The front page of the website says on the lower right that the poker room is open at 8pm, signups start at 7pm, and limited games are available. The change was put up Friday night.

I Has anyone here played a had yet?? I'm waiting until wed night to go back up

I played $1/$2 NL last night for about 4 hours. Was a great game, fish are deff playing. Dealers are a little slow right now, but most of them do well and are speeding up and we normally got in 10-15 hands every 30 minutes. They have auto shufflers that make it go by quicker. Atmosphere is nice, seats are comfy, and the drink girls come around regularly. All in all, I give it a 8/10 as it was last night.

Not all of them, just the one that is 5 minutes from my house in Northern Alberta. A few of the rooms elsewhere that I've played were more reasonable, 10% up to $5. The players are so bad it is close to breakeven but unbeatable over the long term.

A couple of things:

Poker dealers do NOT pool tips. It is in their best interest to keep the games moving as fast as possible.

Secondly someone posted a picture of the underside of a table and how you could smack your leg. All the chairs even the players are adjustable in height fyi.

so much fail and misinformation in this thread.

Thank you Phineas - this thread should be locked except for you.

cds - I heard earlier there were no cocktails served at the tables. are those complimentary or pay as you go?

Hey Phineus T Poker,

Regarding your driving routes 7 & 340, did you take Harpers Ferry Road between the the two? It doe look much longer, but if faster then I'll do it.

Why hasn't anyone started a new thread called "Hollywood Casino @ Charles Town?"

Okay, so my bad if dealers aren't pooling tips. Didn't mean to pass bad info. I remember though it was stated in this thread that that would be the case.

Info has changed quickly. This thread started last year and it was only a couple weeks ago (I believe) that the first mention of a time charge (as opposed to the $6 reviled rake) even appeared.

Let CTown take the next week or so to get things up and running and then we can get the thread over the hump a little.

this please. Phineas or maybe Randy from HCT?

i was referring to the cocktails!

Wait so is there cocktail service or no?

i've played poker in a little over 50-60 casino's across this country.....this is the first time I will play somewhere that actually uses time collection as opposed to pulling a rake from each hand.


also surprised they even considered allowing it to be a smoking room. Looking forward to playing with some of you, I recently moved out to NoVa from Southern Cal

There was cocktail service last night for sure, I had a couple beers during the game. I think the normal stuff (reg draft beer) is complementary but I think the liquor (dont know about bottom shelf liquor) and better beer is pay. I got the reg light beer than she had on her tray and tipped her a white chip and that was it. I saw a lady order a Baileys at the blackjack table and she had to pay for that.

also meant to ask, is straddling allowed?

I overheard a guy ask about that, and yes you can straddle, and I think I saw a guy straddle at the table next to us.

Was at CT both Friday night and again this afternoon (Sunday). Was up in the poker room about 6:30. As others have posted there was a line to get on the list. I waited about 30 minutes and when I go to the front of the line there was about 200 people on the list and the guy taking the names said only 6 tables were opening so I did not even bother.

The BJ tables were 3-4 deep waiting to get on a $25 table.

We knew from the web site that the poker room was not opening until 8:00 tonight but we thought we'd go up and try to get on a BJ table. There were about 8 BJ tables open all $100 min and all full.

So far two trips and not one cent gambled.

I think the info that's been posted here has been pretty good considering the situation. Some of the inaccuracies are not the result of wrong information, but incomplete information.

Take rake. We were told a while back by someone training to be a dealer that the rake was going to be 10% up to $6. And, if I understand correctly, that's still true for some games. Since then, of course, we've found out that NL games will have a time charge, instead. But that doesn't mean the guy who told us the rake was 10% up to $6 gave us incorrect info: he just gave us incomplete info. Probably because that was the best he had, and he was unaware that it was incomplete, and he was eager to help out; and we should appreciate his effort.

Also, a lot of the info that's been confusing over the past couple of weeks—and past few days, in particular—can be traced to the complexity of what C-Town's trying to do, and the time frame they're trying to do it in. Remember, at 11:59 pm on June 30th (just four days ago), there were no tables—nor any other equipment associated with table games—even in the state of WV; much less assembled, installed, and waiting for players to sit down and gamble.

This is a very fluid situation. Decisions can be made, announced, then 15 minutes later changed because new information came in that forced them to abandon their original plan. Don't think C-Town's happy about it: they want things to run just as smoothly as we do. It's just going to take a little time to get there.

Have patience, everyone; and we will soon be there.

--klez

Can anyone confirm what they have been doing for the limit games? $6 to 60 or $12/hr?

Thanks to everyone for their postings here. It really helped me out yesterday.

I played for about 6 hours yesterday, 1 on 3/6 Limit while waiting for the 1/2 NL.

Here's what I can tell everyone...

-There is a standard rake on the Limit tables.
-The timed rake on the NL tables was fairly disconcerting as I've never played on a Timed Rake table, throughout CA and in Vegas. But to be fair, I don't play much higher than 1/3 NL and I hear it's more common in the 2/5 games. I believe the argument for it is that the players will be saving money collectively once the dealers get up to speed. To me, the math somewhat supports this but you have to assume that every pot is moderately sized and that it's us vs them. But for those of us that play more tight, I think it's a toss up as we won't be challenging for as many pots. Additionally, some of the dealers were very slow though I expect they will improve or get weeded out soon. Lastly, the dealer change was excruciatingly slow. It took almost every one of them 5 minutes to verify their banks and then collect their $6 tithes. Throw in a slow dealer and a couple of drama queens and we were seeing 7 to 10 hands max per down. I'm on the fence here.
-Waitresses regularly came by with beer, water, and soda and I believe you just had to tip. I gave them a buck each time for my soda or water.
-They wouldn't allow anyone to line up to sign up until 5/5:30. They wouldn't even let us up stairs. I showed up at 4 and was sent away. I came back at 6 and they were letting people upstairs to line up and I was already 80th or so. Frustrating.
-They started calling names at 8:30. It took a good 45 minutes before they had all 6 tables going. They were later able to open up 2 more tables, a 1/2 NL and a 2/5 NL.
-It was very hot upstairs but the tables and chairs were very nice. I'm not sure what the chip weight was but they felt like thick tourney chips and not as light or nice as the ring chips I'm used to.
-There are no posted Poker Rules so we occasionally got conflicting info, which was the theme of the weekend for CTown.
-While none of the dealers were fast, most were ok speed wise. There were a lot of simple mistakes but nothing that time won't fix.
-You can live straddle in both Limit and in NL but you can't double straddle. In Limit, you can only straddle for the next sized bet. In NL, we were told that you can straddle for any amount you want. We mostly just did $4 or $5.
-Cashout was horrendous. You had to carry your chips downstairs to the cashier and the line was about 30 minutes long when I left. I was told that we can expect a cashier's cage in the poker room but it will be a couple of weeks.
-Lastly, I tried taking Route 7 to Route 9 on the way there and 340 to Route 15 on the way back. I'm thinking Route 7 to Route 9 was faster but it's anecdotal at this point.

Overall, I had a great time and cannot wait to go back.

we headed out last night around 8 pm just to check out the madness...will probably head out tuesday during actually sit and play. Anyone know what time the plan on opening on Tues? Wanted to head out there in the morning

also, does anyone know if they'll allow someone to sit behind me when things get normal? First time I hadn't seen this allowed in a cash game was at Charleston.

ycastle excellent tr - thank you.

I took 340 South out of the casino. it goes south to Berryville to meet Route 7. The Harper's Ferry road route is North 340. According to Google maps, the Route 340 South option is 14 miles longer but only ten minutes more, since the vast majority of the 340S/7E route is 4 lane and straight.

Done: Hollywood Casino @ Charles Town

Arrived at the casino at 8am this morning just to play some let it ride/blackjack with my brother for a little while. The lowest stake they were offering was $15 at let it ride...all the tables were full at 8am, but you could get a seat if you waited 20-30 minutes. The BJ tables were all $100 or $200 min and they had only one craps table running at $50 min. Roulette, 4-card and 3-card poker were all $25 min.

The biggest issue they are facing in the pit is a lack of dealers...one of our dealers was a temp (not licensed yet) and the other had never dealt let it ride...there were a few minor mistakes made but mostly the table kept the dealers honest (they really suck at doing math for payouts). Overall, not a bad experience considering their opening circumstances.