Trip Report: Casino Barcelona

[PokerFink]

I'm going to (eventually) make a full Barcelona Trip Report in OOT, with pictures. Until then, I thought I would report real quick on the casino. When the full report is done I will link to it with a reply.

Basics

The place is nice, but not very big. There is an upper level with the lobby and some slot machines that is old and dirty and ugly. To go downstairs to the main casino, you must pay 4.50 Euros ($6). Downstairs is quite nice, and compares to the medium range LV strip casinos such as NY NY, only much smaller. There is a small area with slot machines and a decent size pit of blackjack, roulette, mini baccarat. Booze is NOT free, I didn't order any drinks so I don't know how expensive drinks are. Some of the cocktail waitresses are dudes, which is rather dissapointing, and the females don't wear revealing outfits anyway. So no eye candy. Service is average. Cage is plenty big enough. For currency exchange, they update the rates daily and charge %1.25 commission which isn't bad at all.

There isn't much tipping in Spain. There was a slot in the BJ tables for dealer tokes, but they weren't getting any. I tipped my BJ dealer a five when I finished and he looked surprised to get something. Ditto on the poker tables. Tipping is NOT MANDATORY, which is probably why there are no one euro chips. Hell, you don't even have to tip cocktail waiters or your waiter at a restaurant. If you give a waiter a standard American 20% tip they will laugh; it's probably the equivalent of tipping about 100% in the states.

Chips are very nice. Similar to Chipco in how they looked, good feel, and they were heavy, probably 13g. Interesting increments of 5, 10, 50 and 100 euros. 500 euros and 1000 euros were small plaques. As far as I can tell, there are no 1 euro chips.

Table Games

There are enough tables to go around. Min on blackjack is 10 euros ($13), didn't notice what the max is. Blackjack dealers are pretty fast, they made a couple minor mistakes but it might just have been a bad night; they seemed pretty competant. Dealers spoke several languages which helps a lot. You can bet on other people's spots in blackjack, so it gets confusing when three or four people bet on one spot and it hits blackjack, chips can get mixed up =). The rules were mostly standard, except the dealer doesn't look for blackjack right away, he waits until after everyone has acted. I didn't see Carribbean Stud or Keno or 3-card Poker or anything like that, but I might have just missed it.

Poker

Their poker room is very nice. They were about twenty tables. I was there during the World Heads Up Championship (2000 euro buy-in), so the limits may have been higher than normal. They spread 20/40 limit, 5/10 and 10/20 no limit, as well as 5/10 and 10/20 PLO. The buy-in for PL/NL games was 50BB, no more no less.

THE RAKE WAS A KILLER. It was 2.5% up to THIRTY MAX. Yes, that's right, they were raking thirty [censored] euros from big pots. I was going to play 5/10nl and began to reconsider when I noticed the ten euro rake, and when I saw the dealer drop thirty euros I gave up. The games weren't even that soft, they were rather loose/aggressive. Combined with the 50BB stacks, it's just not a great game. No dealer tokes help a tiny little bit but it's still absurd. It's the only game in town so they get away with it some how.

However, their tournaments were excellent. They had a pretty big buy-in tournament each day, usually 300-500 euros and mostly NLHE. It may have been due to the heads up tournament going on, I don't know if they always run tournaments like that. Levels were 30 minutes long and the blind structure was great, for example going from 300-600 to 400-800 to 500-1000 in one of the NLHE tournaments. Not sure what the starting stack/blinds were, but it played deep. It's rare to see that kind of structure for a 300 buy in tourney.

Apparently there is a nice casino in Girona (about an hour train ride from Barca) but I don't know anything about it. If you're in Barcelona the casino is worth checking out, especially if you want to play table games, but I definitely would not plan a trip to Barca just for the casino.

-fink

(edited for Photoc)