First time to Great Blue Heron yesterday (saturday):
Pros:
Lots of limit games!
Smallest limit game is $5/10
Really friendly players and relaxed atmosphere
10% rake up to $5 on all tables plus $1 jackpot drop (way better than LA!)
They dont' drop anything if you steal the blinds preflop
Beautiful Location
Cons:
Can't listen to iPod at the table?!!?!!
10 Players at a table! KILL ME PLEASE! So boring without an ipod!
No comps at all! No free drinks etc...
Incompetent floor men and dealers (I saw the dealers flip over cards and launch cards off the table when dealing at least once a round)
No automatic shufflers
dealers are soooo slow shuffling!
Not much action (at the $5/10 at least)
Having said that I will go back because I love limit games. I took a bus from Whitby to Port Perry and then biked the rest of the way. It was a beautiful ride! My pedal snapped off which kind of sucked and I had to work twice as hard but it was still awesome. I made the mistake of not calling in advance to get my name on the list (Big Mistake!) I put my name on the 5/10 and 10/20 and waited two hours and had the self control not to play any pit games while I waited
The $5-100 spread limit had a lot shorter of a wait list but looked to be pretty competent nits (waiting for bigger limit games) so I didn't even bother.
I watched a lot of the $5/10 and 10/20 games while I waited and the $10/20 games had a bit more action but for a Saturday night I was quite disappointed. I'm from LA where it is pretty standard to have 7 ways capped preflop on weekends. (I never saw the betting capped preflop at any table all night!!!) So yeah pretty much not much action
There were fish but they were more the call station fish instead of re raise everything fish (my favorite).
I finally got a seat in $5/10 and it was a nit fest. I couldn't believe how many times it folded to the blinds. People were open limping AK and 10's!!!! ! Multiple times I saw this happen!!! Absolutely no action. I managed to loosen up the table a little and people bluff catching against me so I could bet mid pair good kicker and any top pair once they were convinced I was insane but it was SOOOO BORING! I asked for a table change almost right away (I was also completely card dead). Table change came about an hour later and I moved to a slightly looser table but just as horrendously passive. I managed to very very slowly and painfully make $100 over four hours time. Next time I go I'm bringing more money so I can play $10/20 which had more raising but overall still really passive. The $20/40 limit game seemed to be where the most action was but there were still about 6 nits at the table. One table of 20/40 omaha hi was going but i didn't catch much of the action since it was in the back, one of the floormen explained to me that omaha is a crazy game with no skill because you have to see the flop with any four cards except quads in your hand.