Wheeling Island Poker Room *update*

[jackaaron]

Does anyone know when they are going to start having tournaments?

Thx...

[sirfoldalot]

[ QUOTE ]
Does anyone know when they are going to start having tournaments?

Thx...

[/ QUOTE ]

I asked the floor this over last weekend and all he could say was they are coming. No hard dates yet.

[frommagio]

Matt - You and I played together Saturday. Are you a 2+2 member?

[WVUFtblFan]

I have decided that I just dont like the wheeling poker room very much. I arrived at the room at 4 pm on Friday. All of the tables were full when I got there, which isnt a bad thing, but they have all of these interest lists which I got on and they never sat one game that I wanted to play. On a side note, where did they plan on sitting these games with no open tables? I sat 2/4 (aka slow death) all night long, because the 3/6 list was 12 people deep with only one table going, 4/8 interest list had 12 people but never sat, and the the 1/2 NL list had at least 25 people on it. There were times when our table had up to 5 open seats (not exaggerating), with a waiting list of 20 or more people that never got sat. Maybe one or two people per half hour, but there were always empty seats (so much for that fancy computer system). Ive never been to a place that made me miss Las Vegas so much, I even miss Atlantic City. Crazy rules(ever heard of the traveling california blind)been to alot of casinos and never even heard of that. Inexperienced floorpeople, SLOW SLOW cage counters,and a need for at least 10 more tables. This is my second trip there, and it sure hasnt improved one bit, with the exception of the dealers, who are getting better with experience. They had better get tournaments going or something or I'll be driving the extra 30 min. to Mountaineer.

[wonkadaddy]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Does anyone know when they are going to start having tournaments?

Thx...

[/ QUOTE ]

I asked the floor this over last weekend and all he could say was they are coming. No hard dates yet.

[/ QUOTE ]

played there last weekend and it sounds like EVERYTHING has to go thru the gaming commission at this point (or that was their excuse at least)

overall, looks like it's becoming a solid room. as for what was being spread it was something like

~10 1/2NL ($50-$200)
2 2/5NL ($100-$500)
1 5/10NL ($300-$1500)
1 1-5 spread limit 7-stud
2 small limit omaha games
4 2/4 LHE

wait lists were medium long (1-2 hours in the evening), but the poker room had open seats til around 3-4pm on both saturday and sunday. plenty of open seats by 1am also.

most of the dealers were plenty competent, although obviously new and a little slow on avg. a few dealers were awful and they don't keep the worst dealers off of the bigger games unfortunately. the floor was really confused about whether the placeholder chips played while chiprunners were grabbing chips. the answer was usually that "they play if the chips make it back before the person's action." so you would literally have no idea what your opponent's stack size was during the hand which is ridiculous. they said it was a gaming authority issue that would be resolved shortly. like others have said, the cage was comically slow.

the comp cards weren't usable yet, but the hours were being recorded for when they eventually start their comp program. only sodas, hot tea, coffee and tap water were free. good sandwiches, nachos, and paninis avaliable, although the cocktail waitresses were way understaffed.

my experience w/the 2/5 was that it was a soft, friendly game with a lot of people seeing a lot of flops. ~$3000 on the table earlier in the day, ~ $5000 later on. decent action. the 5/10 looked like an action game w/a lot more preflop raising and ~20k on the table.

[Hairball]

I played in the $2/5 game on Saturday for 14+ hours. I found the dealers to be generally competent, the floor to be responsive and authoritative, and the waitresses to be attentitive and overworked.

For the first 4-5 hours of play the wait lists were manageably long and we had a steady rotation of players. After about 7pm the list was so long that the softest money lost patience and never showed up when their seats were called. Eventually we wound up with a table where nobody was especially weak. More tables, or better planning to accomodate another 1-2 tables of $2/5 and one more table of $5/10 would probably help with this.

At the end of my session I overheard a floor person having a conversation with one of the better dealers in the room. They were discussing the situation of a player beginning to rack up and taking a hand while doing so and whether or not the racked chips played. The dealer thought they should, but the floor instructed him that racked chips are out of play. I asked if the player would be permitted to then unrack his chips and was told he could. Seems like a "going south" loophole to me.

They also have a funky button ruling in the room. If a player busts or goes absent when he should be on the small blind or the button, the button advances to the next seated player. He must then post a small blind, the person to his left posts a big blind and the person to his left also posts a big blind. The small blind is live money. The next hand, the button advances to the player who was in the first big blind the previous hand. He then posts a small blind, the person to his left posts a small blind, and the person to his left posts a big blind. Hands thereafter the button and blinds posts as normal. This caused a some confusion amongst the players and a couple of the dealers.

There were a lot of line jumpers at my table. The dealers seemed oblivous to this and never once confirmed that a new player was being seated by a floor person. The dealers also were hit and miss on their enforcement of the room's no cell phones rule and not a single dealer even tried to enforce the no-chew policy. They were all quick, however, to enforce the rule that disallows foreign objects from the table -- only chips, cards, and drink holders are allowed on the felt.

Wonkadaddy, I was playing in the $2/5 game in the middle of the room on Saturday night. There was one other game at an adjacent table and along a wall. I was in the three seat, big guy with a pony tail.

[wonkadaddy]

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Wonkadaddy, I was playing in the $2/5 game in the middle of the room on Saturday night. There was one other game at an adjacent table and along a wall. I was in the three seat, big guy with a pony tail.

[/ QUOTE ]

i was actually there the weekend before this past one. (steve smith panthers jersey if you were around). the 2 live small blind thing was weird. and hopefully they address some of the obvious stack-depth angle shooting opportunities. glad i didn't have any tobacco spitters at my tables and i didn't even realize there was a no cell rule. dealers were also pretty slack on enforcing english-only rules.

but overall, the problems were small and fixable ones. i'll be back.

[frommagio]

[ QUOTE ]
I have decided that I just dont like the wheeling poker room very much. I arrived at the room at 4 pm on Friday. All of the tables were full when I got there, which isnt a bad thing, but they have all of these interest lists which I got on and they never sat one game that I wanted to play. On a side note, where did they plan on sitting these games with no open tables? I sat 2/4 (aka slow death) all night long, because the 3/6 list was 12 people deep with only one table going, 4/8 interest list had 12 people but never sat, and the the 1/2 NL list had at least 25 people on it. There were times when our table had up to 5 open seats (not exaggerating), with a waiting list of 20 or more people that never got sat. Maybe one or two people per half hour, but there were always empty seats (so much for that fancy computer system). Ive never been to a place that made me miss Las Vegas so much, I even miss Atlantic City. Crazy rules(ever heard of the traveling california blind)been to alot of casinos and never even heard of that. Inexperienced floorpeople, SLOW SLOW cage counters,and a need for at least 10 more tables. This is my second trip there, and it sure hasnt improved one bit, with the exception of the dealers, who are getting better with experience. They had better get tournaments going or something or I'll be driving the extra 30 min. to Mountaineer.

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Both Mountaineer and Wheeling are equally accessible to me. I prefer Wheeling, due to the smoke at Mountaineer. But if I can't go early in the day, I'll head to Mountaineer to avoid the wait-lists.

I've had the same experience as you - tons of empty seats available for hours, while the wait-lists were deep. A few times I've grabbed a floor who was passing by, and they filled some seats.

One time a buddy of mine arrived late, and he was frustrated with the wait. I suggested that he just casually walk in and take one of the many empty seats. A timid sort, he agonized over that for about 30 minutes, then finally took my advice.

[ComeOnNine]

damn, i've gotta make it out there some night

[dwatts1350]

Played there for 24 hours on Friday-Saturday night at 1/2. The only major grips I had are:

- The California blind thing is dumb and needs to go.
- There were 40 people on the 1/2 list, but there were, at times, 2 or 3 empty seats and some tables, including mine.
- No chips can be bought at the table if reloading, gotta use a chip runner or hit the window yourself (I didn't think they were all that slow personally).
- Younger dealers did very good, older dealers were very, very slow and incompetent.
- Some waitress' were pretty bad. I only got 2 of the first 5 drinks I ordered. The ones on duty Saturday were much better.