Twin River Casino (Lincoln, RI)
01-04-2016
, 08:50 PM
Quote:
Played here on Saturday 1/2/16 - 4.5 hour wait for a 1/2 table. Complete mess everywhere. Got there around 6:00 fully expecting to wait a bit and was willing to do so. Come to find out, they're not taking names for 1/2. The list is closed. This defeats the purpose of a list. Instead, there ends up being a pool of people waiting around the desk for them to begin taking names again, all the while they keep yelling at everyone to move away and give them space. So now I have to wait and can't even go have dinner. Finally after 45 minutes they begin taking names again - after a change in staff at the desk and the woman who came in just started taking names without telling anyone. There were 100+ people in front of me on the list, far more than I've ever seen anywhere. The list moved at a snail's pace both because it was a popular time, but for other reasons I'll outline below.
Their software is so terrible it can't hold more than 30 names, so the majority of the list was on a legal pad, and the people at the desk couldn't figure out how to transfer the names from the pad to the list without having overlaps or confusion on their end. They badly need Bravo, or at least some other form of software that isn't a stripped-down Excel spreadsheet projected onto a screen.
During the wait, I walked over to the rail and was observing the tables and how they ran when a seat opened up. Some of the dealers being new and not having experience would softly call out an open seat once and then forget about it. A table right in front of me had two open seats for almost 15 minutes before they were finally filled because a floor happened to see them. Other times, the dealer called out loudly an open seat and the floor just didn't react. Even further, there were times it would be called out, the floor would radio to the desk, and the desk wouldn't call anyone. They're so busy trying to hunt down the people that left, finding another 10-20 stud player, or figuring out how to work their ridiculous software, that they let things go. At one point, they called a 1-2 player the normal three times, gave a last call, then stopped. Apparently, in the time between that they forgot they'd called the person and didn't take the initials off the list, then 10 minutes later called the same person again and went through the same three-call protocol, wasting even more time for everyone involved. When I finally say, one of the dealers commented "Well, you can come in and put your name on the list, go home take a shower, have a nap, then come back." Well pal, that's not going to work for the large base of customers you have coming from 30+ minutes away up here in Boston. Just a bit of an example of how out of touch some of the people here are.
There are some people there, dealers and floor, who have a clue what they're doing and/or are trying to do run the room effectively. Unfortunately, there's an equal amount of people who don't give a crap and have no idea what the hell they're doing. I even overheard a cashier who was giving me chips say how the poker room is the worst thing that ever happened to the casino. Probably not what you want your poker customers hearing.
Also, during the wait I overheard a floor (one of the really good ones who ran things really well) chatting with the guy right next to me about the whole situation. The player asked if you could call the desk ahead of time and get on the list. The floor said they had all been explicitly instructed by management to not answer the phones there if anyone calls at any time. Again, really bad form and bad customer service.
It's nice that they try to offer multiple different kinds of games here, but in a 16-table room with 100+ person lists for 1/2 and 2/5 all day on weekends, spreading 10/20 stud, 5/10 and 3/6 limit just isn't a good idea. They have eight 1/2 tables, four 2/5, and the other four dispersed among 5/10, 3/6, and stud. Even switching up two of those tables to 1/2 or 2/5 would help alleviate things. 10/20 had virtually no interest, 5/10 had some but many of the players just ended up on that list because 2/5 was too long. The desk personnel were begging people asking for 2/5 to go on 5/10 instead.
There's a lot of potential here to draw people who don't want to make the drive all the way to FW or MS, but they need to make the room bigger, something it appears isn't going to happen soon. That said, some quick fixes that require little or no money and no regulatory changes such as amending the games they spread to reflect demand, joining Bravo or finding more advanced software, answering the phones, and perhaps running a Twitter account with live updates would make things much better.
There was still a 25-person wait list for 1/2 at 2:45 am when I left on Saturday night. I've never seen that anywhere I've played, east coast, west coast, or Las Vegas. I loaded Bravo on my phone just to take a look at what wait times were like elsewhere - open seating at MS, FW, sub-10 waitlists at Bellagio, Aria, Wynn, Venetian, Caesars, etc. where it was only 11:45 at night! Ridiculous.
Their software is so terrible it can't hold more than 30 names, so the majority of the list was on a legal pad, and the people at the desk couldn't figure out how to transfer the names from the pad to the list without having overlaps or confusion on their end. They badly need Bravo, or at least some other form of software that isn't a stripped-down Excel spreadsheet projected onto a screen.
During the wait, I walked over to the rail and was observing the tables and how they ran when a seat opened up. Some of the dealers being new and not having experience would softly call out an open seat once and then forget about it. A table right in front of me had two open seats for almost 15 minutes before they were finally filled because a floor happened to see them. Other times, the dealer called out loudly an open seat and the floor just didn't react. Even further, there were times it would be called out, the floor would radio to the desk, and the desk wouldn't call anyone. They're so busy trying to hunt down the people that left, finding another 10-20 stud player, or figuring out how to work their ridiculous software, that they let things go. At one point, they called a 1-2 player the normal three times, gave a last call, then stopped. Apparently, in the time between that they forgot they'd called the person and didn't take the initials off the list, then 10 minutes later called the same person again and went through the same three-call protocol, wasting even more time for everyone involved. When I finally say, one of the dealers commented "Well, you can come in and put your name on the list, go home take a shower, have a nap, then come back." Well pal, that's not going to work for the large base of customers you have coming from 30+ minutes away up here in Boston. Just a bit of an example of how out of touch some of the people here are.
There are some people there, dealers and floor, who have a clue what they're doing and/or are trying to do run the room effectively. Unfortunately, there's an equal amount of people who don't give a crap and have no idea what the hell they're doing. I even overheard a cashier who was giving me chips say how the poker room is the worst thing that ever happened to the casino. Probably not what you want your poker customers hearing.
Also, during the wait I overheard a floor (one of the really good ones who ran things really well) chatting with the guy right next to me about the whole situation. The player asked if you could call the desk ahead of time and get on the list. The floor said they had all been explicitly instructed by management to not answer the phones there if anyone calls at any time. Again, really bad form and bad customer service.
It's nice that they try to offer multiple different kinds of games here, but in a 16-table room with 100+ person lists for 1/2 and 2/5 all day on weekends, spreading 10/20 stud, 5/10 and 3/6 limit just isn't a good idea. They have eight 1/2 tables, four 2/5, and the other four dispersed among 5/10, 3/6, and stud. Even switching up two of those tables to 1/2 or 2/5 would help alleviate things. 10/20 had virtually no interest, 5/10 had some but many of the players just ended up on that list because 2/5 was too long. The desk personnel were begging people asking for 2/5 to go on 5/10 instead.
There's a lot of potential here to draw people who don't want to make the drive all the way to FW or MS, but they need to make the room bigger, something it appears isn't going to happen soon. That said, some quick fixes that require little or no money and no regulatory changes such as amending the games they spread to reflect demand, joining Bravo or finding more advanced software, answering the phones, and perhaps running a Twitter account with live updates would make things much better.
There was still a 25-person wait list for 1/2 at 2:45 am when I left on Saturday night. I've never seen that anywhere I've played, east coast, west coast, or Las Vegas. I loaded Bravo on my phone just to take a look at what wait times were like elsewhere - open seating at MS, FW, sub-10 waitlists at Bellagio, Aria, Wynn, Venetian, Caesars, etc. where it was only 11:45 at night! Ridiculous.
01-05-2016
, 09:17 PM
01-06-2016
, 06:44 AM
Quote:
Went there on a weekday pm. Waited for 1/2 table for 2.5 hours. Dealers, through no fault of their own, are unbearably slow. Floor is for the most part very unhelpful. Points (make that "point") are impossible to get credited to your card. Took them forever to open the room. I thought they might have been just a little better prepared.
Last edited by jh12547; 01-06-2016 at 06:51 AM.
