i would suggest anyone using the link that ffxplayer posted to click “start over” and instead pick this county service

no one has a complaint about the actual food prep/handling AFAICT, and instead of county health reporting it as such should prompt the appropriate county agency as mentioned in the Wapo article

MGM Resorts is quickly moving towards joke status.

Johnny, are players in the room in danger of being preemptively sued by MGM as they’ve done for 1 October? is MGM NH going to donate to our favorite charities if we promise to stop posting about this issue?

Seems pretty easy to catch them, no? Let's say Table 8 has an open seat. The dealer puts out a seat card that says Table 8 on it, a floor/runner/etc takes it to the podium. Villain who stole a seat card the day before that says Table 8 on it swoops in and takes the seat with the stolen card. A few minutes later, Player 2 shows up with a seat card that says Table 8 on it. Obviously something is amiss. Floor is called, and asks podium which player they sent over. They say Player 2, Villain eats a ban for however long Johnny thinks is appropriate for this offense.

People then tell the story of how stupid Villain was to think he could get away with this, given how easy it is to catch him.

And FWIW (and I'm sure most ITT know this), they use seat cards for cash games at the WSOP and I think it works really well... It makes the transfer lists easier too. Podium keeps the transfer list, seat card comes in, check the list to see if anyone is waiting for that table, and act accordingly.

These rules and proposed theories to curb the seat stealing are going to do nothing if the floor is going to continue to cowar down to every line jumper as soon as the player makes a mean face and raises their voice in the slightest.

The precedent has already been set, and there's a handful of people who know they can do this and the floor will do nothing if they stand their ground.

The problem isn't necessarily that kind of theft. Instead when a seat opens and mister helpful in seat 6 picks it up to take to the front desk, he doesn't take it to the front desk. He takes it and hands it to his buddy, or the action player he wants in his game. So they bypass the list and the card never made it to the front desk so they aren't sending anyone else over

If Bravo would ever bring their technology to the modern era and allow us to get some sort of virtual notification on our phone that we could then show to the dealer that would be incredible. That would also solve the problem of missing your name being called and would allow players to not need to congregate around the front of the room for a half hour. A man can dream.


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If the seat cards are strictly enforced the problem would virtuallly never make it to a floor's decision. That's the whole point. If you don't have a seat card in your hand when you sit down the dealer will refusento let you sit/deal you in. Take a hard line stance on this for a few weeks and it would easily become the norm.

When I used to play in Commerce Casino, this is the system they had:

The desk has an open seat they call the player and they do not give the player the table number. They referred the player to the Floorman (dressed in toxedo) who is in charge of that section and he would walk you to your seat and pull the chair out for you.

In case of a table change the Floorman would come to you and would either rack up your chips or observe you racking your chips and would walk you to your new table (to avoid people going south)

No player would ever be allowed by the dealer to sit at a table without a Floorman's assistance.

I don't know their policy these days, but that was about 10 years ago.

Of course keep in mind that they were first and best in customer service which may or may not be the goal at MGM.

If this system works in the madhouse that is Commerce, hard to imagine it not working at MGM

at commerce when u table change u are allowed to sit with only the minimum at the table u move to.

this isnt done to prevent people going south, its done to prevent people from going NORTH to cover their target, which is a far more serious problem and threatens the integrity of the games. ( maximum buyins are much lower at the commerce in the $1-2, $2-3 and $3-5 games so going north is a real issue people get away with all the time)

Johnny,

As I said before, thank you for working this situation.

I played Saturday in the high limit area and I have not been able to stop coughing yet after getting home. Please understand that the smoke/fumes have an irritant that affects people like me and I know I am not the only one. This is the third time that I developed a cough after being in the new poker room for many hours.

I just want to emphasize that the air handlers did not "address most of the issue". It is still very very bad.

I didn't realize that line jumping was such a big problem until reading posts.
I can speak to one recent occurrence that happened to me that was very similar to your post.

I waited patiently at the back sign in desk for 30+ minutes for a seat at 1/2 PLO5. I was directed to my seat when my name came up. I'm seated for a minute when a two racked - table changer comes over saying that was his seat.

Was a little uncomfortable as the gentlemen was aggressively pleading case. I told dealer I was on list & was directed to come to this table...then I just sat quiet figuring that this should be an easy cure by the floor.

When it looked like I was going to get asked to get up & give up my seat I more aggressively stated that I was waiting over a half hour as my name climbed the waitlist. The two racked table mover gave in and went somewhere else.

Not sure if the Guy was legitimately told to move to my seat, or if he was just keeping an eye for a seat to open at the 1/2 PLO5 to jump over to.

Could have been a simple mistake on a very busy night, or a guy being a d*** jumping tables. My opinion is that it was the latter.

I don't play at MGM often, but all this discussion about seat stealing is really disappointing. I think their have been some intellectual posts regarding fixes, and I will admit that my post is not adding to that discussion; rather, I just want to emphasize how frustrating it must be for players to have to deal with this. This falls back on the poker room management and floor; there really are no valid excuses that prevent them from rectifying the issue.

You could come up with the best system in the world and IMO it still probably wont work at MGMNH.

In my experience, the floors/dealers are mostly friends with the worst offenders. Usually happens something like this at 2/5.

Jumper - "This seat taken?"
Dealer - "Been trying to fill it but no one's listening, have a seat"

The last time it happened and I snarfed at the dealer, I took some grief from a few other players - who also knew said jumper. They asked if I'd rather play with one fewer player - then sort of chuckled to themselves. IMO it shouldn't be on the players to police stuff like this, why do I have to put a target on my back because the floors are unwilling to stand up to their "friends"?

This has nothing to do with the new room either. This is an issue that goes back two years now.

I would love to get assistance from any/all of you to handle the seat jumping issue. Please, if you are ever at a table and it happens, FM me the table, day, time, and seat number. We are putting a zero tolerance/automatic ejection in place for those we see doing this. It will stop.

I dont play here unless Im passing thru town but I read this thread now and then. I feel like I have to jump in and say KUDOS to you. Now if we still reading on here about people jumping tables a month from now I may have to come back and take my kudos back.

I played at Commerce last week. I can tell you the floorman doesn't wear a tuxedo anymore, but the rest of your post is still pretty accurate.

Bravo, and THANK you! I live in NOVA and my last 10-12 sessions have been at Live due to being fed up with this place. If things are changing for the better with the line jumping and hopefully the air quality issue I would definitely return.

i've PM'ed johnny in the past and he's always gotten back to me, very quickly and with the name of the dealers/players i pointed out. so i know this isn't an empty statement.

Everyone,
We made a significant change to the air handling system today. Please give me feedbackmover the next 3-4 days and let me know if the situation improves/stays same/declines.

Excellent idea, sir!

Hi Johnny,

I'm happy to see you commenting on the seat stealing, but it's disheartening to see you saying the same thing the supervisors have said to us before – “report the seat stealers to us and we'll kick them out.” The problem is not that there is rampant seat-stealing; the problem is that MGMNH does not use effective systems and procedures to ensure players are seated fairly in the first place. The symptom of that problem is that dishonest/selfish players are taking advantage of this and stealing seats and transfers. You can't solve a problem by simply treating the symptom. I'll get back to that momentarily, but first...

What you are suggesting (“report them and we'll kick them out”) is not even possible in many seat stealing situations. Since it's so easy to just walk up and sit down at an open seat with no proof you were sent there, it's very easy for seat stealers to get away with it. Most of the time, players and dealers have no idea if the new player/transfer was legitimately sent there or not – it will look the same. It's easy for most people to not realize how bad the problem is. If everyone was aware, they'd be complaining every visit. When it takes 45 minutes or more to be called when you're not far from the top of the list, they think, “well, I guess that's just how long it takes.” They don't realize they got jumped by two people and they should've been seated 30 minutes ago.

To catch someone, usually you would have to keep checking the gray waiting list on the TV screen and know who's next. Then when someone comes to take a seat, you'd have to see that their player's card (if they use one) doesn't match the next name on the list. And maybe they use a different name on the wait list than the name on their card...so the only way you'd really know is if you knew for sure who the person on the list was... “Oh, 'Jake85' was next on the list and he's still waiting there, but this random guy just sat down instead.”

This is obviously ridiculous to expect players to have to go to such lengths to catch people. It's incredibly distracting and keeps one from focusing on his own game. Someone on the waiting list would have to stand around the 2/5 section and watch it like a hawk, walking up to see if new seated players match the names that were just called on the list. Imagine how absurd that would be...players should be able to peacefully wait listening to music or something, not standing there playing prison guard.

Furthermore, it would ALWAYS create conflict...dealer has to stop the game, floor has to be called, and the "tattle tale" has to look like a crazy person to everyone at the table when he says out loud, “Don't deal this guy in, he's stealing a seat.” As absurd and crazy as it sounds, that's typically the way I've seen it go down whenever a seat stealer is accused.

The other most common way I've seen seat stealers get found out goes like this: I'm playing at a table for a while and I hear them repeatedly calling a name over the speaker, “Brandon (I'm picking a random name) for 2/5...” meanwhile, Brandon has already been playing at my table for 30 minutes and he chuckles at his “cleverness." Obviously, now it's way too late to do anything about it.

The table jumpers are easier to spot than the line jumpers (new players) because you can see them just suddenly pick up their chips and move to another table within the 2/5 section, without having gotten permission. But even then, it's really hard to be the person who runs over to the table and calls the floor and everything. And even when you are willing to do that, the person still gets away with it often...they will just lie about having been sent there, or the floor will say, “they've already been dealt in, I can't move them now,” or (best-case scenario, but still bad) they are told to go back to their previous table where they are now mad at the person who ratted them out, etc. as has already been discussed.

And how would sending you a PM accomplish anything? By the time you see the PM the player has long since gotten away with it. It's not like surveillance is going to go back and investigate this type of thing. Best-case scenario, you'd have to find the culprit in the future and say something like, “We've been told you've been stealing seats and if you continue doing so we're going to kick you out.” What an awkward and ineffective situation all that would be...wouldn't you rather just have a system that prevents seat-stealing altogether?

It's unreasonable to put this on the players and leave it up to us to try and catch people. It doesn't work and even when it does it causes larger issues. Players should be able to simply focus on their game, not on catching and reporting the seat stealers. Staff should be able to focus on doing their jobs efficiently, not on resolving these issues and kicking people out. And, above all, we all want MGMNH poker room to be a place where people can overall have a good vibe, get along with each other, feel like they're treated fairly, and enjoy coming back to (and for the staff, enjoy working at) again and again. Having a “catch and report, kick people out, cause fights, etc.” vibe is not at all what anybody wants.

Back to my earlier point: you can't solve a problem by simply treating a symptom. The way to solve this problem is to employ a system that greatly reduces or even eliminates the ability of players to steal seats in the first place. I strongly believe that using the seating cards would accomplish this, provided that the staff uses them every time.

The only valid complaint of using cards I've heard from the staff is, “It would be a pain to walk back and forth collecting cards.” In my original post, I explained why I don't think it would be that much of a pain. But now, I don't even think that's a concern at all because, as I just mentioned in the above post, I think Mr. Sandbag's excellent idea of printing a bunch of extra seating cards for each table virtually eliminates that issue.

I'm sure it might seem overwhelming to management or staff to implement a new system. In my opinion, this system is a pretty simple one to bring about and here are the steps I would follow:

1. Print approx. 18 cards for each table (don't print seat number, just use table number). Keep most of the cards at the podium. Dealers still use Bravo to mark an open seat. Very occasionally, a staff member can collect all the cards from the dealer at a particular table if and when they run out of cards at the podium for that table.

2. Train and explain to list attendants/supervisors that they must give a card EVERY time, regardless of if it's a new player or a table transfer.

3. Explain to dealers that they CANNOT deal a player in until he provides a seating card.

4. Correct and reinforce how serious you are about this whenever a staff member/dealer is found to be not properly following the procedures (this is something much easier for players to PM you about, by the way).

5. If, after all this, there is somehow still the occasional seat stealer, THEN we report them and swiftly kick them out. If the procedures are followed, though, it would be extremely difficult to steal a seat.

If the above system was implemented properly, I can pretty much guarantee you that MGMNH would be a MUCH more efficient, fun, fair, amicable, pleasant place to be for both the players as well as the staff. So many arguments, grudges, feelings of hostility, etc. can be avoided if we simply use the seating cards effectively. Please consider this, Johnny. I know the 2/5 players want it. I know most of the staff I talk to wants it. And for the staff members who are unsure or negative about seating cards, I believe their arguments are unfounded, or they are not really thinking about the bigger picture pros and cons, or they don't realize how big the problem is, or they are simply resistant to change.

Again, I really appreciate you reading and considering this, Johnny. I promise you I wouldn't be taking all this time to make these insanely long posts if I wasn't so incredibly frustrated about this issue. It's obvious that you care about the fairness of everything at your poker room and that you are concerned about the happiness of your players and staff. I thank you for that and I hope you can see eye to eye with me and enact change on the seating system/procedures.

if everyone recalls from earlier this year, this is the same casino, room and management that allowed their supervisors to be violently berated and threatened by a “whale”, not to mention all the CUSTOMERS within close distance.

so yeah, if the supers can only put on a sad face and pretend that’s not happening, why would they grow a pair for a much more minor thing that’s still filling the rake box the same as the rightful player in the seat?

i’m sorry but i’ve followed this thread and played in the room since opening, and a good portion of improvements gets paid lip (or finger in this case) service and no changes happen.

Curious as to what those things are that get lip service. I have read multiple posts that have nothing but negative things to say about our room? Is there anything you like about it? If not, why play here? Obviously our product is not up to your standards.

I would love the opportunity to meet with you. Makes it much easier to answer issues. I am in the room right now, and will be available to discuss any issues you have . If you can be here today, pick a time and day and I will be happy to rearrange my schedule.

The Great Outdoors nailed it once again.

There are several obvious reasons why a policy of “report seat-stealers via PM” cannot be an effective solution to this issue:

1) As TGO said, it puts undue burden on players to have to police this stuff. Afaic, the rake we pay should buy us the expectation that fair seating policies will be proactively enforced by staff.

2) It’s hard to believe surveillance is really going to go back and investigate something so minor (from the casino’s perspective) after the fact. And even if they did, it would be a drain on surveillance staff.

3) Best-case scenario, violators will still get away with it for that session.

4) In most cases, a camera review wouldn’t be conclusive enough to warrant any hard action. It’s easy to catch someone stealing chips on camera, not so easy to be sure someone was seat-stealing, given the lack of context about what may have happened away from the table (if the player talked to the floor, etc.).

5) Most of the time, we can’t be 100% sure someone is seat-stealing; but it sure looks like they are. Are we supposed to report someone we’re only 90% sure stole the seat? That seems unfair, given that he may have gone through legitimate channels. As players, we don’t have access to all the information we need to levy such accusations with certainty.

6) This would be a huge drain on you, Johnny, to have to read every PM when this happens and waste time dealing with these cases on an individual basis.

You can see why this is an impractical and inefficient proposal. But what’s more is that, even if it somehow worked smoothly on the front end, the policy holds no weight if the floor doesn’t start dishing out consequences…


Foatie is spot-on here. The precedent has absolutely been set that if you’re stubborn enough or willing to just lie to their face, the floor will concede. Despite seeing seat-stealing happen regularly, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a player get ejected from the casino for it.

There’s a subset of players that, whenever they’re caught in the act, pretend like there’s a language or cultural divide preventing them from grasping the whole “wait your rightful turn” concept. Despite being regs themselves, they just act confused and are thus only given their 110th warning. Zero real consequences are ever dished out. With no fear of punishment, anyone who wants to attempt a seat-steal is freerolling to do so.

We need a system that accomplishes these three things:

1) Provides quick and easy verification that the player was legitimately sent to that seat.

2) Makes the act of seat-stealing much more brazen to attempt and more difficult to pull off.

3) Allows the floor to easily know if a person was attempting to steal a seat, therefore making punishment much easier.

The way someone itt described the seating policy at The Commerce - where every new player/transfer must be personally escorted by a floor who gives verification to the dealer – sounds interesting too. But, given how easy it would be for the staff to start allowing exceptions here and there, it would only be a matter of time before a system like that came crashing down.

Afaic, the seat-card system proposed by The Great Outdoors is the most logical potential solution. The introduction of “hard proof” to the equation allows all sorts of misunderstandings/complications to be bypassed altogether, and gives timid dealers a stress-free way to take a hard-line stance on this issue.

I know your main concern atm is most likely the air quality/fumes issue, Johnny, and that you’re working very hard on that. I appreciate your efforts to tackle that, but I’m sure all the potential solutions for that are costly and complicated. Meanwhile, this issue could be addressed cheaply and in a relatively easy way. The roughest part would be the few weeks of transition until everyone gets used to it.

Another good point TGO made is that the staff is lucky rn to not be hearing more complaints about this in-person. It’s an easy problem to avoid noticing if you’re not already aware and looking for it. People aren’t actively upset about it because they’re ignorant to the fact that it’s going on. When they have to wait an hour and a half for a seat they should’ve gotten after one hour, they don’t know they’ve been wronged.

Thank you for all you do, and for engaging with us here, Johnny.