This room is very nice looking, but when you enter, things do seem a bit cramped, and indeed, they are. The chairs look comfortable, and they are, and the tables look small, and once again, they are. Like playing poker in the woods, the Silverton made a lot of effort to keep their "Great Outdoors" theme ongoing in all aspects of this poker room. A Big stone wall, with faux weathered leather chairs, oak ring on the tables, and a double door entry, the only thing missing is a fake fireplace. However, it is tight, and I don't mean the competition. If you are unfortunate enough to be sitting in the 2-6 seats you will be cramped. The wall, the doors, and yet another wall, are all very close to the table, which makes it a little more unfortable then needed. Taking out a table would satisfy this problem, but that isn't an option, apparantly. There are auto shufflers, which is a plus, but the tightness of the room brings it from a 4 to a 3.
The clientele is another book by its cover situation. Old locals and young wannabe hotshots, how do you think they play? I know the other reviews say that this is an easy clean, but I would tend to disagree. Lots of action, don't get me wrong, but with the 8-9 people to a flop consistently (often with at least two or three raises preflop), there are a LOT of suckouts, which makes for a fun game, if you like that sort of thing. Because I played there on a Sunday afternoon, the number of locals versus tourists was very uneven. In fact, at our table, there were only 2 out of towners out of 10. These were not tight locals, as about half of them were kids, who played loose and wild. A few kids busted out while I was there, but the oldies just waited for more. Pretty entertaining overall, but in general, this competition is not worth the drive.
OH MY GOSH! If there was an award for the ABSOLUTELY WORST dealer staff in the WORLD (as far as dealing competency), this place would get the Gold Medal. They are very friendly and make a strong effort to get to know players by name, but when it comes to actual dealing, they are astonishingly bad. They should film a table and use it for dealer training as what NOT to do. I was shocked beyond the capacity for rational thought. I'm serious. I played for three hours. The floor had to come over to make a decision NINE TIMES! THIS IS NOT A JOKE! 9 TIMES! It was hilarious, though, and made for a fun time. You name it, and it happended. Pot pushed to wrong person several times, cards mis dealt and had to redeal several times, burned and turned 4th street before action was complete, burned and turned 5th street before action was complete, mucked players cards mid-hand (and they had a chip on top), mucked the winning hand and pulled the cards out from the muck (which I have never seen before), etc. It was absurd, but entertaining.
A true saving grace for this room was the speed of the cocktail service. The service bar is very close to the poker room, and it shows. Drinks were brought within minutes every time. Very impressive.
I went ahead and gave the management a 4/5 for the simple reason that every floor decision they had to make (and there were plenty), was very fair and reasonable. They got me seated very quickly, and were kind and courteous. No complaints here, with the possible exception of employee training. Since the managers know what they're doing, it seems they could spend some time working with the dealers (at least teach them how to manual shuffle, at least one doesn't know how).
They do this funny thing on Sundays. Any player that had Jacks full or better (both hole cards playing) get to pull an envelope out of a hat. I am not making this up. Inside the envelopes is cash ranging from $5-$20. This is only run on Sundays, from noon on, from what they told me. They also give a standard $1 per hour. All in all, the comps are average. This would be a run of the mill average room, but the dealer staff is the icing on the cake that makes the drive not worth it.
