I haven’t been up there in a while so I figured I’d leave a mini review. I drove up last night for their $150 tournament at 5:30. It’s actually $160 because you get an extra 10k chip for a $10 dealer addon or whatever (why do places do that?) So it’s 35k stacks, 20 minute levels starting at 100/200/200.
I registered at 5:12 and was handed a slip that said Alternate 17. But it wasn’t a true alternate situation - he sat the first 9 alternates before the tournament started, and the next 9 (including me) halfway through the first level. I think it’s just a matter of moving dealers from cash tables to tournament tables. Including re-entries, we had 113 total.
Overall, the structure felt too fast. There’s plenty of room for play in the early levels, but when late reg ends after the break after level 8, you come back 1,000/2,000/2,000, then right to 1500/3,000/3,000, 2k/4k/4k, 3k/5k/5k so it mostly plays all in or fold for the entire field for the next 4 levels. And since you’re losing so many players so quickly, and they can’t break tables fast enough, you’re playing short handed a lot, which gets painful with the big blind ante. I didn’t make it any further than that, so I don’t know if it leveled out at all. I got my last 10 bigs in good, jamming my AJ into a raise that turned out to be Q9, but he likes Q9 so he called and was rewarded with a Q on the flop and a Q on the turn. GG. Out in 35th place.
Chairs are gassers, tables are nice, chips are plastic but not completely terrible - oversize 10ks, which is fun. The crowd is friendly and mostly ABC players who aren’t agressive enough. The dealers are hit or miss. But overall it’s a very pleasant playing experience.
But I post in case anybody is looking to see how tournaments fill. Considering this was a WSOP weekend and a sunny Friday night, I didn’t expect it to fill up, but they still got 113. And like I said, if you want to be seated for the start, get there earlier than 20 minutes before.
There seemed to be a bunch of slot machines, but I pay them no attention. I’d imagine there were some table games somewhere, but I didn’t notice.
I registered at 5:12 and was handed a slip that said Alternate 17. But it wasn’t a true alternate situation - he sat the first 9 alternates before the tournament started, and the next 9 (including me) halfway through the first level. I think it’s just a matter of moving dealers from cash tables to tournament tables. Including re-entries, we had 113 total.
Overall, the structure felt too fast. There’s plenty of room for play in the early levels, but when late reg ends after the break after level 8, you come back 1,000/2,000/2,000, then right to 1500/3,000/3,000, 2k/4k/4k, 3k/5k/5k so it mostly plays all in or fold for the entire field for the next 4 levels. And since you’re losing so many players so quickly, and they can’t break tables fast enough, you’re playing short handed a lot, which gets painful with the big blind ante. I didn’t make it any further than that, so I don’t know if it leveled out at all. I got my last 10 bigs in good, jamming my AJ into a raise that turned out to be Q9, but he likes Q9 so he called and was rewarded with a Q on the flop and a Q on the turn. GG. Out in 35th place.
Chairs are gassers, tables are nice, chips are plastic but not completely terrible - oversize 10ks, which is fun. The crowd is friendly and mostly ABC players who aren’t agressive enough. The dealers are hit or miss. But overall it’s a very pleasant playing experience.
But I post in case anybody is looking to see how tournaments fill. Considering this was a WSOP weekend and a sunny Friday night, I didn’t expect it to fill up, but they still got 113. And like I said, if you want to be seated for the start, get there earlier than 20 minutes before.
There seemed to be a bunch of slot machines, but I pay them no attention. I’d imagine there were some table games somewhere, but I didn’t notice.
