I am curious....

I think one of the main cons of Mississippi straddle is the unnecessary beating the blinds take from having to act in EP with dead money in. Has anyone tried a Mississippi straddle where the action still starts UTG but skips the straddle and comes back after the BB acts?

Also, this would almost fix the problem of players starting the action in the wrong spot, which happens quite frequently at lower stakes.

Rio was allowing 1 table to do this last year bc everyone agreed, I did not play in it tho. I have never seen this anywhere on the east coast.

Personally, I prefer a game with a Mississippi Straddle.

If the dealer makes sure Utg knows there is a straddle, there won't be a string of out of turn actions. (As you often see at the Shoe)

Concerning the rake, I would strongly suggest no more than $5 max. The area standard is 5. The Shoe opened with 6, and is still recovering from that decision. If you can view old Bravo stats, or look at revenue reports, you will see the room was empty for a long time. Now perhaps your location would insulate you to a degree, but I still think you'd be abandoning the market share to your north, and it's a huge share.

hmm, 1/3, MS Straddle, $500/uncapped buyin, this sounds like a game to quickly get stuck 4 digits in, and for that reason, until I just move up to 2/5 for that punishment...

Mr. Grooms said that he is shooting for an experience somewhere between Bellagio and Aria. My last experience with Bellagio a few years back tells me I would much prefer more Aria and less Bellagio. A server was spending a lot of time flirting with what must have been a whale playing 2-5 on the next table over. A player at our table had been waiting for service for some time and our dealer went above and beyond to try to politely get the server's attention. The end result was that the poker room manager took the dealer aside at the end of his down to severely reprimand him for his actions.

At the Aria I never felt like the level of service was noticeably different depending on how much they thought I was going to gamble. When Brad Garrett sat down at the next 2-5 over, the staff didn't drop everything for him. Their service is so good, they don't need to. Except during the WSOP I have never had to wait for service.

Please shoot for my experience with Aria over my experience with Bellagio. I know its a very limited sample, but the Bellagio experience just seems much more pretentious while Aria seems classier.

You cant be out until you've been in... None of the details are even close to decided, but I am certainly getting some good input.

I wasnt in the market at the time, but was watching... I would imagine a $1,000 per hour high hand every 45 seconds had some bearing on that.. LOL. Less than the $6 + $1 rake, anyway...

Each of those rooms has strong areas I want to emulate at National Harbor. I think you may have had small sample size at Bellagio. Their product has changed immensely over the last couple of years. Craig (the Dir. of Poker) has done well, and his number 2 guy for a time, Sean, is now the Director of Poker at Aria.

Agreed. IF the straddle is announced and the dealer announces that the action starts in "seat X" , you usually wont have issues...

I think the Shoe is still raking 6+1

I am certain they are...

Completely agree. I've been at Bellagio several times in the last 8 months and the service has been excellent - as it always is at Aria. Truthfully it is much, much better than it was a few years ago. But @ that time they also made the decision to spread the tables apart and give everyone way more room than they used to have. Not sure if the change in personnel is related to that or not - but the table spacing change is one of the best decisions they have made.

IMO there is no noticeable difference in table service between Aria and Bellagio. MDL - and its players, including me - would kill to have table servers/service like that.

Put me in the camp for table caps, uncapped games kill recs too fast IMO...so while uncapped games are great for pros it would seem to gut fish too fast...so in my hypothetical poker room maybe 1-3 cap 300, 2-5 cap 1000 (differentiate from other rooms and towards higher end clientele) 5-10 cap 2500 10-25 uncapped PLO: 2-2 200-500, 5-10 500-2000, 5-5-10 1000-3000 10-10+ uncapped

I also like the Mississippi straddle 5x max but think that for your lowest stakes games it should be capped at 2x

+1 on the no MS straddle. The increased shallowness of stacks takes so much of the poker out of poker, it's very anti-fun.

Very reasonable IMO

I wont even go to the shoe because of the mississippi straddle and it is down the street, will most likely never set foot into MGM if they have it too.

I prefer a MS straddle to an utg straddle.

Although I personally prefer Delaware Park's "straddle from anywhere with the button getting preference" rule, I don't care which rules are in place as long as they're enforced 100% consistently. And that goes for almost any other rules Johnny chooses.

Regardless of where you stand on the issue of straddles, it's important to recognize that reasonable people can make an argument either way because it's not that important to the game either way. For example, this opinion...

...could be countered with the fact that increased shallowness of stacks takes so much of the skilled player's edge out of the game that the variance goes up and players see more pronounced swings, which results in lesser-skilled players winning more often. Look at PLO versus NLHE: why do you think there are so many whales who play PLO? It's not just that there's more money involved at the same NLHE blind level; increased variance lets them win more frequently.

Also, the "anti-fun" opinion depends on why you're at the game. If you're there to win money at all costs, then I'd imagine that having your edge decreased equates to "anti-fun" for you. But if you go to the casino to splash around, then straddles are "pro-fun."

I think the only thing MDL could improve is having a 20-minute pickup rule (if there's a list) coupled with a 120-minute dinner list. Additionally, there should be room for using some common sense and picking up people who might try to game the system by, for example, take a 19-minute break 5 times in a couple hours. MDL handles chronic walkers terribly, as does every other room I've ever played in that doesn't have a dinner list. So hopefully Johnny will implement a dinner list and a relatively short and strict pickup time.

Anyone who would argue against the above setup is probably a chronic walker.

+1 to dinner list

How many people do you consider your market here? Is this number different than the other places? Just curious.

Reminds me of when my wife and I were discussing circumcision when she was pregnant with our first and our doctor said the decision wasn't that important.

True Story.

+1 to all of this

It's been awhile since I've been there(doubt it's changed), but one area MDL falls short is keeping tables full, filled, and fair (preventing line jumping and stealth transfers). Busy rooms Parx and Jacksonville kick butt in this area, both placing a high priority on this issue. Both use a similar system where a floor person is in charge of a particular blind level and they work as a team with brush at the front desk, as well as with the dealers (Jacksonville dealers announce "player in" very near 100% of the time). Jacksonville manages this issue with only verbal communication as they don't use a table bravo.

The MDL 2/5 has a large population of bum hunters who chronically table change and sit out/wait for a mark to play with. A lot of the 2/5 games have become just awful there recently. Nothing worse to a rec player then 23 year old anti social millennials bouncing around, sometimes with and sometimes without the floors permission, like they own place.

A dinner list combined with a some table change restrictions might help that out. Something like once you change tables you must wait two hours before your next table change.