I’ve since played on weekday nights and that was a much better experience.

No offense, but Florida games are run much smoother and have more staff available than in Chicago. All the little things like ease of calling a chip runner, being able to buy chips off someone else, having enough cashiers, having food available in the poker room, shorter wait times, all these thing are better in FL. Chicago might have better dealers. I’m from Chicago fwiw.

being able to buy chips off someone else

Players in Florida are allowed to buy chips from one another without any type of issue? That seems like the perfect place to launder money and pass fake currency off. But yeah, go Florida!

Depends on the room, a lot of times they just don’t care if you do it away from the table.

Nice first post!

Gotta start somewhere and it was better than talking about more J4 overkill.

9:00 Friday night 2/5 NL has 58 on the list, 1/2 has 88. Chicago really needs that new casino!

While that would help, players could choose to play at the other establishments within driving distance. For whatever reason they just choose not to. They'd rather wait hours to sit and play, rather than going to any of the other poker rooms in the Chicagoland area and sit much quicker in just as comparable of games.

Are the other rooms really "comparable"? I've only played at Aurora in the past (and it's been a few years), but they raked the small blind for the promo drop before the deal, which I hated. Also, I forget if the rake was higher than the 6+1 Rivers is taking...

GVC -- never played, but isn't the rake 7+1 there?

But honestly, for me, Rivers is just closer. It's 20 minutes to Rivers, but minimum 45 minutes to any other casino. I imagine that's the case for a lot of people in Chicagoland area, just given the population distribution and location of the casinos.

I'll never understand people who will sign up as the 30th person or later and wait two hours than drive 20 minutes further down 90 to sit almost immediately in the same game

Once you get to the 50th name on the list, why even bother?
All the tables are open, you'd need 5.5 full tables to get up and leave before they get to you.

I've played at Rivers and at GVC and even though the 1-3 buyin is larger at Rivers, the games play the exact same in terms of looseness.

Your choices are to be the 50th the name on the list and wait 3 hours or more
Or drive 20 minutes and get seated almost immediately.

Someone explain to me how the Rivers experience is worth waiting 3 more hours to play on a Friday night

I get that, but I mean we’re still talking an extra 50 miles round trip and an extra hour of driving time getting out to GVC from Chicago and back. And that’s no traffic. The not super serious poker players would probably rather put their name on the list and donk around or eat in the casino than put in the extra mileage. People are lazy.

And to D4o, besides GVC what are the good options? RCG kinda sucks now and they had some cheating stuff a few months ago. Aurora is garbage. The shoe is dead. Not great Bob!

HORSE running in the private room with food delivery were both nice perks. Dealers were all competent and only 2 mistakes plus 2 misdeals over 9 hours. The games are still good. Rake a bit steeper than expected at $11 per down. Overall a very nice poker room and excellent experience. 3rd floor parking garage leading directly to the poker room was an unexpected bonus.

Room is allegedly fully staffed now; should help with those weekday evenings when they used to only open 16 tables cuz of short staff and lists would be 30+ deep.

We had a dealer on his first ever live shift on Friday night. Was better than many dealers who have been dealing for years, faster and more accurate.

He was doing everything completely "by the book" without the shortcuts that dealers teach themselves over time (not saying they're bad at all, just more experienced dealers combine multiple steps into one, this guy was doing everything as if he'd been very strongly trained).

Big fan.

There's a lot of rooms in Florida so you can't lump tbem all together.

At the Hollywood Hard Rock, you want to buy $300 from a player who's racking up at the 1-2 NL table? No problem.

You want to buy $7000 from a 10-25 player? Big problem.

Been twice place is great, my comparison is the shoe so….everything is better. Chairs, space in between tables, TVs, High hand promo, not sure what it was like before but no line at cage and enough staff so that one was just walking around picking up garbage from the floor with one of those grabbers.

Dealers were all experienced except for one who was new but still dealt fast and did pretty good, he initiated a discussion about the Big Bang theory and am pretty sure was carrying a bible from down to down but was pleasant enough about it where it wasn’t to weird..

I can’t stand waiting just won’t go if it’s crazy, so I just check bravo and go when it’s less than 10 and have not had to wait at all seems like any day if you can get there before 11AM.

The parking/access to the poker room is unreal again compared to the walk at the shoe.

Booked a small winner and had Jean and Jude’s on my home down river road, life is good!

Cheers

First time at Rivers last night. I'm new to the Chicago area but have played in places like Blackhawk CO, Jax FL, Vegas, Indiana & South Korea.
I went to Hollywood in Aurora first because its a tad closer & have to say Rivers stomps them in every category.

My only playable hand in 4 hours was my 3rd hand at the table, my AA got two-outered by a maniac that kept screaming in Arabic & had pushed in $400 blind twice.
Floor had to come over a couple of times to tell him to stop screaming. Of course 5 hands later he donks off his stack into jacks full to someone else then leaves. The run bad hurts.
Nothing to do with the room of course.

I showed up around midnight on Sat night so there was no wait list for 1/3.
I'll be interested to see how fast the list moves this coming Thanksgiving weekend.
I did notice there were 20+ waiting for PLO until about 2am.

Dealers are very competent, friendly & efficient. Levels above Hollywood.

As previous poster said, chairs are comfortable & plenty of space between tables.
It's the first room I've seen that has the table numbers overhead making it very easy to find my seat.
The cage did get backed up several times throughout the night having only 2 people running it but my wait was less than 10mins.

Chips are decently clean & I'm able to shuffle them unlike Hollywood's slick coating.
Cards also felt better quality. One of the dealers stated they don't do setups as they are destroyed every 10 days in rotation & replaced with new decks.

Cocktail waitresses were coming by the table more frequently than any place I've been.
Table talk was very friendly. My opponents ranged from short stack fish playing with $100 to a couple of OMCs only playing the nuts.
Unfortunately, I lost count of how many times I was dealt 92 & 82 so I practiced my folding skills for 4 hours after the two-outer.

Negative: Cleanliness.
I had to clear 3 beer bottles from under my spot before I could take my seat.
Players seem to leave their drinks in the holders & trash around their seat when they leave so the new player has to get rid of them plus clear the area around their chair.
Every new player to the table had to clear old drinks or beer bottles.
Trashcans are only a few steps away but people are just lazy.
Still would be nice to have someone assigned to clearing trash & maybe wiping down the rail from the player leaving.

Also the tables especially near the rail are quite dirty with black dust particles.
The felt, at least at my table, was pretty worn & faded in each spot.
Parking was fantastic as you can just walk right into the room from the 3rd level.

Overall, this room smashes Hollywood & I'm looking forward to becoming a regular.
Just need the run bad to stop!

Where can I find the tournament schedule for this room?

no tournaments at rivers. not yet, anyway.

Played a couple of sessions this weekend, appears they've got a new process for getting the dealer a fill so they no longer need to take $100 from a player, they have lammers instead they use.

Also the waiting lists *seem* to be moving faster, but think this is just a sample size issue as doesn't look like they've changed the process, people's names will still flash for aaaaaaaaaaages while they have 10m to get upstairs etc.

I've been playing at Rivers a lot lately and was there again last night. I arrived around 9:30pm and only waited a few minutes for a seat. Looks like the Holiday rush is done and things are back to normal as we in the Chicagoland area enter what I like to call that January to early March grind. The 1-3 game I was in was fantastic; sure didn't hurt I won a big hand with a straight but that's besides the point.

As I sat there playing, all I could think about is how lucky we are in the Chicagoland area to now have a room of this caliber. It's been open just over 9 months now and when I think back to what poker was like without this room, I'm grateful. Are there things they can improve on? Of course, every single business always has that. Do I think they've done a good job addressing their shortcomings? Yes, absolutely.

The room itself is running smoothly. They sorted out the white chips issue, lists are moving faster these days, and the floor staff seem to be more comfortable and have gotten into a rhythm on how to run things. Friday to Sunday during the Holidays involved super long lists, especially at night. With the Holiday's being over, this weekend should tell what the lists will be like going forward. They also have a full staff of dealers available, to the point that dealers are now cleaning and running chips, or being offered an eo (early out) when there is not enough demand for tables to open - usually later at night.

Good job Rivers, I hope the good work continues.

MD

They still need more dealers. They start closing tables around midnight with 60 people on the 1-2 list and 25 on the 2-5 list to send dealers home. Open seats and they don't call names to let games get short so they can break the table.

It’s 2 am. The 1/3 List has 42 people on it with 4 games running and Rivers is breaking games/closing games.

There is no casino in the US that is so interested in closing games late at night.

Rockford Charitable Games is run better than Rivers any day of the week.

If RCG has a game getting short, a prop player shows up to keep it going with a smile. If Rivers has a game getting short, a male Wicked Witch shows up to shut it down as soon as possible.

Why are you playing there if you hate it so much? GVC opens until 6am and the Shoe is 24 hours.

RCG - *multiple* cheating scandals, unregulated, shuffle your own cards, half the tables don't even have rims, massively unprofessional dealers a lot of the time, always in a complete dive. Surely you're trolling.

They do in fact seem to underestimate demand on holiday weekends, that is definitely a flaw.

Clearly RNSG has an axe to grind. I'd wait an hour to play at Rivers over playing RCG any day of the week

At RCG, the players No longer shuffle any cards. The dealers always shuffle Now.

The dealers are quicker and make almost no mistakes.

Many of the venues are classy - not all of them - but many.