aviodable attractions

the counterpart to 'recommended rooms':

"it seemed promising ... but never again!" if this is among the
thoughts you've had after a session at a foreign table, this is the thread for you ... post away!

Dijwaila - Just to clarify for others. This post is in reference to live poker rooms/tables right? In any case, I'll go ahead and post my thoughts on the Luxor Poke Room in Vegas.

Poker Room: Luxor Casino
Location: south end of the Vegas strip

Luxor itself is a nice low stakes casino and the buy-in for the tourneys are on the low side (less than $50). Now this was back two summers ago (2007 I think) so things may have changed, but at that point in time the tourney structure was rather poor. Somewhere between 10 or 15 minute blinds and each poker table oddly seated 11 players. I'm pretty sure it was 11 and not 10 because I recall myself continuously counting the number of players seated trying to figure out why there was more than 9 or 10. Dealers were friendly for the most part but I remember at least one guy who was just in a poor mood throughout his shift. In general though, they seemed to be competent and knew what they were doing.

Also, they had tourneys in the morning, around noon, and in the afternoon. I entered the morning and noon ones - perhaps not too surprisingly, the morning tourney had fewer people (a little less than 30) and the noon one probably had about 70-80 people including the alternates. Payout structure was somewhere along the lines of top 12 to 15% <= this I'm not too sure about this, but this is the best estimate to my recollection.

The competition itself was okay. No players that struck me as being very good, but people had a semi-decent knowledge of poker. Be prepared to play against players who are just testing out the waters (it seemed like a lot of people who wanted to try playing poker for the first time at a casino and those who didn't have a lot of experience in general), so you may experience more bad beats than a higher level game.

I'm not sure I can rate Luxor given that I don't have much of a comparison point (sadly), but if you're looking for a low stakes buy-in game with soft play, Luxor could be an option though I doubt it should be the first option.

ryodejaneiro wrote:Dijwaila - Just to clarify for others. This post is in reference to live poker rooms/tables right?

indeed ryo, we're talking brick and mortar here! thanks for getting the 'avoidable attractions' topic rolling.

this was back about 15 yrs ago,and i wasnt anywhere near the pokerplayer i am now,but i sat at a table for 16 hrs n dropped close to 3k...my problem wasnt in the losing...its that i couldnt leave...my car was blocked in and i ended having to stay the night because they wouldnt or couldnt move the car...looking back now....it was probably the managers car...

funny story chef ... but please try to keep post content relevant to the topic.

dijwaila wrote:funny story chef ... but please try to keep post content relevant to the topic.

I thought chef's post was on topic, unless I'm completely misunderstanding the purpose of this thread. For me, parking is a real issue when it comes to selecting a poker game. As silly as it may sound, issues such as the one brought to light by chef do happen.

I've had my car broken into at games and even nearly got robbed in a parking lot of a cardroom because of poor lot security (fortunately I've been studying the Martial Arts since I was 10 and am capable of handling 3 idiots who didn't bother to equip themselves properly for a robbery). Because my wife and I often travel to games together, a well run lot is important to me for her safety.

I would actually recommend against playing at Thunder Valley Casino, largely due to the parking situation. The following situation happens regularly at this casino, but I'll tell the story from my own perspective:

My wife and I traveled together to Thunder Valley Casino to check out their newly opened poker room. We thought it would be a good place to play, given the reputation of the clientele consisting of many loose, high-rollers.

When we arrived, the CHP had the lanes to enter the valet blocked off (no idea why, but this happens every weekend there), so we had to park in a lot across the street, where a shuttle bus would take us to the casino. Fun.

The lot was packed, and the only parking we could find was far away form both the casino and the covered shuttle bus stops (did I mention it was pouring rain?). We opted to go for the shuttle, as walking to the stops was closer than walking to the casino. Still, we were soaked by the time we arrived at the shuttle stop.

We waited for nearly 20 minutes for the shuttle to save us from the rain that was blowing in sideways. Of course, it was standing room only on the shuttle, but that's okay, because sitting on wet clothes is uncomfortable anyways.

Once we finally got into the casino's cardroom, we received the final kick in the nuts (can I say "the nuts" on a poker forum? ). The highest stakes game was $2/$3. WTF. And of course, best of all (sarcasm) they're using those crappy electronic tables. No dealers, no chips, NO TELLS (well far less tells at least)! All that way just to play low stakes, online poker. Yippee.

Another room I'd advise against is a casino we visited shortly after coming to California. The casino, called Cache Creek, is an expansive and beautiful casino with a luxurious hotel, but the location and the poker room sucked! We drove for roughly 4 friggin hours to get to this place about 150 miles beyond the dead center of absolutely nowhere.

When we got there, we found a good 30 table poker room with 2 tables running. A $3/$6 limit game, and a no-limit game. Most everyone at the table had a hundred to a few hundred in chips, but there was one cow at the table sitting on easily $5,000 worth of chips. Awesome. I'm ready to grind. I'm watching this guy bully the table around and calling all ins with anything. I go to buy in for $5K, and the piece of work floor tells me that the max buy-in is 200.
"Dollars?" I ask.
"Yep," he tells me.
"But that guys over there sitting on 5 large," I rebut.
"He bought in for $200," he says.
"You want me to go up against a guy sitting on $5K with 200 bucks?"
He then goes on to tell me that I can rebuy as much as I'd like. Awesome. Or I could go play blackjack for $200 a hand.

I expressed my disapproval with a long string of foul words and insults. Not very classy of me, I know. But jeez, what a waste of time that whole drive was! I'm just glad that floor boss isn't a military commander; he'd have our boys carrying Nerf guns over there.

i agree that parking can be an issue. however, without at least referencing the casino's name ... of what use is the post?

i should have gone into greater detail, which is especially funny considering that is what was being referred to as lacking from chef's post.

"I'll take Mississippi Riverboats for 600, Alex."

"An innocent looking little girl from Tennessee who separates poker players from their chips by putting on a very convincing 'I don't know much about poker' act on Mississippi Riverboats."

DING!

"Who is My Little Cousin?"

"That is correct."

This girl is a shark in sheep's clothing. I've watched my little cousin work her magic in the ring. The babyface combines with the southern twang and charm to keep opponents off guard until she rakes in that one big pot. She's very good at giving up just the right amount of preflop equity in order to set up one big return for the night.

Yet another reason to avoid the Mississippi Riverboats!

Hey dijwaila - I actually thought the same thing initially but I noticed that the casino is identified in the subject heading area after looking at the post again. Perhaps TBD can edit things so that the casino name appears on the main body of the post since I'm not sure if there are too many people who look at the subject heading?

Also TBD, where's the Thunder Valley Casino located?

ahh, guess i missed the boat on that one. sorry for the pun, i can't help myself with those lately.

ryo's suggestion to transfer all relevant info (place names, dates, etc.) into the body of each post make sense too ... it would help to establish a 'general format' and make communication more efficient.

thanks tbd and ryo ... both for the post and casino tips. we're off to a promising start with this topic. keep them coming everybody, soon we'll have a good database of places to visit and those to avoid.

p.s.: appreciate your posts too chef ... a little more effort with the post grammar would help though. happy you're a member, keep it up!

ryodejaneiro wrote:...Also TBD, where's the Thunder Valley Casino located?

Both Thunder Valley and Cache Creek are located in Northern California.

Thunder Valley Casino is in a small town called Lincoln, California (near Sacramento).

Can't remember exactly where Cache Creek is though. Off the top of my head I would say it is probably the precise furthest point from literally anywhere imaginable .

Argh!!!! I was writing up a post and hit the page back button on my keyboard and poof!, my half written post is gone! Here's an attempt to recreate what I was writing.

I was thinking back to dijwaila's comments and wondered if it would be beneficial for us to try to strive and list out some info before posting our reviews. So for instance, my Luxor review might have the following things:

Name of Casino: Luxor Casino
Location: Las Vegas, Nevada (south end of the strip)
Date of Visit: July 2007
Type of Game Played: NL Texas Hold'em Tourney [you might even include tourney details if so desired]
Website Link: [since website links are similar color to the text by default, maybe just paste the link instead of hyperlinking?]
Pros: Small field, relatively mild competition, tourney durations are short (1.5 to 2 hours)
Cons: A lot of suckouts, small poker room, poor blind structure

[general impression/review/thoughts about your poker experience goes below the basic info section]

Something like this can "streamline" this thread a bit more. Now of course, this is just a thought - I don't think there's a need for us to go back and try to list out info that's already been reviewed since that's a hassle.

the only comment i can think of is, excellent post. i can't think of a better example.

the only thing i would alter to that example is the removal of
pros/cons. it would be nice to think that we will get a lot of posts
for this thread and 'recommended rooms', so categorizing them this way
will likely prove helpful. still, i only imagine what the original post
contained ryo ...

you should win the poster of the month. forget numbers ... this is by far the best of the month and should be considered based on that merit.

tbd, what do you think of this idea? we conduct a poll during the final three days of every month, when members get to cast a vote for who they believe deserves to win. then you could see the results and take them into consideration. (now that i reread that idea, it doesn't seem as applicable as i initially though ... perhaps that would have to be reserved for a tie.)

I appreciate your comments dijwaila, but I think the only reason why my post count is up recently is because I'm seeing more things to post about because others are posting. But also, not everything that I've posted haven't all been poker related.

I keep on forgetting that this thread is for the casinos/poker rooms to avoid, so yeah, scratch that pros and cons thing. If we can edit the title of the thread (including the spelling error), that might help with future posts...for me or others. That is, a person may see the thread and think, "what avoidable attractions?" - the title can use a bit more description IMO.