Oh yeah, I take back my comment! I chopped for first the one time I played a tourney there. Hella sketchy seeming but fun game with soft players.

Come on, man. We're all degenerates here, but normal people don't want places like these built near them. Have you tried driving to Foxwoods or even Gillette Stadium? But, like Monty said, it's still better than the chemical waste dump that it was, which might have greatly helped it win the bid. The alternative would have been replacing Suffolk Downs via the Mohegan bid.

I'm my opinion around the Needham area just off the highway would have been the ideal location. But it is what it is.

LOL. It was hard enough getting approval for Everett and failed for Revere/Eastie. Precisely zero chance of approval in an upscale suburb.

Exactly, it would need eminent domain to build on Needham. An industrial wasteland cleaned up or Suffolk downs were the only logical choices. And where they ended up is just fine in my opinion.

Not to mention that it's actually pretty easy to get to off I-93.

NEWS ALERT!!! It's in a city, there is going to be traffic.

I didn't say that Needham would have been at all possible. Or even a consideration. I just thought it would have been a perfect location.
Especially since I live 15 minutes away!
Anyways, I'm not here to argue.

Needham? Do you know what the traffic is like there? It's really got bad in the past few years. There's giant backups as far out as Dover now.

I figured as much. Just giving you a hard time.

This is the internet! We're only here to argue and watch porn. Get back here!

Uhh, yeah, you're actually right. That section of 95 gets pretty bad during rush hour. Although I won't be coming from the freeway.
Oh well, back to watching some more porn I guess

Today's 12pm $200/$10k tourney:

106 entries
$16,900 prize pool
Ran smoothly overall, only 1 "slow" dealer...

Lots of reg faces now, slightly tougher field than Sunday's edition.

Be very curious to see how tomorrow's $360 Encore event impacts FW's 2 x $400 flights $75k big event tomorrow.
First big FW tourney I'll miss due to convenience of competition in -for me- much closer Boston.

Yeh, and when you cashed out your $300 stack, they would give you back around $270, if you weren’t paying attention.

If there were no payoffs, outrageous emininet domain fees, etc., the exits off of of 93 could be much better. But that isn't happening in Boston. Nor was it going to be possible to get political approval for anything on the I-495 loop where easy on/off would be possible. Given those constraints, it is located about as well as it could be.

There are bus routes that can get them downtown from Newton Corner and I think even other places in Newton, and from there they could take the T.

Nailed it.

I'm glad you had a good trip.

Encore Everett might seem like kind of a lousy location now, but my prediction is that in 50 years, if it is still above sea level, but long after the Tobin Bridge has fallen into the sea, and so Route one runs further East on the other side of Admiral Hill, it won't seem so bad.

Right now it's sort of hard to fix the traffic because there is too much traffic. I hope the towns reinvest all that casino money wisely. Probably start with a police barracks since a few of those over glorified crossing guards and all those staties walking around the casino could probably use some place nice to put their feet up (not that the SUVs aren't nice). Could they bypass some of that 99 traffic down Robin St.?

But who am I kidding. This Boston and it's taken 20 years for the Green Line extension and it ain't even close to done yet. I remember when we all aspired to be a better place than New York, but it's still tough to call.

And besides, maybe we'll be paddling canoes across the Lower Mystic while being chased by Dennis Hopper in an eyepatch on a natural gas tanker with only crude weapons to defend ourselves with come the 2060s.

I own a tourism/event planning biz in Boston and so I am a little familiar with how people feel about getting around town. Yes, Everett is not ideal like Seaport today but Seaport wasn't ideal a few years ago as well. Encore is going to clean up the area and make it nice and in a few years people won't remember that it was like it is now. There are so many neighborhoods from Fenway/Boylston Street area that were pretty rough but are now absolutely beautiful. West Roxbury and many parts of Dorchester and the South End were all pretty rough not too long ago. Distance wise it is very close to everything and Encore isn't exactly convenient but this is the best you can do without tearing down something else. There simply wasn't any space that wouldn't have been way more expensive. Parking would be $60 instead of $42 if it was Seaport and it would be a lot more congested with less options to expand. It would've been amazing if Encore was at the Seaport as that would be a hop skip and a jump from Faneuil Hall and the Aquarium and lots of rich workers (law firms, tech workers, etc... are plentiful in Seaport) and convention goers but I think they tried to get it there but the project might've cost 4 billion. Ideally Encore would be in Copley Square on the left of the Library if they could take the church away but they got what they got.

I live about 15+ minutes west of Newton, and I regularly make this trip in 30 minutes each way, via turnpike and 93. But not at rush hour.
If you would/could time your drive to midday, you could do this in 15-20 min., barring accidents. (And it would take < 5 minutes to get from Rte 93 to the casino.).
Likewise, Encore to Newton after 7 PM is about 20 min.; at 5 PM could easily take an hour.

Oh Lordy. Copley could have never handled the traffic from the suburbs. I've been stuck in traffic in the Back Bay at 2pm on a Saturday when something goes even a little off (ok, maybe there was a parade and a Red Sox game, but still, Boston needs to put its parades somewhere).

The T from Newton shouldn't be a problem. I'm still taking the T to Encore on Friday nights myself. Sucked a few weekends back because of that fire on the Orange Line tracks, but hey, that's the T for ya.

I do find myself glancing out the train car window at Assembly and wishing I saw that pedestrian bridge going up, but... well, we shall see.

They wouldn't do the T from Newton - too slow. They would do a direct bus from Newton or just Uber.

Was on the list for 8/16 mix today. They started the game when the list was at 6 people but only 3 showed up so they broke it up before we were dealt any hands and cleared the list

Do poker MTTs @encoreBH not earn any type of comp points? I played the $200 ($160+40) at my balance is zero? If they don't thats cool but why swipe my card? to track how unprofitable I am for the house?

I didn't even think about this but yes, you 'should' get $2-$5 points 'maybe' but since they didn't and haven't done it I just assume they'll pocked the whole $40 rake from the $200.

Location really isn't that bad. Going in was fine for me and although I hit traffic on way home it could have been worse. I think Boston really just needs an express lane to braintree so there aren't 19 lanes merging into one when you're trying to go down 93. Charlie baker doesn't give a damn so our highways and T will never improve. Not until like 2040 or some ****. Maybe some day Elon could build one of those tunnels under boston.

How were the lists yesterday at 1/3 and 2/5 with the tourney running on the first Saturday since they started having them? Did they have enough dealers to handle it?