It's not a good look, but it will not affect anything. If anything it may get you more new players that never played there before. True degens for sure that don't care about their health or health of their family/friends. May be a good thing for business.
My place is covering the cost of health insurance premiums for anyone not getting paid enough to cover it so it won't lapse, but it must be paid back. So premiums will double upon return until it's paid back.

The 3 rooms in FL are giving you unreliable data. All 3 of them include 3 card poker, ultimate hold'em, etc. as open games. Out of the 10 tables listed in those 3 propeties, maybe half of them were actual poker games.

I really like that idea. I will pass it along to our powers that be. Thanks.


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The Motor City game has to be a computer issue .. There's no way that game is running, with only one on the list for the last 24 hours. Can't imagine what the waiting Player is doing beside staring endlessly at the empty food cases along the wall. GL

My room gave us a memo stating that our health coverage will be paid 100% by the casino if we remain closed after March 31 - unexpected generosity.

You work in CT?

My room (Oxford Downs) finally followed suit with the rest of the country and closed at midnight Friday. Thursday night there were state officials along with police officers who came to inspect the room. Apparently they were trying to shut the room down but the shift manager was able to hold them off by moving players so that there was sufficient space between the tables.

Early Friday we received an email stating that our cash games would now be 7-max in an attempt to comply with the governor’s social distancing mandate. I went to work at 2 pm not knowing exactly what to expect. As soon as I clocked in I learned that Daytona and Orange City were closing at 4 pm and Derby Lane at 6 pm.

When I started we had 4 cash games and around 30 entries for our noon tournament. On a typical Friday we’d have twice as many cash games and 70-90 tournament entries. A funny thing happened though, the lists started to build and we began opening new games. Around 4 pm we received word that the governor of Florida was restricting all restaurants to take-out only and eliminating any alcohol sales. It was very strange to hear “last call” at 4:15 in the afternoon. I was sure that this would be the straw that broke the camel’s back.

At our peak we had maybe six 1/2 NL games, one 2/5 NL game and a 5/5 Big O game. The 4 table games we had open were very sporadic. I’m sure the lack of alcohol killed much of the normal Friday action there.

Then came the announcement around 8:30 pm, the room was closing until further notice, effective at midnight. There were lots of groans and sighs but most people realized it was inevitable. I noticed quite a few new faces in the room and discovered that some were regulars in some of the other area rooms that were already closed.

So what started out as an extremely slow Friday turned into a pretty decent night. Tips were flowing, I ran extremely well on the table games and even dealt 2 high hands that held up. And for about 8 hours, our little room in central Florida was the only active poker room on Bravo in the United States. Pretty surreal and definitely a night I’ll never forget...

FL pkrdlr, you may have been one of the last dealers to deal a legal live hand of poker for possibly the next 3 months, but probably even longer than that.

All the stuff I've read, not only on this site but other sites, makes me think I may never be able to deal cards again. Even if casinos are able to open again at some point, the social distancing that they're saying may have to occur for perhaps a year until a vaccine is available, will make it even harder for poker rooms to open, if ever again.

Not to sound like doom and gloom, but after switching careers and being a poker dealer for the last 10 years of my life (I'm 52 now) and that being my only source of income, I'm seriously fukkin scared and anxious right now. I think I speak for most of us dealers that will never be able to transition to a profession where we'd make comparable money to what we were making as poker dealers.

And, in the meantime, with not a whole lot of money saved, how the fukk do we continue to pay our bills?

I see many others in the hospitality industry feeling the same way. Will we even have our jobs if/when casinos open again??? Things will never be the way they were just a few short weeks ago.

Even if we're able to collect unemployment benefits, it would be pretty much just a fraction of what we made each week as we're tipped employees.

I saw a graph that projects the state of NJ's cases won't even peak until mid-summer and hopefully they will be at the end of the curve some time in October. HOLY FUKKIN SHIIT! Atlantic City may be a memory at that point and the country will be in total disarray with ridiculous amounts of people unemployed.

Hoping to wake up from this horrible dream but I just don't see that happening and I don't know what else we can do.

Supermarkets are going to have to stay open and home delivery is going to be a boom job. I would guess that cashiers, warehouse and truck jobs are all viable opportunities.

I feel legit bad for you guys, this absolutely fkn sucks. Me and my wife's jobs look relatively secure right now but who knows where we will be in 6 months time. I keep saying we want to focus on staying healthy and staying employed but honestly that's somewhat outside of our control.

Hope you guys all get through this OK.

My wife is a 'home delivery' person and she had a great week last week, yes. But when the news that our township had it's first confirmed case and a 'rumor' that 2-3 workers at the store she pulls from were going to be added to that list she pulled the plug. She is a contractor, so she will be able to step right back in whenever she's comfortable and we are lucky that she doesn't 'have' to work.

She could consider gloves for each order ... if we can find them. We'll see, it's tough to leave the kids home alone all day as well and then possibly bring something home with you.

It's also not a 'windfall' of cash either ... She doesn't keep track of exact hours, but I've estimated that she 'makes' no more than $25-30 per hour gross and then you need to take out 20% taxes and expenses. The flexible schedule is what is attractive, but don't go thinking you're going to make too much hay unless you're in a very dense shopper area and can 'easily' pull multiple orders simultaneously a couple times a day ... that's what the 'super' shoppers do.

I told her it's better to leave the orders to someone who is a bit tighter than we are and we'll just go day to day. I'm sure she'll just want to do a few shops and get out of the house soon ... unless the governor says differently.

It's an odd cycle .. stores can't get enough help AND they can't get enough product either. GL

No. I’m in the Midwest

I don’t think this will be the case at all. At some point the people making these decisions will figure out there’s no stopping this and all we can do is slow it down and deal with it. At that point things are going to have to go back to normal. The longer they wait, the more the world will suffer from an economy on a death spiral. At most, we may see a (pointless) country wide lockdown for a couple weeks and then things will start going back to normal. This thing is just like the flu, infecting almost everyone that comes in contact with it. It’s been here for several months already and we are just now starting to test for it at a minimal rate. My county has tested a total of 85 people as of yesterday. 85!!! I think 3 positives out of those. If it’s here, it’s everywhere. When they allow casinos to reopen it will be business as usual IMO. I’d be shocked if there was a social distancing mandated. No way of knowing now, but my guess is we will be cards in the air by middle or end of April at the latest.

End of April seems ambitious at least where I am since we service NYC players. I'm preparing myself to possibly go a few months. Then business could be slow for a while until the economy recovers. If you were already thinking of moving to a new job now is a great time to start taking online classes and get yourself prepared.

I just have a bad feeling there are going to be quite a few places with the opinion of "whelp, we closed for 2 weeks, that should take care of that" and open back up.

Luckily, there are a lot of places being mandated to be closed by the state and not just under the pressure of 'doing the right thing'.

This virus is very different from the flu. It has a much higher morbidity than the flu. The mortality we don’t and can’t know yet. It has an incredibly skewed chi distribution in HOW it impacts people based on age much different than the flu.

You are correct we cannot stop it. Yes we are trying to slow it down. That is exactly the goal of flattening the curve. If you slow it down the medical system doesn’t get overwhelmed. So those who require intensive medical intervention can receive it.

Also compared to the flu, this virus is not mutating much. Not only does that indicate a vaccine may be a long lasting one but also once exposed your natural immunity may also be long lasting

As far as testing you are correct, we did not get ahead of this and we are not yet where we should and need to be but we are rapidly getting there. We are also going to find a treatment. What it will be we don’t know but what it will be.

Will we be out by Easter? Maybe in some select places but not the whole country We can’t keep the whole country on lock down for a year.

Well said Fore ... This all started in the dark and we are trying to find the light. My stance this whole period has been we don't really know the basis for the 'rates'. This is certainly due to not getting ahead of this and being able to produce enough data that transcends the whole population. When you only ask the sick if their sick, your answers/data will be skewed. But testing 'everyone' in a county/township 'today' wont matter since the virus may not be present until tomorrow.

The real data will come from finding out who has been exposed (and survived) ... which essentially makes them eligible to move on with life (this time around). Sean Peyton of the NFL tested positive but is now 'clear'. What does that mean? How do we know he can't spread the virus anymore?

People with symptoms who were sent home untested two weeks ago are now more readily being tested ... now that more tests are available and their use is 'allowed' on a broader base of potential patients. I can't really hold health officials overly accountable when they were dealing with a limited supply and an ever changing information stream. Are we now going back to those folks to see if they really had it? Doubtful at this point.

Watch your words, but typically a virus can only be treated (slowed), not cured, until your body figures out how to deal with it. Vaccines are usually versions of the virus itself. So we may be in a scenario where 'everyone will get it anyway' ... or maybe they 'should' get it so they don't have to worry about it going forward which essentially is what a vaccine does. I'm not so sure if that's considered a 'cure' or a 'treatment'.

The SD is slowing the spread so that the health system is not overwhelmed, but this 'extra' time is also allowing any potential breakthrough to occur before everyone is exposed (maybe). I agree that may be a bit of fools gold, but I fully support the primary reason for SD. In today's 'liable' world we needed to drastically eliminate some of the potential finger pointing that 'would have' occurred had we just gone about our business.

My home casino announced that they have moved their next possible opening back to April 13th. This matches the now state mandate in place so that's no surprise.

We are all looking for the curve to flatten or start falling ... less 'new cases' than the day before. If this is a sign that the virus is done 'spreading' or we somehow find out that everyone was exposed but survived then that's when we can all go back to normal with little to no apprehension. GL

Officially furloughed for 6 months today. Good luck everyone.

I'm sorry to hear that. Good luck to you and everyone else.

Wow, thats too bad, good luck. Get on that unemployment if you havent already. I assume they will bring you back earlier if necessary.

My wife isn't a casino worker (RN) but she just started furlough as well. At least until the end of July it's not too bad $ wise with unemployment + $600/wk from CARES act.

Sorry to hear that. Any idea how they came up with such a definitive amt of time?

Caught in the awful vortex of the Florida unemployment system. Room has been closed since March 20th, I was finally able to file on March 26th. Stuck in a perpetual “pending” status along with 90% of my co-workers. Seems like the vast majority of those who are receiving payments were already in the unemployment system from a previous job. The state’s website went down Friday morning with a message it would be closed until Monday morning so that they could process payments. Fingers crossed I come out on the other side of this approved and start seeing some $$$

sorry to hear that quadstriker.

From the perspective of a poker dealer is it better for the casino to remain closed, and collect the unemployment + 600/week? Considering the fact that even upon re-opening the poker room traffic is not going to be even close to pre-covid numbers, that would mean reduced hours/tips for dealers until traffic returns to normal which will likely not be until we have a vaccine 1+ years from now at the earliest.

There's going to be plenty of people who will speculate on that, but I'm not going to be one of them.

There's far too many questions of how if when how much why etc etc etc, and I think there's a case that people rambling on this issue like they have all the facts and spreading unintentional falsehoods or misinformation causes actual harm.

I'm just going to bunker down and stay safe, and I hope that everyone else does the same.