Visited the new WSOP room this past Sun-Tues, played 2 tournaments and spoke with staff I knew from previous visits, including the room manager for close to an hour. Initial impressions:
* I understand the reviewer's comments about the waitress service (I ordered a tea from one and it never arrived; the next waitress had it there in less than 5 minutes), but keep in mind, the poker room doesn't hire the waitresses. They're at the mercy of each individual waitress and their personal likes and dislikes of the room. The one complaint I heard from them was that the walk is too far. My question is, how did you serve drinks to those in the video poker room (now the high limit cash game room)? When people take jobs as casino waitresses, they know it involves a lot of walking, so why is serving in the poker room such a big issue to them? And there is never an excuse for taking an order and not returning. The other waitresses were great, however, so any rating I give will be about the waitresses who actually served me.
* From my conversations with staff and the mgr., I understand the waitresses are also responsible for taking food orders as well, which apparently became an issue, but the mgr. said he's having discussions with food service and I have confidence that this will get better.
* In other casinos, I've noticed self-service beverage stations where players can get their own soft drinks and water. This might be a good idea to add one in or near the lower-limit cash game area. There's certainly plenty of room to add at least one, possibly even two.
* I personally think the cash game rooms look pretty nice, especially the high-limit room - plenty of space between tables, lots of room to move around, and room to add more tables. There is no downside to that. I hate crowded rooms, or those that resemble an oversized walk-in closet.
* The tournament area has already been updated with TVs and an extra blinds clock. Can it use improvements? Sure it can. I even noticed the lighting issue, but it didn't affect me as much, so it's not really an issue to me. I never heard any sounds from the fake tree in question, so I have no idea what that's about. As for the "lobby" feel, they don't have any gallery ropes, so I would like to see them add something so passersby don't get too close to the action by accident, or newbies try to sit at a table thinking it's a cash game.
* As for the tables and chairs, I'm not concerned with them matching based on material and shape. The chairs are all black and still in good shape. All the tables were perfectly fine to use, so I don't see an issue with that, either. I've seen plenty of rooms that use different types of chairs, sometimes out of necessity, because the company discontinued the current model a room uses.
Some people who are used to Borgata expected the same kind of room here. Big difference: this wasn't built from scratch, like Borgata was - it was remodeled. I'm not as concerned with material things and amenities, I'm there to play poker, enjoy myself and order the occasional water/juice/tea. If the dealers are good and friendly, the staff is mostly engaging and social, and the tournaments have good value, that works for me. I saw and experienced all of that in my visits.
The only negative thing I feel about the room - and the mgr. readily admitted this - is that they opened too early. But I'm fairly confident that the and his staff will take on each issue, solve them one at a time and continue to make the room better each day.
As far as I'm concerned, this is my new tournament home.
