Mountaineer Status?

[pitthockey]

The dealers except for one woman (Karie I think?) were clueless. The 1/2 NL table I was playing on was filled with a bunch of 50 year old+ loose passives. I was in the BB with aces one time and 5 people called a min raise from UTG; I made it 30, and got 3 callers. Coffee was free at the table, Miller Lite was $3.25. I was seated immediately at 8:30. All in all, a nice environment, and if it continues like tonight did, very soft games at least at 1/2.

[GoStillerz]

Hit mountaineer tonight.

Good news first: First off, HUGE room. Definitely the biggest poker room I've ever seen. 37 tables. Staff was all very nice/personable. No smoking at the tables.

Bad news: Dealing ranged from 'barely passable' to 'unforgivably horrible.' Booze costs money, so less drunks than I'd like. Floor staff seemed completely overwhelmed. Seating system still chaos.

My personal experience: I went with two friends, and we decided at the beginning of the night to sit at the same table. This made me reluctant to switch tables, even though I was pretty much constantly wishing I was at another table. The long-term sitters were all nice guys, and there was decent action, but I wasn't catching cards, and the core group of 6 at the table seemed to be intimidating virtually every other player who circulated through our table. If my friends hadn't been there, I'd have changed tables.

And now for the big complaint. The dealing. I could ramble for hours on all the complete horsecrap I saw from the dealers tonight. I'll save my breath and just hit the low-lights. We had one dealer who I caught raking $5 from an $8 pot, who then subsequently tried to put an entire pot down the rake chute. She clearly had NO knowledge of how the rake worked, and we had to tell her what the appropriate rake was literally every hand. She also seemed to think she was dealing stud, because she kept saying that we "completed" the bet when it was called around. We had another dealer who stole a dude's small blind and put it in his tip box. At the beginning of the night we had a dude who was so nervous his hands were visibly shaking to the point where it was interfering with his ability to deal. We had a guy who flipped a card up on four consecutive hands. We had a dealer who pushed the pot to the wrong player twice. And pretty much universally, they couldn't read a hand and had to have it done for them by the folks at the table. Luckily there were enough experienced players at the table that between us we could catch most of their mistakes. If you were a newbie at a table full of newbies, well, God help you.

I went to wheeling last night and couldn't get a seat in a reasonable amount of time, so in that regard this was a win. People seemed to be getting seated pretty much right away even when the place was full. This is a HUGE room. I guess I can be grateful for the crappy dealing in that it made me pay super-close attention, but seriously, these dealers, or at least the ten or twelve that I saw tonight all need a lot of work.

All that said, I'll be going back, and would recommend the experience. Just bring your patience cause it's amateur hour on the dealing, the floor staff is struggling, and there are still some kinks to work out.