Come to think of it I'm positive it was a newbie dealer error. They don't take a rake without a flop in 1/2 makes no sense that they would in 2/5. Why didn't you call floor when you seen this happen?

The only thing that really pisses me off w/ Mount Airy right now is no one seems to know anything about poker comps and of the 15+ hours I've put in so far nothing has shown up on my comp balance.

I was at 2/5 a couple times this week, and we asked a couple different floor people about this. They all said that if there is a raise and a call/raise, even if there is no flop it is raked.

*smashes head against wall*

Bad move.

Hows the wait tonight?

Gonna be anxious all through work tomorrow. You gonna be there late night Sunday Mikey Mike?

Most likely, although I'm going to be up in the Blakeslee area during the day so I might end up checking out Mohegan while I'm up there, not sure yet. If you ever see a dark haired kid with a silver PStars card protector say whats up that's me.

My review of the Mt. Airy poker room

It was probably a bad decision to choose the room's first ever Saturday night to make my first foray into Poconoker. The room was impossibly crowded and the physical layout of the room defies logic. There are 11 tables crammed in to a tiny space and if you are sitting anywhere near the dealer, you are going to undergo nearly continuous assault and battery. On the other hand, the sign-in system and buzzers are good except that the buzzers themselves are monstrously oversized, much like early cordless phones. But they work. Which is probably a good thing, as it is not practical to sweat any of the games prior to being seated. It is just too congested. You will want to take your buzzer and go to the diner or the bar while you are waiting. And you will be waiting on Saturday night. The wait at 9PM was 2 hours for 1/2 NL and 1 hour for 3/6 Limit.

After finally being seated, I had the displeasure to learn what we now all know too well: The rake is oppressive and confiscatory. Not only is it 10% to $5.00, but there is of course the stupid bad beat jackpot. So as I watched $6 disappear into the black hole hand after hand, I realized that I was a sucker just for sitting there at all. The level of play was not high, but with that kind of rake, forget it. Also, as stated elsewhere, raking pots when there is no flop? That's just wrong.

Urgent message to Mt. Airy: You are being just plain greedy with a $6 rake. And you will lose business as a result. Yes you can congratulate yourself on land office business while your room is a novelty, but ultimately the high rake will scare away a lot of business.

Also, you CANNOT sign up for more than 1 game! And forget about changing tables, it's too monumentally inconvenient.

Will I ever play there again? Only occasionally. The rake is just too high. I will continue to confine most of my serious play to Atlantic City.

Question:

How do you not learn how to design a poker room and rake structure when you have perfect models of successful operations within a 3 hour drive? You have a chance to design a better room. You have a chance to blow Atlantic City poker out of the water with thousands of hungry players in northern NJ and New York City. But no. Instead you design a small, cramped room where it is impossible to play comfortably. You stick the sign up desk DEAD CENTER and create lines and congestion making it impossible to navigate. You have a single line and a tiny little room for chip sales. You have dealers with undersized chip trays and cash folded up in the center slot rather than a drop. And then you saddle the players with a rake that is higher than the competition. And rake rules that increase the effective cost to the players beyond what is established by the industry at large.

Recap (Positives):
1) Location within driving distance to northern NJ and to a lesser extent NYC.
2) Free parking
3) Diner off the casino floor
4) Chips (brand new and they smell great - like the Top Hat and Canes I used to be able to buy before the French company bought out Paulson)
5) Buzzers system for signing in
6) Chairs are good

Recap (Negatives):
1) Oppressive confiscatory $6 rake with BBJ
2) Raked non-flops
3) Congested and undersized room with utterly logic-defying traffic flow
4) You cannot sign up for more than 1 game
5) Extremely long wait times (1-2 hours on a Saturday night)
6) No shuffle machines. So you have green dealers taking forever to get the hands out
7) Waitresses are few and far between, take forever to return, don't get the orders right, and can't move through the room even if they did. I gave up on this and went out and got my own drinks.

Black Clouds and Silver Linings:

Unless the rake changes, and despite the fact that I live 50-55 minutes from this casino, Atlantic City will continue to be my poker headquarters. I resent the high rake, especially in view of the fact that they are charging more than the competition for an inferior product. $5 rake plus $1 BBJ + $1 Toke + Rake rules that increase house take dramatically? Sorry guys, I'd rather drive to a proper poker room.

However, hopefully the suckers will not care or notice this and will flock to the PA casinos giving Atlantic City such a beating that the room rates and comps will be very attractive.

And Atlantic City poker rooms: Why not crush these fools by lowering your rake to 5% to $4?

I think the large majority of you are over estimating the effect that the rake is going to have. MOST people wont even be giving the rake a thought. The general tourist/ fun time player doesn't worry about these things and will still be frequenting the room. The Lamont of fish should far out draw the extra dollar taking from the pot...

Is $5 the standard rate at A/C??

I usually play at the trop and always thought it was $4 + $1bbj

For me the extra dollar rake doesn't equal the cost in gas, tolls, food and misc spending in the 6 hour round trip drive to AC for the amount of play time I would put in for a 2 night comp so it dosen't bother me that much. I also drive a truck so my gas expense is higher than most but if I put in 20 hours in a 2 day AC trip and scoop 4 max raked pots an hour(shooting for the stars for to drive my point across better) it costs me $400 in rake in NJ and it costs me $480 in PA. The $80 difference is still better than $50 gas +$26 room tax, +$13 tolls, +$15 fast food on road +$20 misc.

Mike shoot me a pm

I wouldn't mind the extra $1 in rake if the room:
1. was more spacious.
2. had more competant dealers.
3. didn't have to wait an hour for a seat.
4. didn't have to wait an hou between drinks.
5. gave me more than 40 cents per hour comps. (which so far, hasn't given me any for the 10 hrs of play).
6. SPREAD SOME OMAHA H/L dammit!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

yes, I was there again Saturday night. One word description...CIRCUS!

That's gotta be due to whoever was running the board, cause last week I had my name on 3 different lists at the same time...no problem or grief from the floor.

I went there last nite from 4 PM- 10PM...Sat at the 1/2 NL. I had no wait at all to play. Room is indeed small however I thought every dealer I had but one was good. The only thing that pissed me off the whole nite was trying to get a drink was hard. The play was increadably easy with a standard PFR of 8X BB. PLayed for 6 hours with a +$567 Profit. I will go back agian due to the 30 min comute.

S.O.P, in all Poker rms, the Pot gets over $10 you'll see a rake....

You might not get the clap, but you also won't be sleeping alone...

Google super 8 pocono bed bugs (if in fact this is the one you're referring to). Nasty.

Well I made it through. Other then not sleeping well with the provided pillows everything was ok

Well I was going to blast MT airy for me (t mobile) not having any service whatsoever but this morning I turned my wifi on and they have free wifi. The floors here are average to poor, the cage is atrociously slow and incompetant and the dealers aren't much better... that being said there's a good amount of action that equals it out.

Any Omaha H/L game get started yet? There were interest lists on Saturday, but no tables available. This is a major deciding factor to where I'll be playing regularly.

I'll let ya know tonight when I go down there around 9pm. It's rough with such a high holdem demand filling the tables so quickly. I believe Mount Airy will be the first room in the area to expand though as the floor has already said they're building a 30 table room downstairs so I'm sure Omaha will be able to get going fairly regularly once that opens

I follow mountairycasino on twitter. They just tweeted the following:

"Poker Room is OPEN!! Come on over and play your favorite hand: Omaha, Texas Hold'em, Three Card Poker, Seven Card Stud and MORE, MORE, MORE ! "

LOL. Three Card Poker ????? Has anyone from the marketing department even seen a poker room before?

I was hoping they would tweet table availability, spread, etc. A perfect use of technology. Guess I'll suggest this to MS@PD since they seem to be looking for feedback. Not sure, at this point, what Mount Airy is trying to do...except turn a quick buck.

Every poker room needs a guy like Stan from the Borgata posting game reports. Gotta suggest it to the local managers.

Best dealers I saw: dannielle Jamie Judy and Brett

I can tell you from experince, Omaha H/L or any other kind, just don't spread with every DONK within a 2 hr drive, look'n to play $1/$2 NL.....