The employees at Thunder Valley say that they will have real tables (cards, chips, dealers and all) when the expansion is completed (scheduled for July 2010). Yesterday evening I spoke to the floorman about it and he repeated the same thing.

The entire table (every single person) spoke up and said they'd prefer to have real poker. While I'm not ready to really believe that it will happen until I see it, I would imagine that it's more likely than not. Everytime I talk to players about it, they always agree that dealers/cards/chips would be better, even with the increased rake that comes with it.

Couple weeks ago the floorman told me that the real tables are coming in March. Which is much better than July obviously. Here's hoping they follow through. Been busy so I haven't been there in a couple weeks to follow up and make sure they're sticking to this plan.

Haha, back in Aug of 2009 they said they were going to switch to live dealers and chips in Nov of 2009. I will believe it when I see it. Considering they have been repeatedly removing cash bonuses of poker, (Spinning the wheel, etc) I don't see them easily making a choice to switch to something that will cost them more. I have a feeling they will end up keeping the electronic tables for a while after the expansion. They will want to wait and see if they can first attract enough poker players to make the switch worth while.

I'm with you on wanting to move to live dealers as well, I just have a hard time believing it will be any time soon.

In the spirit of constantly pushing back the date, I've now heard that the real tables will start on April 2nd.

Hey, at least it's a specific date now right? I'm assuming it'll get pushed back at least one more time though considering the trend so far.

Maybe he ment April 1st.

Surprise Surprise! No real poker still...

I've learned not to get my hopes up regarding poker and Thunder Valley. Going to keep playing at cap and making the drive to lucky chances every now and again, but definitely want to have juicy live action strike TV where I am only 10mins away from. Just apparently not Nov, dec or April 2nd...maybe July?

I was assured that May 7th is now the official date for live poker at Thunder Valley. While they told me they were certain this time and there would be no more pushing it back/flaking out, I will remain skeptical until May 7th arrives.

I'll take the over.

FYI Thunder Valley goes live dealt May 7. Really soft players IMO

Well, today is the day. FOR REAL! The website says the room is open, and I came across an article in one of the local papers that said so. I'm planning on heading over there in a little while to check it out.

One thing that I've heard is that they only have half (8) of the tables up and won't get the full 16 going until the official grand re-opening of the casino in July. This makes me wonder if they are not actually opening the room itself, and are simply putting in the tables in the current temporary poker area.

I guess I'll find out soon enough.

I played for about 3 hours tonight, and definitely have some mixed feelings about the poker room so far.

The poker room is in the actual poker room location. It's right next to the parking garage entrance (super convenient and easy for random fish to notice), so that's a plus right there. About half the room was still blocked off, but they had something like 10 tables set up, 8 of which were running. I checked the waiting list (which is conveniently displayed in multiple locations on flatscreens) and saw that they were spreading the following:

3/6 LHE
4/8 LHE
1-3 blind NLHE (max $300, don't recall minimum)
2-5 blind NLHE (I believe $500 max, but I could be mistaked)

I can't afford 2-5 so that wasn't an option. 1-3 I could do in a pinch, but with a wait list 33 players long, no thank you. 3/6 had a 9 person list. 4/8 had an open seat. 4/8 it is!

Notice that there was a 33 person wait list but 2 unused poker tables. FAIL. They explained to me that they simply didn't have enough dealers to run any more tables. Why they didn't have enough dealers on hand to run all their tables on opening night (which also happens to be a Friday) is beyond me. Sucks for all those people that only wanted to play NL.

I get my seat and start playing and immediately notice a terrible terrible terrible thing. Here's how each hand plays out:
SB posts $2
BB posts $4
Dealer deals cards.
Dealer collects drop (4+1). The $4 BB and $1 from the SB, leaving $1 sitting in front of the SB and nothing sitting in front of the BB. This occurs IMMEDIATELY after the cards are dealt.
Action moves around the table.
SB's turn to act. "Wait, do I owe $3." No you owe $2. "But there's $1 and it's $4 total right?" Yes but you posted $2 so you owe $2 more. "But there's only $1 there."
This same thing occurs OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER all ****ing night long in various forms. I question the dealers about this and they've all been told that they have to take the drop like this, and they know it's dumb, but they have to follow the rules.

But it gets better. No flop = no drop. So when there's no flop, now the dealers have to go back and put the money BACK in the pot after they've removed it. Can't we just deal the ****ing flop and THEN TAKE THE DROP? OK rant over... at least on this particular subject.

The dealers were decent for the most part, but they are all brand new (at least the 4 that rotated through my table tonight). So the dealing was slow at times, sloppy at times, and generally subpar. I expect it should improve with time, but right now it's pretty annoying. During one dealer's time at my table, he dealt 10 hands. 10! There were misdeals (twice), a prolonged debate over how to handle the empty seat where the SB should be (floor took 5 minutes to come over and tell the dealer what to do), a 3 minute wait for the floor to tell a player that his cracked AA did NOT win anything because that's only valid before 6pm, and general EXTREME slowness in everything the dealer did. He needed a good 15-20 seconds at each showdown to determine the winning hand.

10 person tables suck. I like 9 person tables. But Thunder Valley went with 10 person tables

Smoke was much lighter than the old poker area. I'm very happy about that.

"Chips!" That was an adventure every time. The dealers never spoke loudly enough (I just got into the habit of shouting it for them since they clearly didn't plan on ever saying it loudly enough to be heard). The floor people always took FOREVER to bring chips to whoever needed them. I'm hoping this was all first night kinks that will be ironed out.

All in all, I'll be back because it's close, convenient, and has good games. I had a relatively good time despite all of the nonsense (and booking a small loss ). I expect the overall operation to improve with time. I know I was pretty negative in this trip report, but they have some work to do over there. Nothing that can't be fixed though.

Good TR, Any info on Tournaments?. Times?. buy-ins? etc....

Sorry. I didn't even look because I hate tournaments I did realize when I was writing this that people would probably want to know... oh well.

thanks for the TR, but a few ?'s on my end: what is the rake there (im assuming they have a jackpot)? can u ask the floor if they are willing to spread higher and/or other games (mixed, o8, stud8, 2-7, etc.) if there is enough interest? tia...

Rake is $4+1. There are 2 bad beat jackpots, one is AAKK and one is Quad something (don't remember). There are Royal Flush prizes that go up each day when they aren't hit ($25 a day I think, but I could be wrong) and a "Hot Hand" promotion. For the Hot Hand, each day they pick a random full house (today was 66699) and if you hit it you win $200. If no one hits the hand, the $200 carries over each day, so $400 on the second day, then $600, and so on. Once the hand is hit, no one else can win it on that day.

The only limit games they are spreading right now are 3/6 and 4/8. They should really reconsider that, but I'm not sure what the plans are. Doesn't really make sense to have 2 bottom limit games like that. They should ditch the 3/6 and ad an 8/16 imo.

I don't think they are going to spread anything other than Holdem and Omaha.

1 PM daily. $40 (35+5). start with 3k chips blinds start at 25/50 and double every 15mins. Structure is about the same as any other live tourney with comparable buy-in. They pay top 15% generally.

I believe one is Aces full of Tens beat by quads or better (starts at 2k and increases based on daily drop amt) and the other is quad 7s beat (Starts at 10k and increases daily). Every month the bigger jackpot isn't hit they lower the starting hand qualification until it gets to quad 2s beat (if it doesnt get hit in May it will be quad 6s beat in June, 5s in July, etc...).


++
Dealers are definitely inexperienced and mistakes occur quite frequently. I'm confident this will not be the case within a few weeks, but it is definitely an annoyance watching every dealer struggle with even the most simple situations.

I finally had a chance to make it out to TV last night. Got there about 8:30, and they had 2 3-6 games, 1 4-8 game, 5 1-3 NL games and one 2-5 NL game going. LONG lines waiting on all. For some reason there were 3 open tables, but I guess no dealers? Also looked like a back area wasn't open yet, looked like possibly more tables at some point in the future.

Took about an hour before I finally got a seat at 4-8. 3 of the 4 dealers were very rough. When I sat down in the SB position, he tried giving me cards but I had to push them to the BB, he looked confused at first.

The taking the chips off the table preflop for the rake is beyond stupid. It confused a number of people. I saw one dealer tell people they had 3 more to call in the SB, because they leave the one chip out for the SB, after dragging the other chip. This happened on more than one occasion.

Perhaps the biggest problem was slow seating of players from the floor. We had 2 open seats for over 10 minutes, then went to 5 handed for over 5 minutes (right before I left). There were over 10 people still on the 4-8 list as well.

I wasn't a huge fan of the felt - just wasn't totally smooth.

Overall it's a nice room and there was a lot of action - but it's not well run at all right now. Hopefully it'll improve in the future.

Oh - and when I left at 11:30, there were still 43 people on the 1-3 list. I saw at least 15 people waiting around the desk waiting for a seat as well.

I was there last night as well, played 1-3 NL. My table had a nice conversation with the manager of the poker room (the guy that ran the set up and created all the rules of the room).

-the reason that they only have 8 tables right now is because that is all their licencse will allow. The extra tables are just there to cover up the electrical stuff underneath. Their license will allow them to accomodate up to 16 tables sometime in June.
-rules are unlikely to change there. Manager said he visited all Sacramento area poker rooms and made the rules based on those visits (sounded like he used to manage a room in SoCal or Vegas). The table had a lot of comments about this including their rake dropping policy. He was aware that everyone hated it but he said they have to be CONSISTENT. lol
-Comps are accumulated at $1 per hour played.
-They are willing to spread any game if all players agree ie, winning hand must show one, mandatory straddle, any limit, any game, ect.

Is it soft games?

Just wanted to update some of my thoughts. I've been down to TV 5 or 6 times since the poker room opened. All information is from Friday and Saturday nights.

The dealers have gotten better, though there is still a ways to go. But to be fair, many of the dealer slowdowns and mistakes are caused by players at this point. There always seems to be at least one player who's giving the dealer a hard time, questioning every little move and slowing the game down. New dealers have trouble dealing with someone like this.

The floor people are bad. I really wish I didn't have to say that because they are all pretty nice guys, but it's true. Last night there was a list for 3/6 that stayed between 15-25 people the whole time I was there. It always took at least 15-20 minutes to fill a seat, and at the point I left there had been 2 open seats for more than 30 minutes. When called for problems they take forever to respond. When called for chips they take forever to respond (they really need to hire some dedicated chip runners). Generally anything involving the floor people is SSSSSLLLLLLLLOOOOOOOOOWWWWWW. I'm optimistic that this will improve with time, but right now it's incredibly annoying.

Games are good and seem to be picking up steam even. But if they don't get enough dealers to use all of their tables they are going to hurt themselves. They always spread 3/6 and 4/8 limit, but finally had a 10 person interest list for 6/12 last night. However they couldn't start the game because they only have 8 of 16 tables in use and they were all full. They had one 2-5NL running, but a long enough list (12-15 I believe) to start a second, but couldn't do that either for the same reason. The waitlist for 1-3NL is still always 25 people minimum, and 3/6 is often not far behind.

EDIT: One final thought. In terms of the limit games I'm of the opinion that they should do away with the 4/8 and have only 3/6 and 6/12, or alternatively have only 4/8 and like 8/16.

Thanks for the up date.

Getting more and more agitated by the day... 6 weeks in there really should be some improvement with the dealers. But I still spend my sessions correcting mistake after mistake. It's quite ridiculous and I made a point to have a chat with the floorman tonight before I left.

A large number of dealers still struggle with any number of simple tasks.
- Sidepots are just endlessly confusing for them; simple math apparently is not so simple.
- Need chips? Better go get them yourself. Many of the dealers will sit there and wait for someone to pass by. They also like to do this WHILE holding up the game. So they sit there, not calling for chips, not dealing cards, not doing anything really until either a player jumps in to help or a floorman happens to walk by. Apparently yelling "Chips!" is a difficult thing to learn.
- Players not paying attention to the game and slowing it down? The dealer will sit and wait patiently. I find myself constantly telling people to act, what they can bet, yes there's a frakking raise you moron PAY ATTENTION. But dumb people are part of any poker game. What's ridiculous is that I have to deal with them because the dealers won't. I also don't understand why the casino isn't pushing them on this point; slower games mean less rake for the house.
- I play 3/6 and this situation comes up every session. "Live Six!" Someone makes it 9. Someone else makes it twelve. Dealer announces, "Cap!" NO, it is NOT capped. Live 6 means the cap is 15. And then the dealers proceed to question me on this point until they either realize that, obviously, I am right, or they call a floor person to come over and tell them that DUH I am right.

Ok, just blowing off some steam after a horrendous mistake filled session tonight.

/rant

Thanks for the update. Are they running any tournaments? Do they have all the tables running now?