I am a professional poker player and I decided with my partner to take a vacation in a sunny place that also has a Texas holdem room, so we decided to come to Punta Cana and go to the Hard Rock Casino at night.
From the first minute and during the 3 days I went, the dealers would not stop making awful mistakes that made the game very slow in an environment where the local regs are quite hostile to the rest of the players.
Yesterday was what put me over the edge and the impetus for this review—the casino staff (dealer and supervisor) literally cheated a player sitting next to me out of his entire stack.
I was in the hand and it came down to the river where the player who was cheated out of his stack announces all in because the local player only had 100 dollars behind him and he had 700. At that moment the supervisor brings 1000 dollars to the table to the local player and the dealer announces that the money is also in play when he never announced it before starting the first round of betting. The dealer says that he announced it before in English and Spanish, which is totally false and the supervisor supported her.
They call the head of the room named Stanley and he supports the version of the dealer and the supervisor and dismisses the claims of the affected player and myself and 3 people who said that he had never announced anything. The casino professionals and the local player were totally dishonest with zero code of honor and fair play. I have been playing poker for 23 years all over the world and I have never seen anything like this.
Also for a casino like Hard rock its unbelievable that they don't have a decent set of chips—the 5 and 1 chips are of different sets and different sizes. The chairs are small and uncomfortable and most of them are not adjustable. Not to mention the bar service, I asked for a tea and after 40 minutes I asked if they had forgotten and they said no, the machine was broken, they didn't even have the courtesy to tell me. The next day I ask for a tea and they serve it to me in a children's birthday cup. If you squeeze it too hard you get liquid in your hand. A disaster everywhere you look. I changed my ticket to leave this mediocre and depressing place as soon as possible.