They got a RUTH CHRISTs SteakHouse there, I'll be there the end of the Month Gotta Luv them stea.....
I'm HUNGRY ALREADY... & Poker too, are they open 24/7??? Any Hotel Rm, Poker rm RATES ????
Will they honor my MoheganSun Sagamore Card???

If I get there by 6:30 tonight, what are the chances I'll get a seat in a reasonable amount of time?

Steak House: yes
Hotel: No, Try the Woodlands it is about 1/2 mile away. Plenty of Hotels with low rates.
Poker: Has been running non stop since they opened. I think someone said last night that it got down to 4 tables about 6 a.m. yesterday.

The last I heard, no. But it would be best to check on your own. They comp $1/hour for 1/2 nl hold'm

I was told by the floor that is .50/1hr for 1/2nlhe.

That's about the time I got there last night and was seated immediately... I'm not sure about tonight with that Huey Lewis concert going on... It may just be a madhouse...

Left up $430 playing $1/2 NLHE... Fishing was GOOD last night...

Did well in the room today. Up money for the week. I stand by the statement that this is the best poker room in the state.

played 1/2 nl all week. 09:00 to about 13:00 average 100 per day. if i played with anybody im the guy from vegas with elderly father in pa. games are really soft, even an below average player should make money. dealers are very slow, but i must say are getting better. the fill problem with 1500 in the rack is crazy. 3-5 minutes wasted every time a new dealer pushes. rack was never correct for 5hrs i played on friday. would like to play 2-5 but it is a time game 5.00 every half hr the dealers are not putting out enough hands per down to make it profitable. overall room is ok, good space btwn tables and quiet, i believe it will be a fish bowl for a long time to come. good luck

Anyone there currently have an update on wait lists for 1/2 & 2/5nl?

Last night @ this time it wasn't bad. Waited about 10 min. Most of the time u will wait longer for 2/5.

Any limit games going yet or still loaded with NL?

I seen a stud game when I was up there.

Some of the dealers aren't too terrible, but yes, there are some painfully slow ones.

I'm coming back home tomorrow from CT to check out the room. Can I still expect a stupid wait?

The only time I really saw a really big wait was the 1st day. I did miss last night though it might of been sick. They do spread 1/2 2/5 NL and 10/20 limit if running you can sit right down most of the time most of time.

BTW I missed going up there yesterday. Did they have a 10/20 No Limit going again? If I can get cross booked by a buddy I may sit in sometime.

Nuts up here right now. 70 ppl.on the list For 1/2. 10/10 No limit spread. 15/30 omaha H/l 15/30 stud. 30 on the list for 2/5 NL

I checked out the room for the first time on Saturday night. I guess it was kind of a mistake to make my first trip there on the first Saturday night of poker coming to PA. Nothing the floor could have done to fix the situation, but the waits were insane on Saturday night. I arrived shortly after 7 p.m. There were 7-8 tables of 1/2 NLHE running, and 65 people on the wait list when I arrived. There were two tables of 2/5 NLHE with about 25 people on the wait list. There was one table of 2/4 LHE with nearly 30 people on the wait list and one table of 3/6 with about 10 people on the list.

I was surprised to see some of the bigger games NEPA mentioned running in the room, although I was just looking to donk it up playing some LHE. Seems as though the room is definitely not going to just be a standard 1/2 NLHE and 2/4 LHE room. The board had full lists of interest for bigger LHE games and 1/2 PLO, but just not enough tables to accomodate everyone.

Throughout the night, there was continually 40-50 people milling around the front desk waiting for seats. I waited a little over two hours for a seat at 3/6 LHE, and the floor was telling people people that the wait for 1/2 NLHE was at least 1hr and 45 minutes. I was bored silly at my two hour wait for a seat, but I didn't feel so bad after a player sat down later in the evening and said he had been waiting four hours for a seat in the game. I was also on the 2/4 LHE list, and I heard when they called my name for that game. I would have had a four hour wait for a seat in that game if that was the only game I was interested in.

That must be what poker in hell is like -- waiting four hours to play 2/4 LHE.

Most of the dealers seemed fine. I did have a couple that were were painfully slow, but that seemed to be a rarity. We also had a dealer that said he came from Foxwoods that was outstanding.

My game finally got short-handed around 2 a.m. After we got down to four players, my 3/6 LHE game broke, so I went over and sat at the 2/4 LHE table for another couple hours. Once that game got down to four handed, I left around 4 a.m. I dropped around $70 playing 3/6LHE, but got $40 of it back at 2/4 LHE.

Pocono Downs seems like the best place to play in the state because the rake is so much better than everywhere else. The huge wait for a seat Saturday night sucked, but there really was not much the floor could do about that. Hopefully, the room will expand at some point in the future. I seen dozens of people that waited a while for a saet, then just gave up and walked out because they were unable to get a seat.

Played Friday & Saturday, might stop by tonight as well. All things considered, the casino has done a great job of getting the room up & running so quickly. There are some bumps in the road that needs to be worked out, all things that should be easy fixes. I know Al and a few others from the staff read this, a few kudos & I will put out my list of (hopefully) constructive criticism:

First the kudos:

-90% of the dealers were doing a good job. One or two were really slow or just not up to speed on the rules of the game (chopped pots, side pots, and little things like making change for small blind were recurring problems). In a month, the crappy ones will hopefully be weeded out, and those that need a little more practice will get comfortable- this will be a non-issue after some time passes. A few of the floor staff have some issues too that I know the top managers are aware of, I won't embarrass anyone by pointing it out here. Not all the little turtles make it to the ocean after they hatch, need to thin that herd slightly...

-mix of 2/5NL vice 1/2 NL games seemed to get better on Saturday. Thank you. Friday this was out of whack, with WAY too many 1/2 NL tables when there were higher end players standing around for hours. Who would you rather keep waiting- 2/5 & 5/10 NL players that are going to sustain the room long term, or 1/2 NL & 2/4 LHE players just passing through on a lark during a concert/race?

-flexibility of games spread. Dealers & floor were great about this in the high stakes room. Players on several tables talked to the floor & got games & stakes adjusted to taste. Bravo. I didn't think this would happen this early on, but that kind of player focus is going to earn loyalty.

No some of the issues that need work:

- Biggest complaint: Saturday, the podium simply did not have its act together getting empty seats filled on the 2/5 NL table. Not sure what the problem was, dealers and players on multiple 2/5 tables repeatedly brought empty seats to the floor's attention, but there would constantly be 2+ seats open, with 30+ players on the wait list. We had a seat open for FORTY FIVE MINUTES at one point, despite a huge list. Podium was slow to call names, and slower to clear off people who weren't there. My suggestion would be to start calling "on deck" names when there is a huge list, and giving player maybe 15 seconds max after their name is called, not 2-3 minutes as it was averaging then.

- chip fill & buying chips from the dealer. All the fills on the 2/5 table were white & red; no green, no black. For some reason the 2/5 tables had 2 stacks of those stupid $3 "turtle" chips for pot rake on 1/2 game clogging the dealer's tray. When players wanted to top off chips or re-buy after getting felted, it was a traumatic event and slowed the game WAAAAAY down- repeatedly the floor asked or told players to go to the cage instead of buying from the dealer, which I can understand for newly seated players, but for rebuys/topoffs it is just silly. Get more/faster chip runners, give both the dealers and the chip runners some green/black chips to speed it up.

-time rake collection. Yikes. Floor was trying to track 30 minute increments and would call out to dealers when to take time - vice basing it off 30 minute dealer rotation, or simple top/bottom of the hour. The dealers bump schedule was not 30 minutes for some reason, which added to confusion- several times dealers started to collect time right after being rotated, despite it just being dropped a few minutes earlier. Floor got swamped & forgot to take time on several occasions, causing panic to try to double-collect quickly in next half hour, all around frustration with players & further slowing down the game. Some additional training/standard procedures have to got to get this fixed. Mixing 1/2NL & 2/5NL dealers caused a few occasions of them dropping pot rake on time rake tables, which also caused a big delay for the floor to sort out & get refunded to the winning player of the accidentally raked pot.

-Friday night, the early 20s testosterone-fueled NJ males in their stylish bejeweled baseball caps were on the back-end of a 12+ hour drinking bender were at the tables in force. It is great to have them around when they are donking off stacks of chips, but when they are border-line sexually assaulting the clearly intimidated waitresses & female dealers, and spilling drinks on the table & screaming at the fish for bad plays, the floor has got to get the room under control. Twice I saw drunken confrontations escalate into shouting matches, and the one time it got so heated that the podium called for security, it took TWO MINUTES for security to show up. Sooner or later there are going to be fights, I am not advocating for Gestapo-like security presence to loom around the podium or the tables, but the floor was clearly not in control on several occasions. It's going to scare away a lot of the fish if that doesn't get fixed.

A few nice-to-haves:

-How about letting players straddle on the higher stakes games??

-how about getting some licensed massage therapist type young ladies to offer back/neck massage offering like Vegas/AC?

-add a few small drink/food tables in at least the high-limit area. the tables ended up with a ton of empty drinks & other trash under them because there was no place else to put it.

-Around 10 PM Saturday the 10/20 H.O. table ordered carry out from Ruth's Chris which was delivered right to the room- awesome. you could hear everyone else in the room drooling over what a great idea that was. The players took turns taking their bags of high-end chow over to the nasty little snackbar tables in the adjacent room & had a little feast, and were back at the table in 15-20 minutes. Super speedy dinner break that didn't have to resort to hot dogs, M&Ms and the other barely edible food at that snack bar, minimal disruption to their game. Why not keep a binder with carry out menus & numbers for all the hotel restaurants at the podium to offer this for this for everyone? Many players will happily pay extra to have real food brought down.

-all & all, I am very pleased with the room- look forward to seeing it get better!

Emjoyed reading your trip report, 9985. It was interesting to read the thoughts of another player that was there this weekend. I think it is the state, though, not individual rooms that are preventing straddling?

Thanks for the kind words it is nice to see everyones hard work paying off. I will try to address some of your questions and comments.

Art Blanda


-mix of 2/5NL vice 1/2 NL games seemed to get better on Saturday. Thank you. Friday this was out of whack, with WAY too many 1/2 NL tables when there were higher end players standing around for hours. Who would you rather keep waiting- 2/5 & 5/10 NL players that are going to sustain the room long term, or 1/2 NL & 2/4 LHE players just passing through on a lark during a concert/race?


I completely agree with you, I would rather of spread 2-3 more 2/5 games friday but the lists for 1/2 developed much more quickly. As we add more tables hopefully this will become less of an issue on the weekends.

Biggest complaint: Saturday, the podium simply did not have its act together getting empty seats filled on the 2/5 NL table. Not sure what the problem was, dealers and players on multiple 2/5 tables repeatedly brought empty seats to the floor's attention, but there would constantly be 2+ seats open, with 30+ players on the wait list. We had a seat open for FORTY FIVE MINUTES at one point, despite a huge list

Agreed, we definitly have to seat players much more quickly. However, much of the problem is that there was such a long list it takes a while to get a player seated if you have to call 10-15 names before someone responds and also you probably have multiple games needing players. We should be able to get a player seated within 5 minutes though.



chip fill & buying chips from the dealer. All the fills on the 2/5 table were white & red; no green, no black. For some reason the 2/5 tables had 2 stacks of those stupid $3 "turtle" chips for pot rake on 1/2 game clogging the dealer's tray. When players wanted to top off chips or re-buy after getting felted, it was a traumatic event and slowed the game WAAAAAY down- repeatedly the floor asked or told players to go to the cage instead of buying from the dealer, which I can understand for newly seated players, but for rebuys/topoffs it is just silly. Get more/faster chip runners, give both the dealers and the chip runners some green/black chips to speed it up.


The chip rack/chip runner situation is something I am constantly evaluating. We need more chip runners in the room, everyone knows this. The problem is that there arent any more available to us at this time. More are coming, at least thats what I have been told. Its difficult to have a perfect system for rebuys when you dont have a cash drop box and are have a chip rack with a set amount of chips.


-how about getting some licensed massage therapist type young ladies to offer back/neck massage offering like Vegas/AC?

Already in the works



add a few small drink/food tables in at least the high-limit area. the tables ended up with a ton of empty drinks & other trash under them because there was no place else to put it.

They were ordered 2 months ago.




Again, thanks for the feedback. I appreciate all the possitive and negatives being brought to my attention as it will make for a better Poker experience for everyone.

Thanks,

Art Blanda

Art,

Thanks for joining! I would first like to say I think overall everyone is doing a great Job so far. I'v been there everyday except Friday so far and I have already seen vast improvements.

I drive about 45 min. 2 get to your room. Is there any process in the works that we can call in to get on the waiting lists? This would be great even if it was just for regular/everyday players. Esp. On Fridays and Saturdays.

Also, is a twitter account in the works? I know there is @mspoconodowns but I'm talking about one just for the poker room. It's a great way to put out what games are being spread, special events and/or promos.

Thanks

Marcus

I have been getting a lot of questions regarding call-ins, as of right now it is too busy to have call-ins. However, probably in the next 2-3 weeks we will start accepting them during the week(M-Th).

I played a little bit at Mt. Airy after work on Wednesday night and was told by a dealer that they allowed one UTG straddle. Didn't have anyone at my table straddle, nor did I, but allegedly they're allowing it.

Bored, which seat were you in the 3-6? I played it for about 2 hours Saturday night, sitting down a little past 11pm. I was the admittedly grumpy guy (horses did not cooperate while I was waiting) in the 4 seat in the blue striped shirt.

I was the fat guy in the gray Kutztown University alumni shirt. Wish I would have known there was another 2+2er at the table. No wonder I was losing in that game LOL. I certainly would have thrown you a, "Sup, Bro?" had I known.