The amount of space in between poker tables is nowhere near good enough, and the stupid cocktail tables make this situation even worse.

I have had multiple cashiers miscount my chips when I have been cashing out.

He should be interested in hearing complaints about issues in his poker room that other people manage, and he should be aggressively forwarding our concerns so that the needs of his customers are taken care of.

Thanks for doing this. I genuinely wanted to see a rundown of some of JG's finer moments since it's kind of hard to appreciate the room at the moment. There has been a tremendous amount of frustration, but it also should be mentioned that poker players like to complain about pretty much everything.

As for the golden eggs laid above, I certainly agree with a few of them or have no opinion on the specifically pot-rake game innovations (like promos).

But the bolded stuff...

You're right, not everybody is happy with the room move. Count me among them. The reasons are myriad and mentioned throughout this thread. This was more of a copper turd than golden egg. I don't blame him for this.

There is not enough room between tables and the rails. There just isn't. This is a design flaw. I doubt Johnny had any say in this. If he did...then wtf?

Making 1/3 9-handed when you have repeated issues clearing lists is possibly good for 1/3 players and bad for everybody else. When he decided to do this he was basically telling the 5/10+ nl and 5/5+ 5 card players to go kick rocks.

Mostly competent dealers and floors? I'm at a total loss here. There are some competent dealers and floors, but the number of mistakes---the same mistakes that just keep happening---has remained constant. I'm guessing we've both played a few thousand hours each since the room has opened, so I'm baffled as to how you think this. I'm pretty sure we're not supposed to mention specifics about floors/dealers, so I won't.

The PPOs are fine, but cmon, this room should be able to run a poker series. Any room should be able to do this. This falls under the category of minimally competent.

I've had cashiers miscount my chips, but this happens everywhere.

I'm sure JG is a nice guy, but the room has problems that he either can't or won't fix. If he can't fix them, then say so. If he won't fix them, then say so. It's unreasonable to say you're going to address issues, then have people present you with issues, then get upset and run off after not dealing with issues over the course of years. It's especially frustrating when he does things like introduce the MS straddle when nobody (truly nobody) asked for it, add in shot clocks when I'm pretty sure nobody asked for it, and be so seemingly flexible as to give shortdeck a shot. I wish shortdeck worked too, but do you see how frustrating it is when he does these things but doesn't address far bigger problems/issues?

That the poker room exists is great. That the poker room could easily be immensely better is what we're discussing here. It's possible Johnny has no control over all of the negative aspects of the room. That's a shame. In any case, all we can do is bring such matters to his attention, and to the attention of whatever group is reading this thread, in hope of improvement.

We all want the same thing---a better room, right?

Of course it’s a great room with lots of reasons to play here. Johnny just turned off a lot of us who were hoping for a little more responsiveness and a little less sass. The bathrooms this afternoon were decent fwiw. Not peak hours but it was still nice. I echo the above post: we want this room to be “monumental,” not just above average.

The private games brought in all of the top pros from a 50 mile radius. They would sit in on the mid-stake games hoping to just get an hour or two in at the private games. See the problem is that the big games can't actually be declared as closed, private games. I'm pretty sure the gaming commission would not be ok with that. Having world-class pros inundate the room made the mid-stakes games completely unplayable for all but the absolute best regs on days when the private game went, thereby harming the ecosystem. The private game also took a few of the best action players at the mid-stakes games and retired them from poker entirely---those games are so big that people are going to go broke quickly.

Next time you see one of the private games go, take a look at the bravo list for the game in the poker room. You'll see an additional problem there.

MGM sent me a survey today and I wasted my time providing honest feedback. No clue if poker MGMT will see it, but maybe they will here.

No, I'm not just bitter....but yes, I do think customer service in this room is horrible.

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Fwiw, I also left positive feedback about the floor that are routinely great

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Copy/paste....

I play fairly regularly in some of the biggest poker games the room offers. While I understand that poker is largely a loss leader for the casino, customer service is routinely attrocious - feel like the room is doing everything possible to try to get high stakes poker players (some of whom will blast big numbers in the pit) to go somewhere else. Here are a brief list of things that make your poker room horrible:

-un-cooperative floor. If we're trying to start a 60/120 or 75/150 game in the room at, for instance, 2:30, maybe the floor doesn't actually have to say things like, "we only start games at the top of the hour" when there are dealers actively sitting at dead spreads. And yes, we see that you periodically have the top "high limit" section of the room filled with 1/3 and 4/8 games during promos. Maybe instead of putting a big game at a crappy tournament table with timers on it that crowd people in you could break down in of the small games and move it. This might sound ridiculous, but it's not. When you have $10k+ in black on the table, you'd prefer to have a little separation from heavy foot traffic area to minimize odds that someone walks off with chips if you're away from the table.

-Inconsistent floor. Rulings are a complete crapshoot on anything. Complete lack on consistency from day to day and person to person.

-cocktail service is a joke. Servers are either badly understaffed or of poor quality, or both. On Saturday, I played $60/$120 (the biggest game in the room, and the biggest game on the east coast at the time) in the back room. This game 100% would never happen without it being actively organized by players. Anyhow, I'd like to that the horrible cocktail service for winning me some money. I took the over on not seeing waitress for 3 hours...easy money.

-getting nickel and dimed at every possible opportunity. No, you don't really have to charge a player who sits down in a high stakes game 10 minutes into a down time. Sure, you /can/, but anybody with any reasonable sense of customer service would probably see that the Goodwill built by not being ridiculous about time policy is worth more than the extra $7 you get every once in a while. And no half time for short-handed games? Cool, gives more incentive to us to break a game that we organized to have run in your room. And you want to charge me $4 to buy a soda at your bar that I'm only walking to because your cocktail service is so bad? Thanks!

-some dealers routinely are incapable of dealing approved games (most of non flop mix games) and unable to count the pot. Isn't this part of the service I'm paying for? To have someone deal a game correctly and quickly? Maybe have a specific string of competent dealers for bigger games.

-cage is slow and and verification process is ridiculous. On the rare occasions that I actually win money and cash out a big number, I don't particularly want to be waiting at the cage for 20 minutes with $15k or whatever and a hundred people walking by sweating 20 while they try to get a floor to verify my game play. You have bravo that tracks my play. The cage has my card. If it doesn't exist, Implement a system where the cage can see my play.


-bathroom is undersized and routinely a mess. For a property that cost however hundreds of millions/billions to build to have two stalls and four urinals in the only bathroom in a 46 table poker room is ridiculous. As is the fact that things like soap and paper towels are routinely out.

Anyhow, I get it. You guys hate poker players because you make more per sq. Ft. By putting in slot machines or table games. Fortunately for you, most poker players are lazy and won't move because the games just go where they go. But don't worry, I got the message...I'll actively try to move the games I play elsewhere.

This is great feedback, foobar. I appreciate you taking the time to submit it.

I might be incorrect, but I believe that Borgata has bigger games on Saturdays. Borgata also is doing everything well that the MGMNH poker room is not.

I started playing at Borgata about 15 years ago, and it is apparent to me that upper management has always instructed every employee to deliver the best possible service, and to satisfy or exceed the needs of every customer.

WRT the private game, obviously it sucks for the pros, and I get it, but FWIW, if i were a live one, i wouldnt want to play with the (majority) insufferable whiny rude entitled 5/10 pros who all live in the same house and do **** like discuss other player's tendencies and loan each other large sums of money right off the edge of the table regularly. In fact, i wouldnt want to, so I dont. Thats why i started playing 2/5 again.

I would bet that the typical person who complains that they dont get into the high stakes game who want in should maybe look into an attitude adjustment, although theyve probably already burned that bridge. Not saying that getting into high stakes games should be a popularity contest, but the 5/10 pros I played with were certainly winning some blue ribbons for award winningly bad personalities.

I think maybe you arent comparing it to other casinos. Every casino makes mistakes, tons of them, and consistently the same mistakes. Id estimate that a floor person makes the wrong ruling... 15-20% of the time across all my time playing. here its probably under 10%, I can only remember one decision I thought was egregiously bad (and thought it was kinda funny, but Johnny himself was the one who made the ruling). I have also seen very few dealer mistakes.


I mean, I think from a business perspective, MGM wants a more profitable room, which means that at least some things (like more wait staff), the lost profits may not constitute the cost, so they arent entirely in agreement on what we want. If you look across america, the majority of corporations have found that running their brand into the ground for immediate profits is the best course of action for profits, which unfortunately creates an adversarial relationship between them and their customers.

I agree that we as posters do, and thats why Id be the last person to talk negatively towards someone who is speaking ill of the casino even if I disagree.

FWIW, I don't think MGM's poker room is a loss leader in the sense that they lose money but they still run it in order to attract people who will spend money in other areas of the casino. It just has smaller profit margins than other games.

It still doesn't make sense for a casino to close it down and replace it with slots or table games, because even though the profit margins are higher in them, there is a thing called diminishing returns. The casino might want to run 2000 slot machines, but only a small percentage will be utilized.

All of this should underline the fact that poker isn't offered out of the kindness of MGM's corporate hearts; it's a deliberate decision to make money and we are paying for their services.

There are some people who are grateful to MGM for doing this, but if anything the gratitude should be directed to Maryland lawmakers and taxpayers who decided to allow casinos to be build in the state.

The floor staff is horribly inefficient. I’m not going to sit here and list off reasons since that seems to have been covered over the last few pages. There are some hardworking and competent floors but they are the minority, at least during the hours I typically play. Some even seem bothered or inconvenienced if called for, especially in the early morning hours when there aren’t even many tables to cover. Anyone who thinks the poker room management here is standard is completely out of touch or just hasn’t played in many other comparable rooms.

Yeah they tend to do their jobs but they're not happy to do their jobs. Probably because MGMNH is not a particularly good place to work. Given all the comments above about service/pay cuts, I'm not surprised.

At other casinos the floor staff is all about service - welcoming, smiles, courtesy, patience, respect. Not here. Although there are a few gems among them who DO the above and I happily tip them and occasionally buy them a coffee.

Off the top of my head, Wynn LV and MD Live do floor service much, much better.

That's just a MD/DC thing in general



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It’s really not, especially given the floor staff and level of service just sucks in comparison to the staff at other MD casinos (Live! and Horseshoe).

So, credit where it's due. This happened yesterday.

1) was sweating a buddy in 5/5 PLO and just generally standing around in high limit section. Floor proactively stopped by, gave me a friendly greeting, and asked if we needed anything.

2) why yes, I do. We'd like to start 75 mix short please. Can we get a dealer? This was at 4:20ish PM. Original answer was that we could have a dealer at 5 PM. He came back shortly after and said we had a dealer at the push, in 5 minutes.

3) floor also stopped by our table a little while after our game got off and asked if we'd received cocktail service.

I'm way too cynical to think this had anything to do with my survey response, but weird timing if not. Either way, pleasant surprise!

I saw 20/40 limit mix running on bravo recently. Is this a regular game? What sort of games in the mix?

Was at MGM this afternoon.. The poker room and bathroom were clean and the water at water filling station was back on.

Thank god the human rights situation is no longer borderline!

Guys, when I "ninja edit" your posts to remove things that identify cardroom staff, I'm not doing it because I like editing things. You cannot make posts which identify PRM staff, this is rule #2 here. I have deleted a bunch of posts which were in violation.

I tried letting some borderline posts go, particularly because they were offering praise, but you guys couldn't help but start identifying staff again, more and more explicitly. Please stop it.

For reference, here is the rule. Please follow it from here on out.
If you wish to share praise about specific room employees, go ahead and send it to the PRM via PM. You can be as identifying as you want in a PM.

I don't think you are appreciating the mental suffering the poor souls go through wondering if the conditionals will change again or not. No one should have to go through that.

While your point has theoretical validity, it is my meta-attempt to tilt my opponents. Having spent time in the wilderness from time to time, I’ve had to wipe my ass with leaves on more than one occasion, and substandard restroom facilities do not perturb me.

Does anyone know if the day 2 date has been released for the PPO Event 1?

Not sure why that cant be released when the schedule first comes out but when the schedule was released last week they said the day 2 dates for Event 1 wouldnt be released yet.

Still think $300+70 is brutal but it works best for my work schedule so it is what it is.

Always carry some dude wipes. Always

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Lots of entitlement tilt in this thread

I guess since some of us have gone on a camping trip or two, the new standard of bathroom cleanliness should be that of the stone ages.

Who needs indoor plumbing, anyway? We're men! We can handle it. MGM just should have foregone a men's room entirely and instead posted a sign that said "help yourselves to the leaves and shrubbery outside, you filthy animals."

Happy to hear the bathroom situation was better. I noted the same on my last visit as well.

Why on earth are they putting 1/3 games in the back room with the room half empty? Meanwhile the T/25 game is put at the highest walked-by table at the back podium (with shotclocks).