Mountaineer Trip Report- WV

[Witzo]

Got to poker room around 9pm. Place was packed. The room is super nice and spacious. When you first get into room they have the typical desk going with all the automated boards of what's being spread. I saw they had a seat open for 10/20 limit so I tried to get on that list.
Go to find out that there wasn't a 10-20 game going and that table was actually a 1/2 NL so I end up playing that.

The 1-2 NL is $75 min, $300 Max, 2-5 NL is 500 max and the 5-10 NL is 1000 max. The only limit games actually going were 2-4 and 3-6 and I think there might have been a low limit 7 card stud game going.

They had a 5/10 limit O8 game going that I played for a little bit shorthanded and it was very tough. I was definitely the fish at the table and gave up on it after I dumped about $200 in it.

The dealers are the worse I've ever seen. There was definitely grade fixing going on at dealer's school if all of these people passed. Dealers couldn't count pots, make change, pitch cards, figure out who's action it was on, etc.

I used chips to keep count of hands per half hour and the average was about 10. A good chunk of the dealers were 40+ year old women who had no idea what the rules of Hold'em were, let alone how to deal. Not a single dealer counted their tray, nor used any of the $3 chips in it for the rake. Any time a person wanted to buy chips at the table the floor had to be called over and the purchase verified. Slowed the game down drastically more.
The floor themselves were mediocre. They were very nice but wasn't structured well from what I can tell. The floor people wander the very large room as opposed to just supervising a quadrant of area to keep the games moving.

The players themselves were the worse I've ever seen. .01/.02 NL online is 10x tougher then the 1/2 NL game. I made $1063 playing 1/2 NL in a span of 7 hours. The players just wanted to give their chips away.

The waitresses were all 2.5's. Service was slow. Alcohol is not free at all and bottled waters are $2, but fountain drinks and coffee are free.

For a very large poker room there was only one exit/entrance in and out of the area which sucked. Theres multiple emergency exits but you couldn't use them. They need to open up a couple of these so you can get in and out of the area much quicker. Even the waitresses had to go way out of there way to get out of the poker area to fetch the drinks.

Theres no smoking in the poker area but on the rails there was tons of chain smokers which caused the smoke to blow into the play area. They definitely need to make the smokers move further away from the poker area.

The training that the dealers and cashiers got was apparently terrible. The cashiers were so bad when I bought chips, the person who waited on me counted out the chips 2 at a time! Buying $300 in chips is a simple 2 stacks of red, 1 stack of white + a stack of red - 4 chips. The cashier couldn't grasp this at all and was to incompetent to even use stacks of 5's.

I really can't reiterate enough how bad the dealers were. Players were stiffing the dealers left and right and I wouldn't be surprised if many of the dealers quit. There was a fair amount of abuse towards the dealers and with the few numbers of hands they were dealing a down + poor tipping and only a base pay of $3.65 an hour; the bad dealers aren't going to afford to last for very long.

The tables themselves are fantastic. They're roomy, comfortable enough chairs, nice arm cushions on the table and automatic shufflers. If it wasn't for the shufflers, dealers would have got in 4 hands a down.

Mountaineer has a lot of potential to be a great room but they definitely need to work out some bugs. I still recommend going highly based off the softness of the games alone. It's easy to forgive bad dealers, some suspect floormen and bad cashier and waitress service when people are spewing chips like they are.

[sigurrostyp]

Thanks, I will be going down there shortly

[Aironc]

Thanks for the report. Hopefully the bugs get ironed out. Did you happen to notice if the limit games were as good as your NL table?

[cowboy.up]

Just wanted to add my two cents:

I arrived at 5:30 and was immediately seated for 1/2 NL. Max buy-in of $300 is nice (I heard Wheeling is only $200). Nobody else had bought in for the full amount at my table. As stated above, .01/.02 NL online is tougher than the 1/2 NL I played. I could only stay an hour and a half (was passing through back home to Pittsburgh and had other plans, but picked up a quick $276. Only advice, when you bet, make sure you have the goods because I saw a $75 bet into a $50 pot get called by a guy with K high.

Dealers are mediocre, I wouldn't call them terrible, most were so nervous they were visibly trembling. They should shake the initial gitters off pretty quickly.

I saw limit games being spread from 2-4 all the way up to a 50-100 game (everyone was over the age of 50 except one early 20ish guy). NL was packed all the way up to 5-10NL, and was getting busier as I left.

The room has great potential, give it a week or two and I think the dealers will have worked out the major kinks and it will prove a great place to play for being less than an hour away.

[Witzo]

[ QUOTE ]
Thanks for the report. Hopefully the bugs get ironed out. Did you happen to notice if the limit games were as good as your NL table?

[/ QUOTE ]
No idea on the quality of the LHE games. I did play 5/10 limit O8 for about 90 mins or so expecting it to be soft and it was amazingly tough with myself being the only sucker at the table.

I assume the low limit LHE's have to be just as juicy but if they get off a 10/20-20/40 LHE I'll definitely be giving you a report on that game.

[evagaba]

Thanks for the report guys.

How about some hands Witzo? How did you make your money?

[Witzo]

The huge hand I won I was in BB with AKs. utg who was a friend of mine (thats very loose aggro) makes it $20 to go. 5 people call. I pop it to $70 straight. Friend calls as does 3 of the 5 people.
Flop comes A89 Rainbow. I bet out $100. Buddy folds (he tells me later he had JJ). Loose Asian guy calls, others fold.
Turn ends up being a Q and I check. Guy pushes ai for $300ish. I go in the tank and finally call him as I had played with him for 4+ hours, he had donked off hundreds of dollars, always overbetting pushing with rags and trying to slow play monsters so I felt like he would value bet me or check behind if he had a monster.
He turned over KJ suited and he had picked up a gutterball and a flush draw on turn. River blanks and I scoop a $1100 pot.

I played on Sat also but trip was uneventful. Finished up $150 and would have been up $600+ if I hadn't flopped top set and lost to a flopped straight when I got it ai on the flop vs another aggromonster.

The dealers were better on Sat then they were on Fri as a whole but there were still some who were clueless...
Woman dealer, blonde. Looks... used... kept on trying to rake the pot $5 on the flop regardless of amount in the pot. Took much convincing that a $7 pot doesn't get raked $5.00. She then pissed off aggromonster #2 when he lost a big pot on a draw and while she was pushing pot to winner she replied to his whining with "Thats gambling sir" which he promptly went into the best Samuel L Jackson a white man has ever done when he yelled..
"I don't remember asking you a god-damn thing.."

Floor really needs to get act together. They are clustering more and more and not addressing calls for floor quickly and efficiently. Of course dealers need to shout what table the floor call is for as opposed to raising their hand like they're in the 3rd grade.

Cashiers were using calculators, abacuses, their 7 toes, etc to count money. Was quite sad. When your sole job is to make change and cash money you should be able to add.

Waitresses were very good on Sat but my table were ordering 6 diet cokes at a time and tipping well so maybe I just got lucky that I was at a good table for drink service.

Dealers really need trained or retrained on the clocking in board. They struggled to log themselves in when they sat down as well as logging in players.

Smoking is getting out of hand and they need to keep smokers off rails as the smoke is traveling into poker area.

Need more then one entrance/exit opened up to poker area.

front desk needs to mark off players once seated.

the 2/5 NL and 5/10 NL needs bigger buyin. 1/2 NL at 300 max is more BB's in chips then the 2/5 at $500 max or the 5/10 at $1000 max. playing a 100BB 5/10 NL seems really poor.

Will probably go back Tues as I'm going to railbird the Colts Monday night. Will see if theres any improvement in their day 5.

[Johnny 99]

what was the rake?

[Grumpy1]

I went to also Friday through Sunday. The dealers do need alot of work. They just need time. Play was from good to bad. Lots of Fish and people who watch too much TV. Sunday the play was much tougher at least at my table. Nice room. only live 10 min from the place. I think the weekends are going to be busy and have lots of action from the fishes

[Grumpy1]

rake 10% to 5 dollars on 1/2 NL