Yes. I'm good friends with the owner of the new room coming. It will be the best room in town hands down.

Supposed to be opening around the first week in Nov.

Not so sure how anyone can guarantee 'the best room in town'. The players need to show up and play. There is a very sour taste in some mouths about that location, but that may not hold off the curious and eventually win over the masses. The state has rooms in a pretty tight position, so amenities are limited. It will come down to personnel .. which is pretty limited in GR from what I've seen the last few years.

What 4 days of the week will they operate? Day or night or both?

My guess is that a day game would do well Friday to Sunday with TJ's not opening until 4pm and folks not really venturing up to Westgate.

Having too many rooms will hurt the game ... and the charities as well. I don't think the player pool is getting any bigger, certainly not any younger like it was 5 years ago. GL

We does that location have a sour taste for some people?

They will be running thurs.- Sun. night

Pretty sure it would have to do with the robbery. And players not getting paid back. And some other crap.

Then again, people followed that staff to the new TJ's locations, so poker players will go where there is a game.

But if you remember the group that moved in and tried to run a room post-TJs, that was an epic failure.

[QUOTE=answer20;48453867]Not so sure how anyone can guarantee 'the best room in town'. /QUOTE]

Not like the bar is set real high. But i agree thats probably the worst possible location.

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1) Yes, the robbery is still fresh in some minds. But as stated, players did follow TJ's anyway.
2) There were rumors that TJ's was told to 'get out' (I have no proof one way or other)
3) Parking is 'bad', no lights and 'in back'

Being a 'me too' with that schedule (nights only? Thu-Sun) will really make it tougher on themselves to get going IMO. All this does is saturate the players, making the games 'weaker', not softer.

They should really try to open earlier, at least Friday. Figure out a way to sell out your chips. GL

I would just do fri sat and sun with woodys like a mile away

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Charities are going to want to pull the 'full' 4 day license that they are allowed by the state. That creates the overlap.

Woody's is now running the 2/5 game on Thursday nights just because all the 1/2 action is 'running' to TJs and Westgate. You can't be a 'me too'.

If I were setting this room up I would actually go Friday to Monday. Woody's has their RxR on Monday nights and most players don't want to play at Eastbrook. Perfect night to pick up the 1/2 game that gets pushed to the side a bit at Woody's.

I can't see 2 rooms having a day game going at the same time, but just because the charity license says "10 am to 2 am" doesn't mean that they have to be open for all of those hours. GL

yeah, that's kinda what I figured too.

I don't know much about the last group that was at that location. I never went when it was open but I never heard anything about it when it was open either. I know the new group is planning to do a much better job marketing. They know there are a limited number of players in town and will have to work at getting them to come play.

Time will tell. I know they did a ton of research on looking for other locations and the ended up going to Russos again. At least Russos has good food compared to other rooms.

They chose the weekend schedule to hopefully draw people from that side of town who play at Woody's so they don't have to go all the way to TJ's/Westgate. Plus... there's a lot of people who are tired of the other places and how they are managed that are looking for a different place to play.

The Big Game Room (the company that runs poker at Northway Lanes in Muskegon) is, according to one of their dealers, about to open a second room in a bar in Fruitport, a village in Muskegon County.

That deal fell through once before, so we'll see. I see nothing on the Millionaire Party Locator showing licences for a second Muskegon County location.

EDIT: Information about Muskegon poker is hard to get. The Big Game Room has no website, and the owner unfriended me when I kept bugging him about it on Facebook. The don't make announcements at tournaments and there are no leaflets or flyers. I feel like I'm trying to find an illegal high-stakes home game and no one wants to let me in the club.

Hopefully you will have poker 7 days a week in that area of the state!!

Russo's (Old TJ's) has poker scheduled to start on November 12th. Don't know who the supplier is as of yet.

There will always be a bunch of rumors. The Holland rumors have died down. Now we have the new room in GR opening.

It does appear that this is a business that folks want to pursue. Good luck to all of them!! GL

Unfortunately poker room robberies are fairly common. They happen in the Detroit area. They have happened in Muskegon twice.

When you think about it poker rooms are both easy and juicy targets. Most of the tournaments I've played have been in bowling alleys, and if there is a bowling alley that has any kind of security presence, I haven't seen it.

Most poker rooms have their schedules posted on a web site, and especially in the case of tournaments, thieves can make a very close estimate of how much money is in the till. For example, if a site says that the tournament buy-in is $50, it's not hard to do the math and estimate how much cash gets dumped into the till just before the start of the tournament.

A clever thief could do some recon: count the number of seats, find out when the tournaments start, find out the minimum buy-in at the cash tables, etc. It's a roadmap to how much money is coming in, and when--and it's all in cash, thousands of dollars every day.

AAAhem ... We don't really want to do their work for them now Cliff!! We all know it's not rocket science since the TJ's robbers got away via bicycle and bus.

I would also like to provide a public service and indicate that almost every time I play I know of at least one player at the table who is carrying. It's not me, but someone generally has one ... not so GL.

The new room at Russo's (King's room) on S. Division will be opening a week from today (11/4) They will be open Thursday-Sat at 4 and Sundays at 2. Open house will be Saturday 11/7 from 4-10. Tournaments will be each night at 7.

Now that I've thought about it, I'm sure that must be the case in Muskegon as well. I don't know any of the players well enough to know that for sure, but at my last tournament a lot of people were talking about the guns that they bought, sold or worked on. Some of those players must certainly be carrying.

Not sure if this is news to you guys, but it might interest you otherwise.

Basically various Four Winds properties (New Buffalo, Dowagiac, Hartford) have had a credit card harvesting issue since October 2014 or earlier; detected in late October 2015.

I didn't know anything about this, but I don't go to any of those sites anyway.

Firekeepers did have a similar issue that I received a letter on last Summer. I had heard that it was more than likely an inside job, rather than a hack. But I have not inquired or heard any discussions on it since.

Can't remember even using any credit cards down there anyway. I use my points and chips for stuff!! GL

MUSKEGON COUNTY UPDATE:

I just checked the state web site. It still shows only one room licensed for play in Muskegon County. When I went through this the last time, the state showed licenses to play in Fruitport, but there was no play on those days, at least for the first few days. Either there was never any poker there, or there was but only for a short while. I'm not sure about that any more either.

Muskegon is an information black hole. I have no idea what's going on, and I no longer believe anything that anyone says.

The city of Muskegon, where I live, is one of the worst places in the Grand Rapids/Holland/Muskegon triangle for a live player. The only room in Muskegon County is of course only open four days a week (most of the time) under very unpredictable management. There is no web site, so I won't know if anything changes--and I've been burned several times. I'm over 100 miles* from the nearest casino that deals NLHE poker tourmaments. There are no rooms open north or south of Muskegon county for at least 100 miles, and of course Lake Michigan is to the west. Muskegon is 30 miles from Walker, the nearest city with a poker room.

My local room is 1.8 miles from my house. That's very convenient, but I go not knowing if the tournament line-up has changed, or even if the room will be open. I'm already spending about 40% of my poker time in Walker or Grand Rapids. It's a really screwed up situation, but I am very grateful that I have the poker rooms in Kent Country.

Maybe someday someone will figure out how to do poker on the Lakeshore. The combined population of Muskegon and Ottawa countries (Muskegon/Grand Haven/Holland) is 450,000. That market is big enough for someone willing to come in and compete.

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*According to Google, the drive from where I live to Soaring Eagle is 103 miles. I'm a family caregiver and it's difficult for me to be away for long periods of time. >100 mile road trips to play poker don't work for me right now.

Sorry Cliff ... The chatter about a room in Holland has died down. It could've been 'bad' information related to 'old TJ's' opening up (which is tomorrow).

Don't forget that the HPT is at our 'favorite' place next week ... Soaring Eagle. Not sure what my plans are right now. Maybe play a qualifier or just buy in on Thursday at 3:00. They have 4 Day 1s planned ... Thursday, Friday and 2 on Saturday. Day 2 is Sunday ... down to the final TV table which will play on Monday.

They play down to 15% or fifteen 45 minute levels, so plan on a 12 hour session for your Day 1. GL

Cliff.. just be grateful you are close to any place to play.. living in Ludington I have to drive down there an hour and deal with them running out of chips. Or drive around 2 hours to a real room in TC or Mount Pleasant. It would be nice if Manistee would get their heads out of their asses and put some effort into a poker room... won't happen any time soon.

I wondered what things were like a little farther north, sorry it's not a good situation for you.

I'm glad that you wrote. if this is going to really be a West Michigan thread, we need to hear about rooms, casinos and situations in Battle Creek, Ludington. Benton Harbor and other places more than a one-hour drive from Grand Rapids.

Are you sure you want to consider TC/Soaring a 'real' room?

I would certainly consider TC a much better place to play, but they really struggle to get games going 'out of season'. I would just love to get the 'situation' at Soaring changed around, but I'm happy that Firekeepers is reaping the benefits of their shortcomings. The drive is basically the same for me to either place, but there really isn't much for the family to do in Battle Creek ... (waterpark hotel in MP).

I would've thought Cadillac would be a good spot for a charity poker room but I'm clueless as to the status of poker north of Rockford. Although Big Rapids did have a room for a bit. I can imagine the weather would create a very inconsistent flow anywhere 'up there'.

On a lighter note, I did read that 20%, not the 15% I previously reported, will move on to Day 2 of the HPT event at Soaring Eagle next week. $300 BI event one starts today with 2 Day ones and wraps up on Sunday. Should be a much bigger payout than the Spring event .. maybe even up to $40K to the winner .. not bad for a $300 entry event. GL

It is true that all casinos, as well as all charity rooms, are not created equal.

I recently got online and compared the NLHE tournaments at Soaring Eagle to the charity tournaments in Muskegon. Both run $50 freezeouts so I took a close look at the differences. One thing jumped out at me. The rake was the same at both places--20%.

People are always telling me that I need to start playing in casinos. One of the reasons given is that the rake is lower. Obviously that is not always the case.

I'm certainly not going to drive 103 miles to pay the same rake as I do at a poker room that is walking distance from my house. There would have to be some kind of casino incentive (two tournaments on the same day, weaker players, bigger prize pool) for that situation to make sense.

If you could find two of those incentives at the same time, for example, two tournaments on a Saturday when 70-year-old fish are taking bus trips to the casino, then the road trip starts to make sense.

For now, since TJs is running a $125 freezeout every week, there is less incentive for someone in Grand Rapids or Muskegon to drive to Soaring Eagle than there was a month ago.

Wherever you play, make sure that you regularly check the line-up if you're a tournament player. This is especially true of TJs, where I have seen them change the line-up twice in a week.

Here are some of the recent changes:

1. The $125 tournament will run every week. The posted hours are 1800-0145.

2. The build-a-stack tournament has become so popular that to accomodate the demand it will run at Shamrock and Eastbrook at the same time.

3. Other tournaments have been moved around or changed as well.

If you play at TJs, I suggest that you always check the web site the day before you plan to play. I check it every day.

tspoker.com

Good stuff Cliff ... Is there a late reg time for the $125 on Saturdays at Shamrock? I probably couldn't do 6 pm, but it looks deep stacked so later may work. GL