Yup nailed it. As someone who admittedly will go play blackjack when I’m tilted and stuck, I would never set foot in MGM if it wasn’t for poker.

How much is parking here, and until what time for one charge?Saw a couple posts regarding cluster **** of parking in general.(?) What is the best place to park for poker room? Thank you.

Parking is free all the time.

Valet is also free if you are Mlife Platinum or Noir.

I am a regular in 5/10 NL at MGMNH and I recently spent some time playing poker in Vegas. I forgot how much better the customer experience is in Vegas. Here's a list of some things that Vegas gets right and I would love to see changed at MGMNH:

1. Players can freely exchange cash for chips in the poker room. The ban on doing this at MGMNH does nothing to prevent money laundering and only creates longer lines at the cashier and is an inconvenience. The ban can easily be circumvented outside the casino.
2. Players can call-in to wait list any game up to 2 hours in advance.
3. Hosts are super fast at filling empty seats.
4. Cocktail servers are sufficiently staffed and circulate regularly. (This doesn't matter to me because I rarely order drinks, but I can confirm the lack of timely drink service makes the tourists very displeased.)
5. Drinks are high quality and all complimentary including alcohol and Red Bull.
6. Food service is available at the table.
7. If mandatory straddle is on, dealers allow players who miss straddles to post the live straddle including when buying the button, as they should.
8. Poker tables have space underneath the table for players to put their legs.
9. No limit holdem with a big blind ante is an approved game and regularly spread.
10. $5/10 NL uses $10 chips, $10/20 uses $20 chips, etc. This speeds up the game.
11. Floor supervisors don't need to tally time drops every 30 minutes, freeing them up to do important stuff.
12. Bathrooms are cleaner and actually have working faucets with water pressure and soap.

On point #1: I think this is due to regulation (most likely federal, but maybe state as well). I thought I heard that Vegas was trying to do something similar, but it sounds like it just hasn't been as widely enforced yet. I doubt this'll change for the better.
On point #5: I THINK state regulations prevent free alcoholic drinks from being given. I'm pretty sure it's illegal in VA, not 100% about MD. No excuse for the Red Bulls though. I suspect it's a function of greed/not being enough direct competition.
On point #9: Any fundamental change like that needs to be approved by MD gaming commission. No reason it shouldn't be though. Would like to get Archie approved while we're at it.

Overall I agree with every one of your points though. There's really no excuse for the poor drink service in particular and it's absurd it's been this bad since day 1 several years ago.

I am pretty sure this is a case of 1000+ casinos in Las Vegas versus MGM with the nearest competitor being an hour away. WRT state gaming it also has to do with gambling revenue being almost all of the state's GDP. When you have to work for your customers it makes a difference.

Really good post and outside of the free drinks, most of these should be doable. If most of these changes were enacted, I’d probably consider playing at mgm again instead of online and home games only these days. The only item on the list I don’t like is the change in chip denominations. This is the one thing I dislike about vegas 5/10+


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I still cant get a PLO game going anymore LOL - baby steps.

The drink service thing is about money pure and simple. If there are 2 servers working for the whole room on a given shift - 6 or 8 servers would eliminate this issue altogether.

But no way MGM is going to pony up for 4-6 more employees. They are in cutback mode not increase-payroll mode.

Not necessarily a money thing. It is very very difficult to hire low wage and tipped staff. While being a server is more difficult than many believe, short of throwing unsustainable wages at the issue, in many locations you simply cannot get employees for some positions.

A local casino is open but has to close multiple entrances and the entire poker room (earlier than they desire even if they were not going back to 24/7) because they cannot get enough security staff. Everyone related to poker from the players to the poker room mgr want be open at least longer if not 24/7 but there is not enough staff to do it.

Given that they charge for alcoholic beverages and presumably will continue to charge for them, I disagree - I think they're easily missing out on revenue due to the lack of servers. Plus, I assume they pay them food server minimum wage ($2.50 or whatever pittance it is) and the servers make their money from tips, so it really wouldn't take much to make back the staffing cost in profit.

Not to mention the servers they have seem pretty damn incompetent.

EDIT:
That's a fair point, although again, I personally think having more servers (even if means paying them more, enticing more hires) would directly increase their bottom line, rather than decreasing.

Bad beat just hit on table 20. Flopped Q high straight flush. River quad 8s.

The new promos are a sign of clueless management, this especially:

THURSDAYS
"GET THERE" HIGH HANDS (EVERY 15 MINUTES)
w/ a $50,000 ROYAL BONUS
8:15AM-10:15PM

MATCH A SPECIFIED HAND, WIN THE POT, WIN A PRIZE:
MATCHED STRAIGHT = $100
MATCHED FLUSH = $300
MATCHED FULL HOUSE = $500
MATCHED QUADS = $2,000
MATCHED STRAIGHT FLUSH = $10,000
MATCHED ROYAL = $50,000
_______________________________________

FRIDAYS & SATURDAYS
FLOP IT, WIN IT, PAY IT!!
8:15AM-12:15PM

FLOP A SPECIFIED HAND, WIN THE POT, WIN A PRIZE:
STRAIGHTS- $50
FLUSHES- $100
FULL HOUSES- $200
QUADS- $500
STRAIGHT FLUSHES- $5,000
ROYAL FLUSHES- $50,000!!

There's one exact hand (like quad 3s or a 9-high straight) per time period you have to hit and win with which means most days $0 is being paid out, though the floors still have to update and advertise the promo. It feels like there's a promo going on when there really isn't.

The "let it ride" high hands are pretty dumb as well, as letting it ride means less people will hit them and when they do ride, the winners will often get tax forms for the promos being $600+ (more work for the staff, less winnings for most players in the long term). Doing basic promos correctly isn't hard and yet MGM is making things more complicated and worse simultaneously.

Not to be blunt but if this was actually the case - MGM would have done it years ago.

Sadly I've been enjoying my time at ML for a while now. Its definitely more of a drive for me but I think they do a lot of things right.

I think that's giving them too much credit. Sure, a company like that is focused on maximizing profit, but in reality there are a million ways they can increase efficiency that they haven't evaluated properly. How many people to hire for a specific position isn't typically run through a perfect optimization model; it's either through a very flawed, basic model with minimal inputs, or (way more likely) simply up to the personal discretion of whomever's department it is, e.g. "How many servers do we need?" "Eh serving x people, probably y will be good" and then it's never revisited again.

Bruh they refuse to properly staff the bathrooms after 5 years of being open because they're cheap and dumb. They are stepping over dollars to save pennies. Paying extra to have actually clean and functioning bathrooms isn't going to show up as a balance sheet line item, but any savvy entertainment business person knows it's worth the investment.

I also don't want to hear about job market concerns either, there are 7+ million people in the local area and you're a 10+ billion megacorporation with a grand total of 5 bathrooms on the casino floor. Figure it out.

LOL the idea that they randomly guess at staffing and *never* revisit it is laughable. Johnny knew from Day 1 they werent staffed properly. People complain about the service every single day. At least at the very beginning, they simply were not allowed to hire the staff they needed to hire. I assume it is probably the exact same now.

And agreed, the idea that you couldnt pay a few more cocktail servers or another bathroom cleaner - out of all the people in the entire DMV - is laughable. Plenty of folks out there that would work those jobs if they were actually hiring for them. How is it that ML doesnt have these issues?

From that standpoint, this room has just been poorly managed from the beginning. Whether thats the room staff or someone above them who is refusing their requests for adequate support.

Ever been to Aria or Bellagio? I was just there last week. I never waited more than a few minutes for a drink there and the place was absolutely jumping. Always see 2-3x the number of servers as you'd see at NH, each server only seems to work a handful of tables.

The drink service issue could also be resolved with a self serve option. A fridge with bottled water, a coffee maker and soft drinks would satisfy most of the basic needs.

It would still require someone to re-stock it throughout the day.

The drink service at MGM MH is the worst I've seen at any casino, hands down.

They had this for a while in the old room downstairs, for coffee and water, but did away with it.

I think this was due to servers complaining that it was hurting their bottom line...
Borgata/ Vegas servers are generally much better IMO because they view it as a career and preform accordingly, most of the MGM servers are new and just go through the motions...

MGM management in the past said a lot of the issue was when they switched to union servers. They were required to use full time employees but many of the servers they had liked were part time and it has been hard to recruit full time ones. Really, it seems like a money issue to me but that is what I was told.

While I agree with the sentiment I think the Vegas comparison was a little slanted. They extended the call in time to 2 hours for WSOP at several places but it’s normally one hour. At Wynn you can order food but you can’t eat it at the table. Other places I went to did not have table side ordering except Resorts. They also don’t like players to exchange cash and chips. I heard a Wynn dealer ask two players to do it out of their sight and the Aria discouraged it, although neither threatened to kick anyone out over it. I think they would get more revert if they did a reasonable job of cleaning the restrooms and had more servers. The other asks seem like nice to haves and until we get through Covid rules I doubt there will be any progress.

They have a cooler full of bottled water today.

Fore,
I have to respectfully disagree. I have worked in horse racing for the past thirty years and for the past twenty of them for Casino owned properties, and in every case regarding any positions they refuse to hire enough staff. Not just because of the salary (which is usually not near enough), but because of the benefits, so even if they do want to hire more staff, it's usually on-call or part-time. Example: at every poker room during the WSOP they have long lists (especially Aria & Wynn and of course WSOP) and if they had more staff could reasonably have eight-ten more tables going, but they only hire dealers and floor as on-call right now.
In every single case, the people in charge of hiring always decide the best way to increase profits is by cutting costs, not increasing revenue. Several of my bosses have been promoted or moved to higher positions at other properties, so I guess that is the way to do it, at least from their perspective.
Tuffbeat

Well first you can’t really use poker dealers during the wsop as a example. So you hire 30 more dealers, what do you do come Dec? You should not base staffing levels on current demand. But if you did do this it would have to be part timers and next month they might be getting 7 downs a week.

Also your comments about benefits and part time/call positions actually tangentially supports my position. The original claim was that positions were not filled due to money. If positions are not desirable due being part ime, that supports my claim that wages alone are not the solution.

I spent the bulk of my career in a commodity business (and casinos are a commodity business, particularly the house games, albeit a tiered commodity biz). Yes, mgmt in these biz are always very cost conscience. They have to be but also the money made by cost cutting is easier to measure. I worked on both sides and chose to specialize on the improve revenue and margin side. It reduced career upside potential some but it was much more fun. Still was harder to sell projects.

Fore, do you play here / are you local to MGM NH?