Great Post. +1

Please reread the B&M Forum guidelines -- I just had to delete a couple posts using names of cardroom employees. Thanks!

Oh boy. Bad tourney dealers + playing the Omaha8 today = picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue.

I am pumped for the 560 this weekend, pretty sick structure.

Me too. It should have a great turnout too since it is a weekend

What non hold'em and FL games are getting spread regularly on weekdays? I may be coming down for a visit next week.

2/5 PLO

I know who you are! and I know who you talking about..... Just say, ya, I pretipped when I bought in... Some of the new tourney dealers are actually applying for a job too and Tampa HR is supposed to keep some of them and relieve some of the bad ones in the cash area permanently. Heard that from the horses mouth

Visiting with the family from DC, nice run room...love the button straddle...

What's the best time to play here / time that has more fish?

Every Mon-Thurs 9am-5pm.

Lol!

I got accepted into the university of Tampa, so I'll be headed from central New York, to here. I've read the OP, lurked a bit, so really I just have two questions:

Are the dealers still bad? If I recall it's hit or miss from reading the posts

Is the quality of play at 200NL decent? I've only been to Turning Stone up here in NY, some exploitable players, but a good amount of competent ones too

I think previous posts/complaints/horror stories about bad dealers were centered around just a handful of them (the worst of whom has since been let go). The vast majority are either good or very good. Now, consistent floor rulings... that's another topic.

Assuming that by 200NL you mean 1/2, I'm sure you won't be disappointed with the level of play. Very few good players there.

Turningstone is redic easy. Tampa is definitely softer but a completely different beast. They will not fold anything whereas Turningstone they were mega nits.

Yes, they're definitely not folding many winners at THR.

Pretty crazy to think I haven't been too the hard rock in two years. Even crazier that I haven't once got a promo offer in that time.

Played 2 events for the Summer Poker open yesterday. All dealers were competent and the floor staff was good. The #1 plus of the tournaments, 9-handed tables from the beginning.

It's strange, I consider myself overly harsh on dealers so I try to keep to myself in the uncomfortable situations, it's just so polarized here. They're either very competent doing a wonderful job or they're a complete horror show. On the cusp of having an elite staff for a tournament series though, they'll get it right.

I am sure I missed it, but is the tournament location different than the normal room?

It is right outside the Rise Kitchen and Bakery.

Thanks. I don't venture outside the poker room much, is that by the front desk?

One of the dealers mentioned that they god rid of about 30 dealers after the first week of the series. Maybe that's why it has improved.

Weird situation on table 16 Wed night. I get to the room about 10pm, and there are about 4 cleaning staff, a couple of supervisors, and a dealer at table 16. The dealer has rubber gloves on and appears to be going through his rack cleaning chips. There's cloths covering the table, and the 4 workers, with gloves on, are working on the table.

As they clean, they are putting the rags/towels into bags marked Biohazard. They worked on the table for over an hour. It really looked like the way you would handle a cleanup if someone ****ing died and bled out all over the table. They were cleaning the whole table area, not just like one seat or so. After an hour of playing, my table breaks, so on the way over I go over to a supervisor who is still at the table and asked what happened. I see that even though they have picked up all the cloths covering the table, the shuffle machine cover is covered with little pieces of brown stuff.

It turns out the player in seat 1 has some sort of combo sneeze/cough with snuff either in his mouth or up his nose, and it gets power projected over the entire table. The supervisor told me that from seat 1, the guy in seat 7 got hit with residue. The rack was covered, and was most of the table. If the table looked anything like the shuffle machine cover, which was covered with the tobacco particles and they appeared to be stuck to the plastic, it must have been mighty nasty.

They didn't reopen the table while I was there. But I'd be careful of table 16 for a while. For all the work they did on it, you'd think they would take the felt off and clean it or something. Nasty.

After that post, to hell with avoiding table 16. I'm going to be avoiding everything west of I-75 for a while.