[Mr. Mexican]

My thoughts on Winstar... A few weeks ago I drove up there the first day the new poker room was opened and was very impressed with the ammenities. You walk in and immediately see a large sign in desk with a number of flat screen televisions displaying the wait list. It is adequately staffed and they all seem friendly for the most part. Behind the sign in desk is the main room. Very open and airy with at least 50 tables. Having recently come from Vegas, I was still impressed with the sized. There a partially separated room to the left with a few tables for the higher stakes games. To the right of the sign-in desk is a partitioned off lounge area that is very nice, and it has additional flat screens displaying the wait list. There is also a seperate room behind the lounge for smokers.

As for the action, they probably had a dozen 1/2 and a dozen 2/5 games going, along with some random low limit and 5/10 no limit games. Not much Hi limit action, but occasionally a 10/20 no limit game will form. I played 1/2 a lot and felt the action was much too loose. Additionally, with the $6 rake, a lot of money goes to the house each hour. Therefore, I wouldn't reccomend playing anything less than 2/5 no limit. The tournaments are pretty wild like another poster said and the blinds go up every 15 minutes so it's a real disadvantage to the good players. They have a bigger buy-in usually once a month with more reasonably blind structures, and it's the only one I consider playing.

All in all, it's a very nice room with a lot of potential. Some things need to be improved, like the rake amount and the structure of the tournaments. They could gain a lot by marketing heavily in Dallas and drawing the big money away from the underground clubs. I think the room definitely has the potential to attract some WPT or WSOP circut events down the road.