I'm out of town visiting NY. Is this room worth playing in? The rake is incredibly high ($5 at $20 pot? lmao), you can only straddle from one position for 2BB (any position for any amount should be standardized), 100BB max in 1/2, and it's all OMCs/nits in the entire room. It seems almost impossible to win in this room given how poorly it's structured, how bad the rake is, and how tight the players are. It actually seems intentionally structured to appeal to tight old guys rather than degenerate action gamblers, which when compounded by the rake makes the prospect of actually winning an absurdity.

Just to be clear, the rake taken at 20 is 3 dollars the other 2 are promotional dollars. We take 10% of the first 50 plus a 2 dollar promo ($7.00 max) which may be the lowest in the State and is well within industry standard. We get between 15 and 27 games on weekends as we also have very strong promos and in fact are giving away $25K today.
Im just curious, if you know so much about the room why are you asking about it?. Seems you think you already have all the info.

Why is $3 taken on $20 if its 10%?

Apologies, the first dollar is taken at the flop and then the percentage take kicks in. The 10% of $50 is the final total $5 rake I referred to. The other $2 to reach the $7 total is promotional collection.

Promotional dollars may as well be rake though. How am I to know all of that money goes back to players?

Hi Ohrami! The promo money and rake are kept and tracked separately. Not only does all the promo fund money go back to the guests in promos and BBJ, Turning Stone also contributes to the promo fund...25% of the spend is replaced back into the fund by TS outside of the money we collect from the tables! If you'd like to call me direct to discuss in more detail, that would be great. Office number is 315 361 7629. I am off on Mon and Tues , any other time, if no answer leave a message I will call you back. Thank you!

Which begs to a further discuss of max buy-in limits.
I've seen BI limits for a 1-2 game as low as $60 max (The Bike, LA) to as much as $1000, or even uncapped (Beau Riv, GoldNuggLV). And everything in between. Often I see an out of towner come in and ask why the BI's are so absurdly high/low, and basically they get told "because that is what works here" in so many words.
Face it; the BI limits are what they are, because they work for the majority of the customer base that frequents the facility. In talking with a manager at The Bike about it, their philosophy on it is they don't want their regs to go busto in 30 minutes. Limited bankrolls, etc. And with 200 tables, they can spread a lot of different BI's. ANd if you've ever played the $60 max or the $120 max at The Bike, you know its loose, spewy, nutz and you can pull several racks off the table in a session. I've done it.
TS is a great casino and room, and they balance their customers needs with the product they want to present. The times that I've played there, the balance seems about right.

Dave, thank you for your spot on comments and kind words about the room! Please stop by and say hello next time in!

Frankies the man!

My Man...you enjoying my home town??? lol Keep up the great work, you are ready for it now but you will have your own room in the future! Wait til Flyers season starts and the birds and Flyers are both at home on Sunday!!!

Philly is great! I had awesome mentors all the way. I promise....I will be off on those sundays haha

Frankie- I hope to at some point. My wife's niece is attending SU and playing a sport. (I'll leave it at that. No details, she's a kid) We may come to watch. In which case I'll be sure to look you up.

Awesome, and best of luck to your niece in her athletic and academic endeavors at SU!!!

Frankie, it's great to see you are bringing back major tournaments. I probably won't come out for the one in October, but I think you will get a really good turnout, which will hopefully lead to bringing back some of the bigger buy in events.

Also, it's nice to see that you made some much needed changes to the structure (300BB starting stack vs 600, antes starting in level 2).

Thanks Boss, sorry we will miss you in Oct!

Hey Frankie,

I see you guys are running a $350-75k. Wow I’m excited! I honestly didn’t expect to see a big tournament at rivers, tstone, Seneca, etc (ny/ PA) region in the northeast for a long time.

I’m a big fan of the structure. 40 min levels to start and you go up to 50 on day 2- huge fan of that structure. Also like how you guys are running a better structure along with only one flight per day.

I know you probably can’t divulge this info but can we expect a thanksgiving series? I would be a fan of a $250-300 that had many flights and a solid guarantee. I honestly think you could run a conservative 50k and crush that number (I see last November in 19 was a 75k). Final note- so October series, is there anyway you guys are limited to #s. I just don’t want to show up late and have to wait to have someone bust.

Not going to lie, I’m very happy for a tournament to be happening in NY. The structure looks very good for the buyin.

Hi JK, glad to see the interest in the event. As far as November goes, we are looking to have an event but that will be based in part on Octobers turn out.

For #'s, we are only limited by the number of guests that may show up for this event. Hopefully, all will run as smooth as it has ran in the past and we can accommodate all that are here to play. Hope that helps! See you in a couple weeks!

I’ll be there Friday and Saturday (if necessary) for the tournament! For November, please do what you guys have done in the past if possible- please run a standard $200-250 with solid guarantee that has multiple flights (2 flights a day), and a bigger mtt maybe with a better structure (even if not better structure) maybe just run a $300-500 the next weekend.

I like the setup turning stone has run for the November series over the past few years.

I assume the #s will be really good for the October series. No one is really running mtts in the northeast (only Maryland live is running $300+ mtts it seems). Foxwoods and borgata just started running limited schedule dailies again. Parx is no mtts. Call me crazy but I would expect numbers to be great but will be interesting to see what happens.

Looking forward to the $350 $75k GTD this weekend! Folks within traveling distance who want to play a well-structured live tournament run by a great staff in a beautiful room should strongly consider making the trip!

Thank you for the shout out and kind words Oog! Stop by the office and say hello!

Initial reports are that today's flight has a registration line that circled the poker room. Plan to get there early tomorrow if you're playing.

Lol holy crap, they surpassed the Guarantee with just Fridays flight. East coast is starving for poker tournaments.

Yea the east coast is starving. It’s a lot of the upstate ny regular crowd and not people from other areas it seems though. I don’t see the people I generally see at parx/ borgata here really.

Tomorrow’s #s should be interesting. I assume they hit 300 at least tomorrow.

Any idea on how long the wait was if you arrived during say.. lvl 2 or 3? I assume it will be double the wait for Saturday

Very nice turnout. Frankie, any chance you guys can possibly find a way to play down to everyone returning for day 2 in the money? I feel people that travel may find it irritating to come back for day 2 and not min cash.

Btw the structure was great. Please keep this new setup starting at 100-100. I think it would be cool if you could run a $250 super stack event down the road and maybe go with 40k starting stacks and 30 min levels which would make the tournament quicker. Would be nice to start with 400bb and have deeper play even though the levels are shorter. I def wanna see the multi flight mtts return that have 2 starts a day for bigger field sizes. I could see the thanksgiving series getting a huge # if you guys run multiple flights for day a 250-75k. I honestly don’t think you need to tag on a 100 or 150k gtn. People will show up and it will crush any guarantee you put on it.