Mountaineer Trip Report- WV

[MeanGene]

Route 60 past the airport is one way, you can also take the Turnpike depending on where in Pittsburgh you live. I'm north of town and it takes me a good bit to get past the Fort Pitt Tunnels and on the Parkway. Still think that's the way to go, tho.

I went there the first Saturday the room opened and the dealers had a rough time of it. I'm sure they were nervous as this was, after all, their first full day of work. I went back the following Saturday and across the board they'd definitely improved. They still have a ways to go--a few dealers kept flipping over cards they pitched to the 7 seat (might've been a slight hump to the table) and the pace of operations is slow. They don't deal as many hands per hour as you'd like, they're slow making change, etc. But they'll get better and better as time goes by. There were a few occasions when the dealer nearly killed the deck while the hand was still live. Like the time I flopped a set and another dude flopped the nut flush. The money went in, he turned over his flush, and as I resisted the urge to eat my foot I flipped over my cards and said, "I have outs". For some reason the dealer set the deck on top of the muck and started pushing the pot the other way, which might've made for an interesting scene. But, bless her heart, the deck was still intact and the board didn't pair. Awesome.

I played $3/6 Limit the first day (there was an open seat) and $1/2 NL the next and the quality of play was pretty awful. Preflop raises at the NL table were around 8x the big blind and it wasn't unusual to see people firing twenty bucks into an eight-dollar pot. Oh, to flop a set at such a time. Instead the one time I flopped a set the other guy flopped the nut flush. But I digress.

The poker room is non-smoking, but as the OP said the people along the rail smoke like crazy and that rather defeats the purpose. It's a good idea to hold your breath when you go to the bathroom as you pass through the cloud. That's another thing--they need more bathrooms. Lots and lots more. And, as the OP said, they need another way to leave the poker room area. There's this high wooden rail all the way around the room, but there's only one opening in the rail for people to enter/exit. Not good.

But the room itself is really nice, and it's huge, with plenty of space around the 37 tables. They have a decent mix of limits, though $1/2NL is by far the most popular. I left around 11PM Saturday night and every table was in use, and the waiting list for $1/2 was about 25 players long.

So, plenty of room for improvement, but you'd expect that when you're opening a room in a state that never had poker before. I may head back down tomorrow, I've got the itch now. Oh, and it may be personal preference, but the cappuccino they serve in the poker room is pretty good. Maybe a tad too sweet, but since beer isn't free I was drinking cappuccino the whole time. Pretty good stuff.