FWIW, wanted to share what I know of central coast area poker, and ask for any info you may have about other parts of the state, and southern washington.

1. spirit mountain casino--half way between salem and lincoln city. big poker room, daily 2/4-4/8K LHE, 1-2 and 3-5 NL...30-60 LHE on tuesday 1pm. good promos, high hands, rack splash on the hour into table pot. sunday 500 hourly high hand is usually 10-15 tables going. biggest room in state as far as i know, non smoking room. 2/4 is regular low limit no foldem, 4/8 is usually pretty tight. 1/2 NL pretty good action and fishy, no idea about 3/5 or 30/60. usually worth the drive if i have the whole day to spend. 1.5 hours from portland.

2. chinook winds casino. non smoking Lincoln city, north coast. regular 40 dollar 2-3 table tournies, noon and 530pm. 3-6 weekday afternoons, add 1-2NL on weekends. 18+ room, crazy kids on weekends and special events in town. room is pretty quiet, standard nit/fish mix, pretty easy NL...wilder on weekend, crazy loose. high hands during week, 50 every hour..AA cracked wins rack on sundays. small room, friendly staff, stop in if you are in the area, but go to spirit mountain if you're going just for a game.

3. 3 rivers casino. florence oregon, 1 hour east from eugene, central oregon coast. 3-6K, 2-4 NL. non smoking, but full bar service. played LHE once, crazy fishy bad players, posers. NL should be killer, 40-400 buyin. NL players that were there playing LHE were young i watch tv silly. can't wait to get back, new casino opened in Jan, nicest, best looking casino on the coast (havn't been to coos bay yet), incredible buffet.

4. eugene full house poker. poker country club by the university. guys at 3 river game were talking about a 5/10NL they just raised the min BI to 5K?? also have 1/2 NL, gonna try to check out this weekend or next, wife gone for a week. anyone heard anything about this? no rake, 25 monthly membership fee, all I learned from their website. 18+, lots of college kids, should be good.

any other ideas besides bar poker? just heard about a 1/2 NL game in newport, gonna check out as well, lotsa hoochie mommas at the bar ive heard, just found out about game.

is coos bay worth the trip? im thinking of hitting florence then coos bay the next day and check it out.

thanks
jeremy

I know they are not on the coast, but some cheap portland games are in town if you are around..

Portland Players Club- Just got their live game shut down, but has tourney.

Bridgeview Rounders- Just getting started up, but they have deep stack tourneys and live games are running pretty much everyother day and they are extremely soft.

La Center, Washington is 30 minutes north of portland. It's limit only (one spread limit game) with 15-30 daily and 20-40 on tuesdays, and it's very soft.

thanks a lot man this is just what i was looking for

La Center 3-6 is just LOL. I know they don't have nearly as many running as they do and rakes a bitch but whatev its a good time

30/60 at Spirit Mountain is next to imposable to get in. They run a live board, names never come off. 15 names at the top are never taken off. If they show up they get a seat by order of their names. Best I have ever done was to be 16th. This was by requesting the game 4 days early.

Coos Bay room is small and has one 1/2 or 2/5 running depending on the day. Game starts at 3:30 pm. Room closes at 2:00 am-------

3 rivers is like 3 tables in the middle of the pit - smoke is a problem
Only open Thurs, Fri, Sat, Sun.

Also 7 Feathers, exit 99 on I5 has a 6 table walled off room.
3/6, 3/6 kill, 4/8, 2-10 spread limit, 1-2 or 2-5 no limit.
3/6 goes every day, super nitty, other games often go on Wed. and Fri. when they have freerolls, and sometimes on Saturdays and Sundays when they have their bi-monthly tourneys.
3/6 O8 full kill goes sometimes on Thurs, Fri. Sat. super nitty most of the time.

Actually, all of the games are nitty most of the time. YMMV

Hey, so the best of all these rooms gameswise is spirit mountain and chinook winds right? Anyone attest to either of these, I might even roll on their old person bus tomorrow there oh ya!

DO IT DO IT DO IT

Then trip report.

hey any home games in Salem? just moved here from corvallis.. dieing for live poker!

At Spirit Mountain are the 1-2 and 3-5 NLHE games running 24/7 or only during certain hours? What kind of demographic/skill level is there? I've been there a few times, but not for poker, and it's not really an short commute from many places.

wow thats messed up lol... i'd be pissed to get out there and see that kind of list... they dont ever start another game? seems like they ought to be able to run that game every day if there is so much interest.... do you know why they dont?

Spirit Mountain is by a longshot the most active poker room in Oregon. It's the only one I know of that usually has an Omaha game (4/8 Limit Half-Kill usually) and the 1/2NL and 2/5NL games are usually quite fishy.

Most of the time, though, I just took the extra half hour to drive (from Salem) to Chinook Winds - I started playing there since it was 18+ instead of 21+ and just got a feel for the place. There's usually just one NL table on weekends but it's often quite soft and the food at the deli/grill next to the poker room is good. If the game breaks early and you came from the east just head to Spirit and clean up the stragglers.

La Center sucks ass.

A chimpanzee could beat the NLHE games at Spirit Mountain.

La Center is awesome. It's okay if you don't like or understand limit poker, or just prefer to get half as many hands an hour playing NL (with regular 5 minute breaks opponents play 20 questions over a fifty dollar pot). But I hope you aren't trashing La Center just because it can't offer NL.

Now that they no longer allow smoking, the Frontier is a great room. The limit games, the food, and the service are all top notch.

Ok, now I get to retract some of my statements on La Center, having just returned after a years absence. I've been playing at the New Frontier where the bigger limit games run. It's not quite as good as I remember. Oh the action is great, but there are lots of impediments to getting to the action.

First, the traffic in portland is even more horrendous than I remember. You simply can't get out there in under an hour during rush hour, but i've even been stuck in stop and go traffic at 3:15 on a friday afternoon (after similar stoppages at 1 pm and 2 pm picking up someone from the airport). PDX is a wonderful example of how building mass transit systems that people don't want to travel on while neglecting the systems they do is such a failed strategy. There is no feasible way to take the train/bus to La Center for poker.

But lets say you do make it out there somehow. Unless you want to play 3-6 or 4-8, be prepared to wait even longer. I got in around 10 am this morning, but wasn't able to get into the 20-40 game until after 3 pm. You can call in, I called in around 9:30, but since they'll keep you on the list for 3 hours the best bet is to call well before you leave.

The problem of getting in the game is compounded by the many walkers in their high limit game. I've seen short stacks disappear for over an hour without any move to call them back or pick them up. Since it's a raked game, this means playing short handed and paying extra rake to do so. The only reason I got in the 20-40 after a 5 hour wait was because a short stack was gone for at least 45 minutes and I had to bug the floor to get them picked up. It simply makes no sense when seats are at such a high premium, and people drive so far to get one, to let someone lock one up unused for lengthy periods of time, especially when they aren't even paying for the privilege.

I asked one employee why they don't at least switch their higher games to paying time, that way at least walkers have to pay their fair share, and playing short handed doesn't become prohibitively expensive. The response is they are raking $175 per hour, about $20 per hour per seat, and it's hard to think people would be pay $10 per down. Plus they want to be competitive with Spirit Mountain, which I don't understand because not only is SM is farther from PDX, I have been told it runs mid stakes limit games only once a week, and you need to be a regular to get in the game.

I think they are being short sighted because charging two games of 15/30 or 20/40 $8 a half hour in time is more money than one raked game. Especially when you consider they are constantly reducing rake in the 10/20 and higher games because they are short handed. The current system drives off potential customers who don't even bother going because they doubt they'll get in a game.

I also asked why they don't change the 10/20, which is a rockfest typical of the 2 chip 4 chip games (and the same players suddenly LAG it up when moved to the 4 chip 8 chip 20/40 despite the higher stakes) to an 8-16 to promote action (and because it's a better fit between the 4-8 and 15-30 they usually run. The answer again is rake, the 10-20 gets lots of hands out because of the tight play, so more rake.

Other changes I did not like is the food selection seems to have dropped. The menu is shorter, and when I asked at night if I could order off the lunch or breakfast menu I was told the kitchen would have a hissy fit. Who is in charge of the kitchen that they can dictate what their customers can eat? Plus the food seems pretty expensive now, even with the 10% discount you get with your players card, and it seems to take longer to earn comps, though they are very generous with the comped meal you get (main course, desert, side dish, free rockstar, etc).

It just sounds like mgmt is not thinking at all about building the business. It would not be hard for a competitor to quickly become the favorite just by better catering to players needs. In fact, it's my understanding you can open a poker room anywhere in Washington as long as your city allows it, and I've often wondered whether unincorporated Vancouver would work as well.

All in all I still will hit it a couple more times this month because the action is great (but partially offset by the heavy rake), but I'm only going when I can travel off hours, and get there early enough that I won't have to sit around for 5 hours getting into their biggest game.

I called Spirit Mountain to double check what they offered, and basically the only game 15-30 and up they spread is a 40-80 on Mondays at noon, and they reserve the seats for the people who played in it the previous Monday. Right now, five days before it starts, the list is 13 deep, so if I drive an hour to get there Monday morning, I will have no idea whether I can get in the game.

So again, not sure why La Center worries about Spirit Mountain, it seems like the SM poker room doesn't want any limit games above 4-8 anyways.

Looks like this thread has been dead for over 6 months -- but hey "use the search function" right?

I live across the river from Portland, and my dad and I have been thinking about hitting up a live poker room for some kicks and giggles. We both regularly play online, and I occasionally hit up a home game. The two places we've been looking at are Chinook Winds and Spirit Mountain -- from what was posted last year it seems as if either place is a pretty sweet deal for small stakes NL. Is this information still up to date?

I used to play regularly at SM, haven't played since Christmas time a few months ago but the games there were still pretty good. It can be frustrating to be first or second on the list for a game and still end up waiting an hour because they only have two or three tables going. If you are coming from Portland I wouldn't bother driving past SM to get to Chinook Winds, it's a smaller room with less action.

Thanks Flow, exactly the information I was looking for.

I'm trying to figure out what the deal is w Cash games in Oregon around the Portland area. I see some poker clubs advertising, but mostly they are obv advertising tournaments. I hear though that somehow/someway their are clubs/rooms that offer cash games, i know theres one in Eugene, and i hear theres a few around the Portland area. What are the laws, where are the games, anyone been to any of them?

I know about chinook winds and spirit mountain and La Center, im looking for something closer to PDX.

there's a bunch of priv home games in portland but i would never have found them out if not for a friend. one priv 1/2nl game got robbed a couple months ago so YMMV.

I've played quite a bit in the 1/2 game that got robbed, off of foster. Im on his call list and get texts from him just about every day. I'm looking for a bigger game than that though, if you know of one, shoot me a pm, id appreciate it.

Jeremy - I've never heard of Full House Poker in Eugene, so I just Googled it. I also found Pocket Pair Card Club, Royal Flush Poker Room, and High Mountain Poker Palace in Eugene. Not too much detail on the web, so can't tell if they're charity casinos or just small poker rooms.

I have a few $1 chips from the others you mentioned. If you or any other 2+2ers frequent any of the 4 poker rooms above and can grab me a $1 chip I'd appreciate it. Drop me a private message if you can help. Thanks.