Originally Posted by Buggle
So I visited today and have some thoughts...
First the room itself. The casino reno is significantly bigger than I'd thought it would be, and others have stated, it looks like they have additional room for expansion elsewhere in the casino should they choose to.
The room itself is quite nice and modern. Nice new tables, phone chargers that all work (at least for now). Additionally, you can eat at the table, tho the poker room menu is crazy sparse. It's all stuff like sliders and chicken fingers. There's no actual proper meals that you can order in the room, tho I'd guess you could get take out from the snack bar and bring it to the room.
Now the not so good things.
When I called in I asked them to put me on 12/25/55. They informed me they were only running 12 & 25, they didn't even allow me to put my name on a 55 starter. So if they do eventually end up running 55 or 510, they def have no interest in doing so right now. They most NL they ever ran, which was a Friday from 12-5pm, was 1 25 and 2 12's.
Next was their speed. I fully understand it's a new room and the majority of the staff (both floor and dealers) are new, but my God.... I've never seen a slower poker room in 25 years of playing poker. Anywhere. Ever. And I've played in a lot of places all over the world. I played both the 12 & the 25, and the speed was mind blowingly slow at both games. There were times on the 12 game where a $25 pot would take 10 minutes, and it wasn't the players, it was the dealer. Here's some examples of the excruciating pain they put me through today:
They had this token they had to put out to show an open seat, then the floor would then come collect the token and call a name from the list. The dealer would look through the tray, trying to find the token. They've also been instructed not to drop whites, so once they've collected rake, they would drop the red chip, and place the excess whites beside the drop, wait till they've got $5 in whites from subsequent hands, then colour up and drop the next red. Additionally, none of the dealers are capable of keeping track of pot size as they go, so each dealer would stack the pot once the hand was over, count it, and calculate and remove the rake before passing the pot.
Then there was the floor. There were lists at all tables at all times. When I left the 25 was 3 handed & paused, and the 12 was 4 handed. Again, long lists for both games. A normal poker room at this point will just grab anyone standing in the room and say "what are you waiting for?" and seat them. Not here. They meticulously (and slowly, as they have to retrieve the seat open tokens), wait for each person to see if they show up. This process is not helped by the fact you can barely hear the announcements even if you[re standing right in front of the brush. You've no chance of hearing anything if you're standing 1' beyond the edge of the room.
I realize most of the above are growing pains, and that you'd think they'd be able to sort this kind of thing out with a month or so of experience. But as for right now, all the above really made the game almost unplayable for me. It was just way too slow.
Then there's the rake. At first glance it is higher than Niagara no question, but lower than Rama. So it may seem ok. But a deeper dive shows problems, especially at 12. First, the buyin at 12 is $40-$200, it's an incredibly shallow game. There was a guy who actually bought in for $40 while I was on the table. So it has a rake of $6+$1, and an automatic $2 flop rake, with some ppl buying in for $40. The second hand a played had a guy open limp the button, so they took a $2 rake on a $5 pot. I don't think this game is beatable, at least not for more than "hey I made a couple hundred bucks playing poker today. Not bad eh?". Too shallow, too much rake. I've less commentary on this at the 25, a $500 buy in with an $8+$1 is a lot better, and the $2 flop rake isn't really an issue at 25.
So anyhow... I won't be going again, the extra half hour each way to Niagara is really worth it. Only way I'll be going again is if the 25 action gets better, the game today, tho the smallest of sample sizes, was nothing special.