Poker in Houston has been suffering ever since the debacle at Johnny Chans and the security issue at Legends that seemed to persist way past when it should have. Best Poker aims to end all that. Clearly an homage to The Lodge in Austin with a massive room cameras at each table it's off to a great start.
Starting off with tournaments and promos. Live tournaments are infamous for being cheap money grabs with very bad value for the player and cash cows for the card house. With Best Poker they have gone the opposite direction and run good MTT tournaments that are the best live tournaments in Houston as of right now. I genuinely hope they keep this up as it is hard to find these days. The promos are very good as well and it always seems like something is going. The unfortunate glaring issue with the tournaments was that when you bag a flight on day 2 the bag will have already been opened for you. This is a very unusual practice as far as I have seen. Most of the time an id is required to open your bag. Of course I am not implying cheating as they do count the chips out in front of you and have you sign off on the amount before you bag. It is just a strange practice that I hope goes away.
The cash games are well run with lots of action. I really wish they ran more cash but a new poker hall takes time to establish a good cash player base. If they keep doing what they are doing I anticipate it growing. I'm hoping for a Lodge in Houston type deal sometime in the future.
Dealers are great and so is the floor. The cameras on each table are a huge peace of mind and the floor actually being willing to check them is nice, it should be a given but there have been many times at poker halls all over where the floor has flat out not checked the cameras when there's a controversy.
Having security and security that is strict is a nice peace of mind especially with the issues at Legends in the past.
The food and drinks are also very nice bonus for those of us who play for hours on end. Always top notch food and drinks.
Overall it is clear to see what Best Poker aims to do for poker in Houston and I genuinely hope they succeed. Its definitely on the right track and if they keep improving the small things and getting the big things right I'm sure it will be massively successful.
Also turn down the flipping ac geez it's freezing