The great LONG POKER LIST FIASCO. Corporate casino goal is to get people into casino, any way they can accomplish that.
Give out some "George Foreman Grills" like Horseshoe Hammond used to do. Or, advertise twenty-two tables
in a poker room, then for whatever reason, have a poker waiting list two hundred - twenty five strong - Success!
You have many wallets in your casino at no cost and didn't have to give away any suitcases, toasters, nor grills.

Guys, the parent company of Rivers Casino Des Plaines, Illinois is on the stock exchange.
If they wanted all twenty-two tables up, ALL TWENTY-TWO of those tables would be up and spreading games.
Don't buy that nonsense about "lack of dealers". That is a BIG TIME CORPORATE OPERATION.

It's 8:45 AM and there are 3 open tables and 31 people on the 1-3 list 27 on the 2-5 list and 14 on the PLO
(I'm sure some names are on all 3 lists, but the point still stands)

GVC will have 8-10 tables open in less than 90 minutes from now and they have a fraction of the dealers River does

I'm starting to think you're right. I've been told by those who would know, that Rivers has hired anywhere from 80 to over 100 dealers
Why the slow roll with getting tables started? This is their third day, they should have tables ready to go as people show up.

22 tables with 80 dealers is more than enough to keep all tables going at all times during this initial opening surge

Horseshoe Hammond has been corralling people into casino with that "list trick" for the past year.
NO CALL-INS - You must be physically present in the casino. Get there, to be on long list.
They have you INSIDE the casino.

Just like that scene in "Casino" where mobster casino guys tricked those Asian gamblers at the airport,
got them back into the casino, so casino could win back, money won by the gamblers.

Something is way off.

At 12:40 on Sunday

Rivers has 6 tables open
1-3 list 92 waiting 2 tables
2-5 63 waiting 2 tables

GVC has 10 tables open
1-3 list 23 waiting 7 tables
2-5 list 9 waiting 3 tables

Did all the dealers quit at Rivers? WTF?
I was gonna go there today

Why are all those people waiting?
Do their dealers not start work until 3PM?

This doesn't add up at all.
GVC struggles to hold onto new dealers since the reopening,
Maybe Rivers bit off much more than they can chew?
No way in the world they only planned to have 6 dealers working by noon on a weekend
especially their opening weekend.
what a debacle

I think they are just going through opening pains. Between the lack of tables/dealers and the crazy lists they are a bit slow to get up and running.

One other thing is crazy. If the dealer wants to buy say $200 in singles from their rack, they can't give the money to a runner. A player needs to give money/chips to the runner. When the runner comes back the dealer can that buy those chips from a player. Makes zero sense, slows the game and is confusing if the dealer doesn't say seat 4 is $200 behind.

Actually it is not enough to run all the tables 24x7. Assume with breaks you need 6 dealers to run 5 tables. Also assume 3 dealers are brushing at any given time. So

22/5 * 6 + 3 = 29.4 positions needed to run 22 tables.

It takes 4.34 persons for each position to operate 24x7 so to run all the tables all the time would require 127.6 FTE with no overtime.

Since at least some of the dealers are likely part time it would require close to 150 dealers to run every t@ble all the time. Rivers did not staff for such and it would not make sense to. While they might have the initial demand to run all tables all the time, they won’t for long. Within couple of months or less novelty will wane and demand drop. Then they have to reduce staff to match ongoing demand. This is double costly. First you have to pay hiring and training costs then you have to pay separation costs.

You clearly know more about staffing than I do,
but the bottom line is at 1PM they had 6 dealers working on a weekend day
WIth 100 people on the list.
Not a single one of their 80-some dealers could be bothered to come in to work?
How many did they schedule for that time? Literally 7 dealers?
It's an insult to the players or it's incredible levels of incompetence
How did that happen?
That's not just an "opening weekend mistake"
Something is not right

Got here at 9:45am today to get on the 1/3 list. As of 2:10PM am I just now getting called for a seat at a brand new table. Thankfully i live 15 min away so I went home for lunch to kill some time. 4+hour wait is insane for a weekend afternoon.

Seems like a smart way to run a business.

I checked in at 11:30 am get on 1-3 , 2-5, 1-2 PLO. I went downstair to watch a soccer game I came back after 2 hours I was shocked no new table was open during this time and waiting list barely move . I talk with a staff member he said new dealers will come at 3pm. I don't think they should run only 6 table on Sunday morning and early afternoon . So I left they text at 3:30 pm so 4 hours waiting time it is totally insane . The staff were polite and I am sure they are trying their best , I hope they will figure out soon how to run the room and keep customers happy. Literally in 4 hours I can travel to Vegas .

Hope the manager didn't bring with him the small room mentality and I wish he will step up his game soon.

I also see a manager with 2 new dealers in training so I am sure they are trying .

The problem with waiting to open until you have more dealers is the ones you already hired will quit.

They'll get better with time, but also demand is bound to be unusually high right now for obvious reasons.

They obviously didn't spend 8-9 figures to expand and open a poker room just to tempt people in and spend money while on the wait list LOL. When the majority on the list are 1-3 or 2-5 low rollers, and a whole bunch of poker players hardly touch the table games.

Stopped by last night just to check it out, aesthetically beautiful room. Didn't feel like waiting 4 hours to play but nice to have a 24/7 room back in the area.

They did seem genuinely understaffed, as do most places nowadays. I overheard a floor manager ask a dealer to stay late, the dealer snapped back "I came in 3 and a half hours early today!"

I'm assuming that it's growing pains and they will get better over time. If they can bring in more dealers in a timely manner this place will be sick.

This room has been open for less than 72 hours, the incompetent guy running horseshoe ran it into the ground over years, give them some time to settle in before getting furious.

Did they open too many tables, causing too many dealers to work extra hours on Friday and Saturday so that they weren't available on Sunday? Was there a failure to force tables to break so that they could send dealers home?

Played 1/2/15 PLO this weekend at the new Rivers casino and played in the wildest PLO game.

You were allowed to straddle up to $15 on the button which almost everyone did. The buy in is $100 to match the stack so there were chip stacks ranging from $100 to $8000 on the table.

Watched a $5000 pot get all in on the turn. Board was 5s6s9hKh. Good player had 7s8s9x10x vs an action player who had Ah5hKx10x!?!?!? You're only allowed to run it once which I'm a fan of. MAX PAIN!! Everyone at the table was rooting for a heart or K/5 lol. River was a brick and the good player scooped.

Imo I think the straddle has to UTG because the button has a massive advantage acting last in PLO. I basically always potted the button with connected cards and would get 5 callers to the flop and $300 in the middle.

I did pretty well cashed out up $2000 over 2 days of playing. Will definitely play in that game again and be sure to bring about $10,000 next time ��

Poker room was very nice but understaffed as most people here mentioned. I played Saturday and Sunday and put my name on the list at 8am and waited about 2 hours before I could get on a table. I put in 12hr sessions both days because the game was so good. There was a ton of interest to play bigger games like 5/10 PLO but honestly this 1/2 game played massive.

Is it something new that they now make every one walk through a metal detector before entering? I'm all for the added security but it would imply that they have had some kind of issue.

As for the poker room, looks super nice and high caliber. Not sure how they could fumble the staffing issues as they did considering how much space and money they dedicated to room.

Wait lists are an absolute joke at the moment. What kind of recreational gambler will come and wait 3-4 hours to get a seat at the poker table? Hope they can figure this out soon as calling names 1 by 1 and allowing each 10 mins+ to respond is not going to work well.

Sent from my SM-G991U using Tapatalk

Some takeaways from a 9 hour 1/3NL session last night...

Like I mentioned yesterday, waited 4+ hours for a seat which sucked!

The room itself is absolutely beautiful. I love the proximity to the parking lot. If you park on the 3rd level and find a spot anywhere close to the entrance you can go from the poker room to your car in literally 30 seconds. Sure as hell beats the 10 minute walk at the Horseshoe.

You can also get your hand stamped so you can skip the ID check if you go in and out.

Bathrooms are also close by as well as sports betting kiosks right outside the poker room.

Free coffee, soda, juice etc from cocktail servers. Overall servers were pretty quick to come by with your drink.

The 1/3 game definitely plays bigger than a regular 1/3 given the 500max buy in and straddle options. Saw a couple of 2k pots last night. Coming from the 1/2NL 300max at RCG it was quite the step up.

I'm not sure if this is only temporary, but you are not allowed to rebuy chips from the dealer. They only had one chip runner for the entire room yesterday so most of the time you were better off just running to the cage yourself. Even if you do get a chip runner, you are not allowed to be dealt a hand until your chips arrive so no "playing behind."

Another thing I found strange is you are not allowed to sell chips to other players at the table even if they are coming out of your pocket. Makes no sense to me.

Also, as a side note and this is just me being nitpicky, I am not a big fan of the chips. They feel cheap and hard to shuffle. But I can live with that.

As previously mentioned, despite the long wait lists my game took forever to fill up empty seats, sometimes upwards of an hour.
Hopefully this improves with time.

Overall, I think I will still be doing most of my playing at RCG where I can walk in and get a seat in less than 10 minutes. Once Rivers hires more dealers and implements a call in system that might change.

Yesterday, I called in to 1-3 at GVC at 4:15 and was seated at one of the 10 1-3 tables within 5 minutes of my arrival 30 minutes later
Meanwhile literally 100 names were on the list for 1-3 at Rivers which had 6 or 7 tables of 1-3 I forgot which
And at GVC there was a $370K BBJ in play
It's literally 20 minutes more driving to GVC if you are south of Rivers
And to anyone who thinks GVC is a NIT-fest,
just raise to $25 pre with AA and when you get 3 or 4 callers define "Nit-fest" for me
$80+ pre-flop pots are extremely common
A week ago I saw someone 3-bet it to $65 to go pre and had 6 callers we talked about that pot for an hour.
How did no one re-raise (I was not in the pot, but watched it play out with my jaw on the floor)
Yesterday, every half hour or so someone would update the table on the wait list at Rivers for 1-3 and we'd laugh and shake our heads
I get it, a new room is exciting but waiting literally 4 hours to get a seat?
Are you getting a "welcome to the new room handy" when you sit down?
Someone make it make sense.

I expected to play at Rivers today, but didnt even bother after seeing they could only round up 6 dealers by 1PM on the Sunday opening weekend
Maybe in a few weeks I'll stop on over.

I’ve played in Illinois, Florida, and Vegas and GVC is at the very bottom of my poker room rankings, only above Hollywood Aurora. Guess we’ll just have to agree to disagree on GVC.

Regarding Rivers, yes Sunday was atrocious. Coincidently the same guy who ran Hollywood Aurora is running Rivers, but time will tell if he’s the problem. FWIW I was told they had about ~50ish dealers on staff, so about 1/3-1/2 of what Fore calculated this room would need to run at max capacity.

Beautiful room. Nice and spacious. But alot of bugs to be ironed out. I know its only day 4, but this is supposed to be an experienced staff. Could have fooled me.

Waits were ridiculous for a monday. An example of a head scratcher. 13 on list for the 1 plo game running. 35 plus on 2/5, 60 plus on 1/3 lists..yep, they opened a 2nd plo game.

No consistency in knowing or enforcing rules. I think my table had 4 different interpretations of the phone rule with in 1 hour. Floor finally called. He changed his ruling twice in 5 minutes.

Game play. Sat at a 1/3 table. Felt like i was ar a retirement home. Players just waiting for aces and grinding out the $1 hour comps..if we get that. Heard several interpretations of that as well. Made $50 in 2 hours of playing, $4 at a time.

Room not matching the hype, yet. I'll be back when they get the bugs worked out.

If I understand this correctly, you can straddle UTG and BTN for up to 50 in the 5–10 NL game? So it’s (much) bigger than 5–10?

What's the issue with GVC? I've only started playing there the last 9 months or so, but put in 129 hours there across 24 sessions and not had much of a problem there. Yeah you have to wait at the weekends, especially for 2-5, but where don't you really?

The major issue is the lack of decent food, but they have NA beer and Arizona Green Tea so that's good for me.

No phones at the table, no headphones, no hoodies. You can't even ****ing chew gum if I remember correctly.

Yes those things are annoying for sure but it doesn't really affect the poker in my eyes. Not really a big deal to me.