This makes little sense to me. If you hire a waitress you pay her from the F&B revenue. If you have a shortage of waitresses, people give up ordering from F&B - I go to Bobby's or Cheesecake for food, for instance. So more waitresses, esp in the poker room where people are wanting to eat and play (something not happening at table games) suggests +EV to the casino to hire 1 or 2 more sub-min + tip waitresses to increase food / drink revenue over all where its wanted most.

Greebo, you're nuts. 6 blackjack or craps players are gonna order tons of high margin booze, while a table of 9 poker players will order soda, tea, and chicken fingers. My resources would go to the pit too.

Valet is the way to go to avoid any potential thieves. You pay $5.00, or free if you're Platinum. Only issue that I've noticed is that it sometimes takes 15-20 minutes to retrieve your car on weekends. I think everyone knows this info, but it can't hurt to put it out again. After all, a person's well being is most important.

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From the Maryland Lottery Gaming Website (gaming.mdlottery.com) Maryland Live generated 9,653,746.00 in revenue in 2013 on the poker tables. It is under Non-Banked Games. In December 2013 they generated 2,356,030.00 in poker revenue, or 76,000 per day in the poker room in December 2013.

I've played a fair amount of blackjack, can't say they've ever been binge fests. Can't say I've seen much more or less drinking at either game in fact.

But why are you of the impression that it's either/or? That's a false dichotomy.

F&B is a necessary evil for the casino. Its extra staff that they'd rather not deal with. They have to have more in the pits to keep the degen gamblers at their tables. Poker players are cheap to replace and even at that, will stay if you provide a minimum of service which MD is providing.

What I'm wondering is how many people who are complaining about the poor service still tip the waitress. Keep tipping, the waitresses will keep doing what they're doing and won't ask their bosses for more support. After all, another couple of waitresses is less tips per.

Nothing makes a better "show of good faith" than actually handing the cash back out. You know, like they did in December?

aren't the waitresses probably working on only tips? if so, MD Live shouldn't care if there's 10 girls working at a time. a little competition might make them move quicker as well and everyone wins.

the 2-2 PLO 8 game typically runs a couple weeknights and every friday, saturday, sunday. a couple times on saturday there has even been a 5-5 PLO 8 table as well. most people do not buy in for the max, i'd say $300 is the average buy-in. as for the style of play, it really depends, there are some players that like to straddle a lot and there have been times where it essentially turned into a 2-2-5 with tons of action pre-flop, but there have been other days where pretty much every hand is 6 or 7 players limping for $2 pre-flop and then more action post-flop.

Just anecdotal experience based on my time in numerous casinos.

Hiring new ones isn't an easy process because every employee of the casino needs to obtain a state gaming license. Md live has probably had enough time to hire more but then of course some people don't work out for whatever reason....

MD State minimum wage for tipped employees is $3.63/hr. Tips make up the majority of their income (most of their paychecks are probably withheld for taxes anyway) but the casino is obligated to pay an hourly rate. In the event that their hourly wage including tips over a pay period is less than the regular minimum wage ($7.25 I believe), the casino is obligated to make up the difference.

I agree that the room should have a few more waitresses, but if you put too many on the floor at once, then you hurt each individual's income potential. If every table had its own waitress who stood idly by until a player asked for something, the players would be super happy because everything would be super quick, but the waitresses wouldn't be happy because they'd be making significantly less. If that were to happen, the best waitresses would just move on to a different serving job in all likelihood.

This is all true, but there is also an upper limit to the number of customers a waitress can serve in a given time. That upper limit defines the upper cap of her income barring variance due to high over or under tippers.

So - when you hit the point where customers are finding it more rewarding to get up from the table and go to the bar, or to the food provider, even from upstairs than to let the waitress serve them - that to me suggests that the waitresses are not at serious risk of lost income by having the ability to be better servers.

And frankly, I'd tip MORE if I got prompt service. I don't tip when my drink takes 30 mins and my food comes back inedible.

I definitely agree. I've worked banquet/catering events before, and it's really obvious that the poker room at MDL is understaffed. They definitely need to put more servers on the floor, but I was just pointing out the problems with being overstaffed as well, which is something management would be concerned about.

If I had to guess, I would say they need something like 3-4 more waitresses for the whole room on busy night, to optimize service.

I doubt Mike really has much if any authority on waitress staffing, but I'm sure he can mention it to the right people and hopefully at some point they make some changes. I personally don't mind going to the bar for a drink, but for those of you who do, it might be worth it to try to get in contact with other people at the casino who may have the power to fix it.

Just a thought guys ... if the biggest complaint that we have about MD Live poker room is that there are not enough waitresses... it shows that we have one hell of a poker room in our backyard. Kudos to Mike and staff for giving us a great place to play. Not perfect, but a lot of the issues that have been coming up are either fixed or greatly improved.

Me either.

And if you're a waitress would you rather scuffle around in the poker room that you know is understaffed, causing you these delays and irritating your customers - who may not tip. Or would you rather serve the pits where you have the potential chance for higher tips?

I've had very good service at the craps tables at ML and my experiences have been that the tips there are far better.

How many super satellite winners the past few days?

Sure, Live can say "We're having a promotion that pays out from the BBJ fund!". But do you know how much has gone in vs what has come out? A publicly available audit of the funds is the ultimate in good faith.

And even then there are a few in this thread that would hint that MDL paid the auditors to cook the books.

Got an email that Phillips has a new menu. Yeah it was new alright, boy the prices have increased in the neighborhood of 40% on some items. The Rise and Shine which was a good breakfast deal has gone from $5 to $7 and nothing has changed...HOLY CRAP!!! They did add a few additional options and removed some others...still no salads!

Limit hold em players. Check out bravo for featured limit games. Mike and crew have been great about supporting the game and now we're trying to set some regular days/times in hopes of getting the games going more regularly.

20/40 Fridays at 3 and Saturdays at noon.

50/100 Mondays and Thursdays at 8 pm.

Hope to see you out there.

Give it up dude. MDLive would never disclose what's in the reserve b/c they don't have to since they're not a public company. Only their auditors know what's in the reserve and why'd they want to disclose so they have to share their piece of pie with you? I think you are just wasting time by constantly questioning how much is in the reserve to no avail.

The crab cake and shrimp platter went from $13.99 to $23. Pretty ridiculous

Awesome, appreciate all your work on this and have enjoyed the 20-40 games. Will try to come out and support them on weekends whenever I can.

Jeff

I ordered a rise as shine last week and they gave it to me with Mahi Mahi instead of potatoes wtf. Might have just been a mistake