I usually tip $1 on at least the first run of chips. If I have to reload, it depends on how much I'm buying/adding-on.

As a BTW, are there still the huge crowds and high limits on the other table games downstairs now that there has been a few days to cool down?

When I was there last night the roulette table I was playing had a 25$ minumum and the BJ was 100$ per hand.

I saw a four card poker table that also was running a 25$/hand minimum.

No, it depends on how much I'm getting. Usually over $100 is my tipping point.

Old news, but I didn't see it this thread...

"Penn National was not able to pay the West Virginia Lottery Division the required $1.5 million licensing fee until after the start of the state’s fiscal year, which began July 1. However in order to keep the casino on track with its launch of craps, roulette, poker and other long awaited table games Lottery officials were on hand at midnight to except the check and grant the license."

http://www.casinogamingstock.net/new...t-clock-903340

Still at 12 tables for now, but I believe they are trying to get a few more open for the weekend even though the hours will be like last weekend 3pm-4am Fri-Sun.

Going on Saturday, July 24th, at this point I take it it'd be smart to be in line at 1 pm?

(that is if they maintain the 3pm start to weekend hours)

Cool, thanks guys, seems fair.

As Rapini stated in an earlier post, officials from HCT have to be cleared by 2+2 before being able to post official information about HCT on this site. Apparently, there are some do's and don't's that have to be followed before officials can post. If you noticed, both Stan and Tab are very careful with their posts with info about the Borg Poker Room. I totally agree that Randy - or someone from HCT - needs a presence on this thread. But it must be done right (and I am totally cool with 2+2 having rules to ensure the integrity of the thread and the best poker blog around).

Is that Friday Saturday and Sunday or just Sat/Sun?

Trip/recon report - Wed 14 July:

Decided to drive out after work yesterday to get a players' card, check out the room & have dinner- honestly didn't expect to get on tables given the known long waits & fact I couldn't get there early. Arrived about 8:15 PM. Newbies to HC@CT (like me) will be a little confused about the best place to park in relationship to the poker room- I suggest the East garage, ground floor if you can get it.

First impression of the casino as a whole: nicer than I expected. Lots of construction still ongoing, but the whole place didn't have the warehouse/industrial facility feel that is common at some of the rural/Indian casinos. Certainly not the Borgata, but relatively classy.

Got to poker room just before 8:30 PM - there were 12 tables running (same game mix as previously reported); wait list for 1/2NL was 48; 2/5NL was 35; 5/10NL was 12. People waiting around said some folks had camped out in line as early as 4 PM (!!) - anyone not in line by 6:30PM was on the wait list. I signed up mostly as a science experiment to see how far up the list I was going to move before I took off.

Dealers, floor staff, security guys & waitresses all appeared to be trying very hard - everyone looked a bit stressed over the huge wait lists, about 5-10% of the players waiting had bad attitudes about it & were rude/confrontational with the staff, which ratcheted up the tension levels. Vast majority accepted it due to the newness of the room.

After signing up for 1/2 & 2/5 NL, I went to get a player's card & have dinner. Traffic was light at the counter & I got to talk to the staff issuing cards for a few minutes. Two of the ladies working at the desk were trained poker dealers waiting for their licenses to be processed. Both very annoyed at WV Lottery for the admin delays- they said there are dozens more in the same situation. They both said there were poker room expansion plans to add another 40+ tables, which was echoed later by the poker room shift manager (see below).

After a leisurely dinner at the buffet & wandering around the other table games for a bit, went back up to poker room around 10:30 PM to see how the list was progressing. Slloooowwwwwly. 1/2 NL list had built up to a staggering 89 people; 56 on 2/5NL, 15 on 5/10NL. I found that outright amazing for a Wednesday night. I was looking at at least another 2 hours to get on 1/2 & probably same for 2/5, so I decided to bail rather than hang until nearly 1 AM since I had to work today.

Highlight of the trip was a 5 minute private conversation I managed to get with the poker room shift manager Brian (forgive me if I don't have his exact title correct). Some good intel from Brian:

- delays in adding tables are a mix of WV Lottery licensing problems for dealers & floor personnel, and growing pains/logistics at the casino. Camera installation is an issue. Management knows the long wait lists are driving players crazy & are trying to incrementally open more tables as soon as they can.

- plans for this weekend are to expand to a total of 16 tables, including a least 1 table of PLO. The other additional tables will probably be 1/2 NL & 3/6 limit, but that could change.

- if player interest is there as the room nears full capacity, higher stakes games will be spread- including uncapped 10/20NL.

- eventually 24x7 operations will come, but no timeline.

- house is collecting for a bad beat jackpot now, I didn't ask any details on payout structure or when it would go into effect.

- virtually all the dealers are new local hires who are coping with a vertical learning curve. Brian transferred from another casino in St. Louis area and knows how to run a room- he was friendly & professional and had a good vision of what needed to be done, I watched him work for about 30 minutes at the podium - he took time to patiently answer as many questions from players as he could while moving things along.

- the pit area in the "OK Corral" slot section near the stairs leading up to the poker room is being considered for expansion of 40+ poker tables, if the demand continues to be high - especially mid-week demand. Idea would be to make that the cash game area & use the current poker room upstairs for tournaments. This is several months away at the soonest & will depend on how full the current room stays once all 27 tables are running, especially on weekdays/nights.

- Tournaments are several months away; probably tied to that expansion. In addition to typical low buy-in daily donk-a-ments they could run a large annual tourney with buy-in as high as $1K if interest is there, as is possibility of affiliating with one of the national/regional televised circuits (i.e. Heartland Poker Tour) - thoser are all probably 2011 events, mostly speculation this early.

-once the dust settles & room is running at full capacity, they may start accepting call-ins to sign up for the wait list.

-chip cage in the poker room is still several weeks away from opening, which is only really an issue for cashing out since the chip runners seemed to be doing a good job.

-Brian monitors this thread as a lurker but does not post, so your comments/thoughts are being heard by the staff.

One last comment about the player demographic- I talked to about 20 people waiting around for tables, roughly half were locals from the immediate area who were not hard-core poker players, just looking to try it. They universally gravitated to the 3/6 Limit & 1/2 NL games, and I heard a lot of comments about buying in light at or near the minimums. Expect calling stations to be the norm! Only a handful of people seemed to be experienced/serious players. Two guys that got seated just as I left were quite annoyed that they got there at 7 PM & still had to wait 3+ hours for a 2/5 NL seat. Very slow turnover on 2/5 & 5/10 NL for the first 3-5 hours is the norm.

I'll probably give it another few weeks before I go back unless there is a sudden surge in the amount of tables running- looking good for the future!

For all the folks who keep asking about the hours, they are posted on the casino website:

Hollywood Casino @ Charles Town Poker Room info

Played last night.

Arriving about 6:30 got me on the 5th of 6 1/2nl tables.

Still 12 tables overall. Same distribution as before.

When I left the poker room about 11:15, the 1/2 list was 70+, 2/5 was 50+; all others were at least 10+. (Sorry, can't remember exact numbers for the others: they were shorter than the 2/5, but they weren't short by any reasonable standard.)

On cashing out, I took my chips over to the pseudo-cage in the corner and colored up. They were happy to get my nearly 3 stacks of red; and I was happy to stick a couple of blacks and a few greens in my pocket and leave, instead of waiting in line at the cashier downstairs.

Got to speak to one of the floors for a few minutes. I left with the impression that we can expect the current situation (less than 27 tables for less than 24/7) to continue for at least the next couple of weeks. He did say they hope to open some more tables (the numbers 14-16 were mentioned), but he didn't say exactly when, and I didn't get the opportunity to ask. When I tried to get him to confirm that we would definitely be at 27 tables running 24/7 in two weeks, he refused to commit.

So.


A large part of the problem is getting cameras installed, though I'm not sure that's the only issue. Our conversation was cut short by work before I got the chance to ask him anything else.

He also mentioned that they were looking at a slightly different way to do things at the start of the shift to speed up the first seating at the tables and get the cards in the air sooner.

Right, that won't solve the blatantly obvious bottleneck of too few tables open for too few hours, but it may at least speed things up a little at the beginning in the meantime.


--klez

They're not whetting demand; they're chasing away customers.

Sure, they'll come back and play when they can easily get a seat; but they would be playing now if it was possible.

When I got in line last night, two guys walked in and started asking me questions about the room. I asked them what stakes they wanted to play, but they didn't understand the question. They just wanted to know if they could play Texas Hold 'em.

They seemed pleased that they could get in a 1/2 game for $60, but they weren't going to wait in line for it, and left.


--klez

And I have a hard time not agreeing with this statement.


--klez

thanks for the updates guys. it's mind boggling why it's such a problem to get the cameras installed. all the tables are setup where they're supposed to stay. some tables already have the cameras setup. you'd think you just had to replicate the same camera setup for every table and you'd be done! wtf

I looked around the other games while waiting for my seat last night (about 7:30 pm).

I did not see every table, but what I did see was:

$50 min BJ tables running

1 $50 min craps table. There were at least two others installed, but not running.

$25 min roulette

$25 min 3 & 4 card poker

1 $15 min Let It Ride

I saw very few empty seats, but there weren't large groups of people surrounding every table.


--klez

thanks for the trip report 9985.

I just want to say to anyone from CT who's watching this thread that I sincerely hope you go ahead and start making your expansions ASAP. The demand is truly there. I hope that if we can expand past 27 tables, anyone in the DC and Baltimore area will be able to play 1-2 with a wait less than 30 minutes.

Just to break it down a little here are some populations of counties nearby CT which will have it as its primary casino...

MD-Montgomery - 971k
MD-Prince Georges - 835k
MD-Frederick - 221k
MD-Howard - 269k
MD-Anne Arundel - 511k
MD-Baltimore City - 637k
MD-Washington - 145k
VA-Loudon - 169k
VA-Fairfax - 1.01m
VA-Fauquier- 55k
VA-Clarke- 12k
VA-Culpeper - 34k
VA-Frederick -55k
VA-Rockingham-68k
VA-Shenandoah-35k
VA-Warren-32k
VA-Alexandria-128k
VA-Prince William-380k
VA-Manassas-37k
WV-Jefferson-42k
WV-Berkeley-102k
WV-Morgan- 16k
WV-Hampshire- 20k
WV-Hardy-12k
Washington DC - 600k

Thats a total of 6.387 Million people..... 2% of the entire United States and CT has a lock on those locations not to mention some reach even further out.

Right now they can hold 270 people.
On Saturdays if only one out of 10,000 people in those areas wants to play poker, its double booked with 640 people.

I myself plan on playing 30+ hours a week. I need myself .2 seats.

don't forget
VA-Arlington County - 210k

Not necessarily. A lot of the Baltimore area people are going to Delaware Park since it's also only an hour away and rakes normally. But I agree with you that the demand for poker in this area is HUGE, and CT is only doing themselves a disservice by not being fully operational already (not that it's their fault or anything, but the WVA lottery drama is hurting them big time).

Do you buy chips at the table or a window b4 u sit down?

There is a cart full of chips, when you get called, you go to the cart and buy your chips, then go take your seat. You can buy reloads at the table though.

I didn't see what was done for the initial seating when the room opens for the day, but for everyone that was called off the list, they use chip runners to bring them to the table.

The level of demand at CT just blows me away, when Harrington, DE rooms seemingly can barely fill the tables. For now, I know where I'm playing poker, and its not Charles Town.

I'm about equally as far away from both casinos. Hardcore players will still probably prefer CTown due to the number of fish at the tables. Once the novelty wears off, and the pros start eating the fish, I expect demand to further decline. But this probably won't happen until at least next summer.