Anyone going to be there Friday most of the day? I will be there for the first time. Is 5-10 the largest game they spread? Is there any Omaha spread?

Thanks.

Quick Question: Is this room (and Mountaineer's) 24 hours? I thought I remember reading somewhere about WV racinos trying to make it legal for them to be open 24 hours. Thanks.

Yes. 24hrs. I called Wheeling and asked.

RF

Alright, thanks.

Headed there tonight. 5'9", goatee, glasses, wearing a Dayton Flyers sweatshirt. Look for me to be shortstacked on a 1-2 NL table Say hi if you see me.

I'd like to know how things go. I'm probably going to head to Mountaineer tonight. Any clue about how the limits/play are over the weekend?

Give me a report!

Can anyone recommend any hotels in the Wheeling area? Wanted to go tonight into tomm. Thanks.

Stay at the Island. I know Mountaineer has rooms for 39 bucks a night for "roaring 20's" players, so you might as well just try to do that there. I"m assuming Wheeling has about the same setup.

I chose a Super 8 here in Wheeling, en route to the poker room now...trip report later on tonite (or tomm morning)

I just came back from the Wheeling Island poker room. Here are some likes/dislikes I have about the place.

- Food service at the tables is nice, so you don't have to go to any of the casino's restaurants, and risk having them bag your chips (according to some of the dealers, they bag your chips after 30 minutes, which i think is insane, when there's a list). I guess it's because they're just trying to reduce long waiting lists, but I think 30 minutes is just too short.
- I don't like how dealers have to count the decks before they start. The automatic shuffler counts the cards while it shuffles, so it's just a stupid idea to have the dealers count. This delay has caused live ones to leave the games when they were up (happened a couple of times last night).
- The play is atrocious. People constantly overbetting pots, and top pair any kicker is apparently the nuts. Of course though, when I got it in all-in with top two pair, other guy has top set. It is also funny to see people raise 25 to 30 bucks PF (in a 1/2 NL game), and then bet 10 or 15 bucks on flop after 2 or 3 callers.
- The place is basically a 1/2-NL house. Being a mainly limit person, kinda disappointed they couldn't even get a 3/6 game going. They did have 2 tables of 1-5 stud, which was a fun game. No one ever folds on 3th street (and 4th, and 5th, and 6th...).

all in all, I had a fun time, and made 1.5 buyins of 1/2 NL. Don't think I'll be going back though, Argosy is equidistant from where I live, so I think I'd rather just go there since they at least have a 5/10 LHE w/half kill

half kill? $7.50/15??

I really enjoyed Wheeling. It is slightly closer than Argosy for me, but I will be heading to Wheeling from now on.

Me and a buddy arrived at 3:30 on Friday. I was third on the wait list and was seated within 5 minutes. They had about 15 of the 20 tables going, and they were at full capacity by around 6:00. As has been noted, they spread a lot of 1-2 NL games, had one or two tables of 2-5 NL, one table of 5-10 NL, and at least one table of 1-5 stud and one table of 3-6 Omaha.

The room itself is nice. It is pretty much by itself in the basement, is non-smoking, and they do a good job of keeping smoke from drifting in. The dealers were all over the board with some being very good and very friendly, and others being very slow and borderline rude (this area seems to have improved based on early trip reports). The card counting every time a new dealer was sat was very annoying, and cost a lot of time. I understand this is required by the state lottery commission, and the dealers seemed as annoyed about it as the players. The "California button" thing was ridiculous, and every dealer I asked said that that is the number one complaint they get from players. I would be surprised if management continues to use this given the high number of complaints they must be receiving. The rest rooms are right outside the poker room, which is a big plus. The table side service is a positive, but the wait staff was very slow. I think they just need more waitresses, as they were all friendly but seemed overworked. The cage ran smoothly as well, so there seems to be some improvement in this area.

Play at my 1-2 NL table was better than I expected given previous reports I have read. There were some obvious soft spots, but about half the table seemed to play well. I usually play at Argosy, and my table at Wheeling was much, much tougher than I have ever seen there. Only one drunken LAG sat down, and he managed to keep his money for some time by hitting runner-runner straight, then runner runner flush to build a big stack. Unfortunately, I never caught a hand against him, but did manage to pick off a couple small pots from him. My friend sat at another table and said there was only one guy who could play there, so maybe I just got a bad table.

For those of you who play higher limits, the 5-10 game seemed awfully crazy. The table was right behind where I was seated, so I heard a lot of the action, and watched a few hands. It seemed like everyone was trying to emulate High Stakes Poker, as the action was very fast and loose. Two guys played a $7K pot when they got it all in on an ace-rag-rag flop with A-Q and A-9. Turn was a blank, then a nine fell on the river... Maybe it's typical to get it all in with top pair, bad kicker on the flop, but that just seems plain crazy to me under any circumstance. Then again maybe that's why I only play 1-2 NL.

The comp situation is strange. They will clock your players card in, but readily admit that they don't know what they will do with your points, or even how many you are accumulating. They assured us that once they figure it out, the points we have accumulated will be applied retroactively. One thing they know is that points gathered at the poker table will not be able to be used for food or hotel stays. Instead they can be used to enter "freeroll" tournaments. No word on how that will work.

All in all, I had a great experience at Wheeling, and will definitely go back. Despite getting stacked when my aces got cracked by a set, I managed to win my buy in back and add another $150 on top. Not bad considering I had a pretty decent table, and I'm not much of a player myself!

sorry, meant full kill, although 7.5/15 games do exist, or at least did exist at the trop

any word on when there will be tourneys in Wheeling

I've been out there a bit when visiting the folks.


Saw a really weird ruling there the other day. Standard problem. 2-4 limit game. Three players in the hand, the dealer puts up the turn card before player in the eight seat acts, the two seat bets four and is called by the four seat and then seat eight objects... to be fair this did happen very quickly as it was a pretty peppy game so it wasn't like seat eight was asleep at the wheel he was a bit new to the game and was fishing a raise out of his stack when the action went flying past.

The floor is called. The turn card is of course taken back, it is explained that the river card will be the turn, the deck re-shuffled and etc. Fair enough.

The weird part is the floor than says it is seat eight's option to call the two dollar flop bet. Seat eight does. Now the floor tells the dealler to take the turn (four dollar) bets into the pot and again ask seat eight if he wishes to call the four dollar bet. I would think that these bets would obviously be pulled back once the turn card was withdrawn.

I interject here and ask how exactly they can bet on a turn card that hasn't really been dealt yet, and get a dismissive "quiet now, grownups are talking" look from the floor. As I am not in the hand I just lean back and giggle.

Seat eight calls the four, then the turn is dealt, all three confusedly check, the river is dealt and so on.

Very weird.

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I play exclusively limit games, Wheeling Island is pretty much 2-4 country, with a 3-6 popping up here or there. I think both they and Mountaineer would be well served by dropping 2-4 and only offering 3-6 or even 4-8 to offset the silly $5 rake. The higher game would allow worse players a bit more life as the rake % is less. A forty dollar minimum buyin isn't going to scare off too many people. Just my $.02.

The other thing I found alarming is the 1-5 stud game there, spread with a $1 ante and $1 bring in. This seems a HUGE ante for the limit. Given the number of hands one winds up playing in this structure is it beatable with a 10% to $5 rake? Or does the silly big action this should create push pot sixes high enough to push the rake % down to a more reasonable number?

That does sound like a high ante for a 1-5 game... I would imagine it should probably be .25, but they probably don't want to mess with the quarters. I'd recommend it, though. Issue is that they are still getting action there, so why change?

As much as we complain about the constant $5 drop... it's the only game in town. They kind of realize it, and know that people will pay it. Bastards lol

I'll be at Mountaineer tonight, so I'll let you all know if it has gotten better.

Tournaments started yesterday from what I heard. The website now shows their tournament schedule as well. Not sure of any other details at this time.

I have no real problem with a $5 rake per se, inflation being what it is... it is that the limits aren't growing with the rake as well. 2-4 should go the way of 1-2. While the 3-6 buy in isn't that much more in real $$ terms it makes a big difference as to the rake as the bigger pots wind up with a much smaller rake as a % of the pot. Bad players that expose themselves to the rake over and over have a better chance of a good result. Years ago Caesars Indiana had 5-10 as the smallest limit and even with the $5 rake a lot of extremely loose players preflop but not bad postflop had decent overall results for long periods of time.


The Tri-State (Charleston area track) people are killing me. That track is maybe five minutes from where I live and they haven't even had the dealer classes yet.

Given a choice I play at Mountaineer. More games and the parking lot seems way safer than the one on the Island. The Mtnr lot is very well lit and isn't, well, on Wheeling Island. I usually hit the island for an hour or three when passing by to visit the folks.

I cant find anything on the Tri State tracks website about what they will be offering, or even when they plan on getting started. I Deal at Wheeling, but thats 3 hours closer to home, and i probably will be looking to move once they open.
Also with the stud, yeah they didnt want to get into the quarters and thats why its $1 ante and $1 force.

I play at Mountaineer as much as i deal at wheeling, from my point of view the dealers at Mountaineer have made some great improvements and are getting better everyday. I cant really watch our dealers, but im sure they are improving as well?

You say years ago at Caesars lol i love that, i can remember when i first turned 21 and played 5 10 at Caesars all the time. Then they started spreading NL just on mondays i believe it was. I was instantly hooked. Its sad when you can remember when people played limit more than no limit.

Has anyone here played in the Wheeling tourneys? I was wondering about the buyin and how many people to expect.

70-80 has been the avg. so far i think.

Buy in amount?

Someone said todays was around 45. Tommorow is the first day im supposed to be around for the tourneys. I can let you know more about them then, unless of course they let me off for the National Championship!

Anyone try the tournaments yet? How's the action? Average amount of players?

I played the tournament at Wheeling on Tue. night and it was full. They only allow 70players max in the tourneys. They may have taken a few alternates, Im not really sure. The buy-in was only $65. The winner got about $1200. There were a few good players and alot of fish, Id say about 80/20, I saw some really bad play. Everyone at the final table got paid, I think 10th was like $110. Show up a little early and make sure you have a players card, if you dont then show up at least an hour before tourney because they have to make you one, then you stand in line at the cage to register, gotta find your table assignment, blah, blah, blah. Tournament dealers were pretty good, but there was no tournament director, just the normal floor men. There was no one to announce level changes, so some tables were playing lower limits than others because there was no bell or warning, and no one to announce level changes or antes. I was moved from my table about 6 times in the tourney, twice into first position where I had to play blinds at new table the next hand. I finished 19th. Not a bad tourney but I wont pay more than $65 to play tournaments there until they get a director. Overall it was fun and most of the people were pleasant.