I think it’s more of the stress of the traffic you encounter when getting out and getting back into the city plus having to drive 2-3 hours each way several times a week that will beat you down physically and mentally.

Go during non rush hours and you most likely won’t run into any traffic.

Can confirm , been on the road the last two years (NYC to Florida, back to NYC , back to florida, then slowly to vegas, and its a piece of cake compared to nyc/ north jersey driving .
I did the nyc to AC trek for 20 years , and its horrible some of the times . I would take the chinatown bus occasionally when i had a car around the corner from it just to not deal with traffic and take a nap before i got to AC

The entire drive is SI dependent. If you try and drive through SI between 1PM-8PM it's going to take 45 min+. Once you're on the Garden State I'd say the traffic is fine more often than not. Honestly, taking the Greyhounds that left Port Authority between 5PM-7PM were sick, special entrance to the tunnel, rarely took much more than 2 hrs to get to AC

Another question, which these casinos become real casinos will they add hotel rooms?

It isn't easy, that's for sure.

I am in Manhattan, and I just don't bother making any trip unless I'm going to get at least two days of playing in. Otherwise the travel time and extra expense is hard to over come. I'm in one good private game in the city, and hopefully will find more until we hopefully get at least one room in the city to play.

But ya, it's tough if you don't have the connections to find the better games in the city , or have a family that makes it hard to travel more often and for longer. My wife and I don't have kids, so it is far easier for me to get away. And she comes along some times.

I take a bus down to AC to avoid the stress of driving. It is restricting, I can't easily leave early if I'm not feeling well or not playing well, but it is cheap and far less stressful than driving myself places and I use the time to do other things like study, de-stress, or whatever.

Good luck out there

The games that I play at weekly pretty much have 0 online presence. I don't go to "club" games, except on rare exception. While I am aware that these things happen, there is almost no risk of this at the games that I go to. I stopped going to the type of game you describe once that guy got shot in a club about 10 years ago.

They are home games among people who know each other (for example, I go to a game that TheGramuel used to go to before he moved to Chicago that the player base is doctors and lawyers, and is no rake) in someone's apartment. I don't think I need to worry about getting robbed in that one. Definitely no house players in the game, either.

I think you just need to look for better games in the city, they are out there

To anyone who is interested to see where things currently stand, check out

https://commercialobserver.com/2022/...n-casino-push/

Basically, on October 4th, the 3 person panel will kick off the the pitching process, which will take 90 days.

Based on that, I think we are probably looking at best case, early Summer 2023, for table games at RW and EC. Maybe late Spring, if we're lucky.

Pretty much all of the ideas for the 3rd license include major construction, so I doubt we'd see the 3rd license open up until sometime in 2025. At this point, it looks like the Willets Point idea is leading the way. I don't hate it, I suppose

I love the idea of it being Willets Point but that's purely a selfish one lol

Is this more of a self deal type games?

What are the buy ins?

I’ve played in games that were true home games at my buddies apartment w people that all had jobs and were members of society and ya those are safe like 99.9%. The problem was these games are sporadic, always at night, and people are buying in for $20 a clip. Not saying they weren’t hugely +ev games but I need something bigger. Also I had an instance where the whale of the games wife complained and the game ended bc he kept losing 500/week lmao.

But for actual raked games with actual money involved there’s always a risk.

Not saying this is you but I find it funny how everyone that frequents these games is in some sort of denial of the risk involved.

You do realize that it’s mostly an inside job when the places get robbed or someone on the inside is tipping it off.

Also at games w take the robbing occurs every hand.

Willets point is a cool idea… nicer than Yonkers and I could go to a Mets game and play a session in one nice little field trip.

However the whole 4 out of 6 votes for CAC seems like a pipe dream. I wouldn’t be surprised if this takes way longer than 2025.

Also there’s still no mention of poker being part of any of these new or upgraded casinos.

My prediction is the NYC casinos (and their pit games) put pressure on northern NJ and we get a full hard rock by 2030 in east Rutherford that has poker.

That seems awfully close to Resorts World, I'm surprised they might choose another one in the same general area.

Why would poker be specifically mentioned? It's a table game, table games have been mentioned. There's no need to mention poker specifically, it's such a small, niche market compared to the other games.

It's definitely possible a new casino that gets the 3rd license could take up until 2026, no one really knows. Specially with Willet's Point, one thing that could take time is if they need to do eminent domain with all the crappy auto body shops currently there, then bulldoze everything, and build from the ground up. Everyone is expecting the first two licenses to be up and running by the end of 2023, and by everyone, I mean the state senators who have been handling everything. Pretlow and Addabbo.

I am actually surprised that if Manhattan is definitely DOA, that more Brooklyn options haven't been discussed. Specifically, there are areas along Brooklyn Bridge Park near Cobble Hill and Carroll Gardens that I think would be a great spot. Ditto for near Industry City in Sunset Park along the water.

I do think you are right about HR in Jersey, but I think it will happen much sooner, and there will have already been poker in NYC casinos for years before that point.

The rake-less game I play at is self dealt and technically "dealer's choice". It runs every Thursday at 7:30, but there is decent money thrown around. Usually have around 3-5k on the table.

As for raked games, there is a sub-set of raked games in the city that pretty hard to get into that rake $5 max. While anything is possible, the hosts do a really good job of keeping the game on the downlow, and new players only come in if they know someone who already plays there. While it's always possible to get robbed, sure, the risk is much lower at these places that aren't blasting the game all over social media. They also tend to be in doorman buildings, as well, so there is an extra layer of security.

These are all 1/1 and 1/2 or 1/3 games, though. I would imagine you run a much higher risk in 2/5, 5/5, and 5/10+

In similar articles about other casinos they usually mention a poker room.

Poker is most def not a table game and if they said they had poker in the same sentence of table games it would most likely mean pai gow poker or Texas Holdem bonus etc.

Also given Yonkers history of spreading really bad ny lotto run slots nothing would surprise me except maybe them opening a break even/ slightly earning poker room.

I hope I’m wrong.

That’s cool.. sounds like fun

more than ten years ago, i think it's been almost 15 now. they always say it after something like this, but frank was really one of the nicest guys you could ever play with.

i showed up at the club the next day with no idea about any of it (pre social media and smartphones) and made it all the way to the elevator before i noticed a bunch of cops kind of snickering at me. turned around and left, found out what happened when i got home.

there are some good games out in the burbs but anything bigger than a couple of tables or higher than 2/5 and you start to get all the problems people mention. i am mostly a PLO guy now and that is even worse. i'm too old and have too many kids to spend time trying to get into a good one. fingers crossed for yonkers lol, that would be amazing for me.

I dunno...you could announce that the sun would rise in the east and the community groups in that area would sue you over it for a decade.

LOL, maybe not in Sunset Park, but you're right

Ugh, RIP to Frank. Poor guy, I can't even imagine.

Yeah, I'd love it if I could find some PLO in the city but there's almost nothing small

This is a unique situation, poker is probably clumped in the Table games category for now. Once the ball actually gets rolling and the rooms are about to open we’ll probably hear more specifics.

Just before the first few casinos were licensed up state, all the proposed properties (Caesars, Live!, etc.) had websites which included their proposals of how many slots, table games and restaurants they would have and they all also listed a "poker room" in their plans so until that happens this time around, it's just a guess whether or not they'll actually have poker rooms.

Would imagine (as a non-new Yorker) that area is a lot more expensive than by Citi Field. My buddy used to live in Caroll Gardens, and Smith street seemed pretty bougie.

I guess just keep the raceway and RW site on refresh then lol

I played with a dealer in PA a few days ago that works in upstate NY and he said he knows a couple dealers who are moving to NYC to deal poker when the rooms open. He couldn't give me any further details as to who's training them, etc., or maybe they were just saying "if poker opens I'm moving down there" but when I go up to play at RW again I'll try to get further info.