Encore Boston Harbor

I am optimistic that Encore's Poker Room has vastly improved, by leaps & bounds, from where it first was upon reopening post-COVID. And it-seems to still be heading in the right direction. But we are all still recovering & somewhat distrustful, after having the rug yanked from under our feet!! When Encore first opened, with 70+ tables distributed throughout the entire loft area, all around the perimeter & within the separate, private high limit room, we felt we had been blessed with the most beautiful, accommodating, "done right" card room in the country...maybe in the whole world. Licensed masseuses contracted for the high limit area (not just during tournaments as was standard in CT poker rooms)...a grill/kitchen & bar/drink station exclusively serving poker players from our custom menu & adequately staffed with poker room designated wait staff...a fully operational cage open 24/7 with chip runners...well run tournaments. Other than an ever increasing rake amount, no poker rates on hotel rooms & a few dealers who needed retraining before allowing them to deal the higher limit time games, that room was definitely miles ahead of what most New England players were used to, coming up through CT poker!! And the shocking disappointment of the post pandemic shell of a card room, after waiting years for live casino poker to open again, was utterly offensive & pitiful...as if we wouldn't notice a difference??? I literally refused to come back when they were open only bankers hours & closed on weekends! So the extended hours...and additional tables are a welcome improvement!! They are managing the waitlists, even on holiday weekends, fairly well now. They are spreading more and more different games and pushing classes of dealers through school to be ready to add even more hours and more tables eventually...maybe a little too fast in some instances. And yes, the half @#$% cage still sucks because if your get coolered & lose your stack, and didn't realize you should keep extra black chips in your pockets in case the cage upstairs is on break/closed & there is a 45 min line at the cage next to the craps tables, there is nothing more tilting than getting picked up before you can get back to your seat after buying more chips!! Perhaps they need to give players more than TEN mins to return to their seat after going all in until they give us a fully staffed cage in the poker room. My only other specific complaint...I realize that there are considerations being made with regards to dealer rotations, EO requests and overtime needs, so sometimes a table will need to be closed & players moved. But I would just like to request that management try to recognize that the players who got to the room the earliest & started games for you should be given consideration & seniority to be allowed to remain at their table & force the newer players to break their game and fill in seats at the longer running game, if the older game prefers not to break. I get it if it's the end of the night and tables are breaking & moving from the 1/3 room into the PLO room to allow cleaning staff to start working in one room. But the other day, we were 6 handed on Table 19 and forced to break, but not into the other room...we were all given seats at games in the 1/3 room! The players wanted to stay at T 19, even if we had to play short but we were told we were not being given options, but rather we were being ordered to break & find seats in other games. It can take a good hour or more not to just learn how everyone at your new table plays, but to develop your own table image. And if we are already having to race against the clock because the room closes by 5:30...now we find the whole flow of the game shifts against you as you are running out of time! When the poker room was just in the center where the PLO section is spread. I remember one night we got down to 4 or 5 handed playing 2/5, but we weee mandatory straddling, so it was shorthanded but more like 5/5/10, so none of us wanted yo break & fill in the other two 2/5 games. And the floor said, "if you don't want a full table, we will never make you break your game, you can play as short as you want." And that makes sense for the casino, even if we got half rake, it still makes the casino more money than breaking 3 games down into 2 games. But I'm not even saying you have to let us play short...if there are reasons you need to let dealers go home or whatnot and need to break a game, just try to allow the players who have been playing the longest, and thus earned the right to remain and have the other short game break and come join our game & send a player or two to one of the other tables. Yes, it might mean having to switch out one table for ours & reassign a dealer rotation...but when it's something that can affect a player's win rate, I would hope that management would agree that it makes sense to keep the players who support the room the most, happy and feeling appreciated.