 3, only a few folks in line trying to register.
Got a seat ticket for table on perimeter. Was a bit drafty but not too bad.

Went off more or less on time with people rapidly streaming in during first hour.
Our dealer was visibly excited to see the turnout, as were table mates.

Around an hour into it (20 min levels to start-which became 30 later on) there was a line started at the back podium for entries and re-entries. They did a great job getting what was obviously more tables going than they perhaps expected. At one point I walked past one of the Floors dealing. Line became a small problem for maybe 30 mins total, but it looked like most got seated within 10-15 mins, as they kept opening tables and leading groups from the line to the new tables. Kinda a mini version of what I saw at the WSOP.

Fortunately line was gone before long, and probably only 20-30 folks had to stand around for more than 5-10 mins waiting.

First dealer didn't get a push for 90 mins.
All dealers I had were competent.
Food and beverage service were both excellent. Many at table ate at some point.
Rice bowls the fav choice it seemed. I've had 2 good ones, and 1 skimpy/dried one, but only had Duncan today...

Only encountered one jerk at the tables. Overall everyone was happy to be there.
Crowd seemed just a bit softer than FW. Fewer grumpy OMCs vs other venues I'd say as well, which is a plus. A few talked about being in a casino to play, and I had the sense that some were used to frat/online tourneys etc rather than hard core live play.

Floor did a great job of hucking onlookers/hovering friends.
As tables shrank down they put up the velvet ropes to block the area out a bit.
Room was comfortable as always and they ability to eat decent/but pricey table delivered food is a big plus over FW.

Announcements from floor were good. They even MC'ed a few hands during the bubble!
Re-drew seats at 27. But I got knocked out top 25....

Cash out was quick for me, with 2 cashiers trained/authorized to handle.

Best news was they announced a regular schedule of Thur/Fri/Sat/Sun tourneys as listed in another post above this.

Many, many familiar faces from FW/Chasers/MGM etc.
For folks like me who live in Boston area, this is a godsend.
I would guess impact on competition will be large, especially as they spread bigger and more varied tournament events. (Plo please!!)

I thanked floor for having their act together and look forward to many more events here!

Overall I'd rate the whole experience 9/10.

Tournaments matter, and I think that was illustrated this weekend. On Saturday, there were some attractive tournament events in New Hampshire that attracted a considerable amount of players. The NH cash games were stronger than usual, probably because of that, and as a result, more people in total were playing in the southern NH rooms combined than in Encore. Sunday was a different story. Encore’s first tournament was a smash, but the southern NH rooms were relatively dead.

Going forward, if Encore builds an attractive tourney schedule as it looks as though they will, they will really put a hurt on the competition north and south, even more than they have already.

Cool TR. Lol at the Dolphins shade you snuck in there.

I have played tournaments all over the world and this was very well run. They kept good control of everything and doing their best as they could and executed the bubble excellently. You couldn't get up and wander around to check out the other stacks. We went hand for hand and they subtracted two minutes off the clock after each hand. Short stack at my table went all in 2 out of the first 3 hands and was called but survived both times. They used tables 30-50 which is in the corner opposite/farthest away from the bathrooms and probably had 40 tables going at once at one point.

There is also some late night menu now which is $12.50 and there are 3 salads and 5 sandwiches (comes with a bag of potato chips too) to choose from and they are all pre-made and boxed up. This is available after the poker kitchen/grill closes.

Decent selection/taste?

If they had 447 entrants then they must have had 50 tournament tables, right?