Hard Rock may have a winner on its hands

The Hard Rock casino has been boasting for a few months now that its coming poker room would be the greatest things since sliced bread. Yeah, well, I've heard that before. I'll believe it when I see it.

For now, I'm sticking with sliced bread, but I have to admit, they did a really, really nice job on this thing. Nice enough that if the place stays busy, it could easily jump to being one of my three or four most common stops. (Right now, in case you're curious, it's Venetian, Palms, Rio, and Planet Hollywood, in no particular order.)

It was surprisingly busy tonight, with nine tables in use when I arrived (out of a total of 18, I think). But it was opening day, which obviously brought in a lot of curiosity visits. The test will be whether it stays this popular over several months.

Let me take you on a little tour. The room is located where there used to be a gift shop, on the left side of the hall (assuming you're coming from the parking ramp), just before you get to the main casino floor. There's a bar/lounge area to the left and the check-in desk to the right:




Then projecting deeper into the room is a wide sort of corridor, along which are three poker tables. This photo shows the tables, but not the corridor part, which is about as wide as the tables are long (i.e., the tables only take up roughly half the width, so there's plenty of walking room):



This corridor opens up into the main part of the room, which includes several tables and the cashier's cage:







Along the back wall of this main part of the room are three or four small alcoves, each with a single table and a nice little seating area for people watching the players:





Finally, there is one table in a separate room off of the main room, which appears to be for private games. Tonight there was what appeared to be a single-table tournament as part of somebody's bachelor party. I stuck my head in anyway. I tell you, there's nothing I won't do for you people!



The Hard Rock ordered nice Kem cards with a special design on the back, just for the poker room, which is an elegant touch few of their competitors bother with.



It was a rare tactile pleasure to have the feel of all brand-new cards in play, before they accumulate the layers of dirt and grime and lint and skin oil and grease from sloppy people's meals, etc.

The dealers were a mixed bag. This young lady was showing more cleavage than I've ever seen on any poker dealer, though I couldn't capture it anywhere near fully in the few attempts I made, this being my best effort. (It was getting to be a little too obvious, after about four clicks of the shutter in her direction.) Trust me--you're not getting even a decent hint of it here:



Other female dealers were more professionally dressed--much less boobelage--so I don't know why this one was so much more, um, exposed.

Anyway, skill level was good overall. One was superb, a guy named Stephen that I've always liked at the Golden Nugget. One was obviously on her very first day as a dealer. She made a few mistakes, but nothing terrible, and really above average for being green. The rest were entirely competent, but not outstanding in any way that I could notice.

I loved the tables and chairs. Lovely gray felt, against which the chips stood out boldly. (This is one of those little touches that too few poker room managers think of. If the chips disappear into the background color of the felt, it repeatedly slows the game down, because both the players and the dealer miss the fact that there has been action.) Great texture, with cards and chips sliding across it just right. They may have the most nicely padded rails of any room in town. Built-in cupholders. Foot-rest rail. My only quibble is that they spread games nine-handed and have 10 cupholders, which means the guy in the middle seat (5) gets two, and/or it will be forever unclear exactly which one goes with which seat. But that's better than nine cupholders for ten players, which I've seen elsewhere.

The tables are nicely sized--dealers able to reach everything, without the players being too crowded together. The tables have the built-in player-management system, so you swipe in at the table. This is far better than doing it at the front desk, for a bunch of reasons that I won't bother to explain (because you either already understand them or don't have any reason to care about them). Lighting was great--easy to see everything without eyestrain or glare. There's plenty of room to move around all of the tables. (I know this stuff sounds horribly picky. But when you spend 100-200 hours a month at these tables, small irritants can really start to get on your nerves.)

Chairs are among the best I've had the pleasure of using. They roll easily, swivel, go up and down, and even recline!

I played at one of the "corridor" tables, and from my seat could easily watch any of three big-screen TVs, though the people at the other end of the table would have had none in view, I think.

Noise was surprisingly subdued. I say "surprisingly" because the Hard Rock is notoriously loud throughout. When they had that new "Royal Hold'em" game for its official trial period, I often left with a headache because of the relentless barrage on my ears from the cranked-up music. Nothing like that in the new poker room.

It's a non-smoking room. The only potential problem will be those first couple of tables, near the main casino hallway and the bar/lounge area, in which smoking is allowed. I was at the second one in, so about as bad it's going to be there, and it was not bad at all. For a while somebody had a stinky cigar (which may be redundant--are there any non-stinky cigars?), which was unpleasant, but nowhere near intolerable. I think the inner tables will be about as good in that respect as anyplace in the city. I'm adding it to "category 2" on my ranking of how "non-smoking" poker rooms compare.

They have a built-in set of restrooms, so that one doesn't have to go out into the hall or the main casino area. This is exceptional, and worthy of heaps of praise. I think the only other poker room with a set of restrooms that is not used by anybody except poker room patrons is Red Rock.

There were masseuses wandering around, charging the standard $2/minute. I don't know if they will be there every day, or just at peak times, or what.

There is the typical capped progressive high-hand jackpot, no bad beat jackpot.

The only rule oddity I've learned of so far is that the Hard Rock becomes the second place in town to employ a button straddle. But unlike at the Rio, where pre-flop action starts with the small blind when the button player straddles, at the Hard Rock they start, as usual, with the UTG player, move around the table, skip the button, let the blinds act, then come back to the button for the option of last action. It's tricky, but probably less confusing than the way the Rio does it. It also doesn't put the blinds at as much of a disadvantage as I think the Rio's approach does. I'd still prefer that they dispensed with the button straddle completely, though.

When I checked in, the games going were $1-2 NLHE (five tables), $2-5 NLHE (two tables), $5-10 NLHE (one table), and a very surprising $5-5 mixed NLHE/PLO game. By the time I left, they also had running a table of No River Hold'em, which I still have never played. I had no idea they would be spreading this. I thought only Treasure Island had licensed it. Goes to show you what I know, eh?

The Hard Rock player's club card doesn't have a hold pre-punched in it, so I had to gouge one out myself when I got home, in order to squeeze the thing onto my ring of cards. I hate this. See how hard my life is? Boo hoo for me!

There were a few opening-day glitches, which isn't surprising. One dealer couldn't figure out what sequence of buttons to press on the player management system to register a player moving from one seat to another. One dealer didn't know the tournament schedule (though you can find it on the Hard Rock web site here). There were some chairs along the wall in the corridor, and when somebody lit up a cigarette there, nobody that I asked seemed to be sure whether those chairs were part of the poker room, and hence nonsmoking, or part of the bar/lounge, and hence smoking permitted. They were having communication problems between the dealers and the front desk, with the latter for some reason not knowing when seats had opened up (though they should be able to just look at a computer monitor and see that, without the obnoxious and error-prone "Seat open!" shouting system most places use). They somehow dropped my name from the waiting list before I got seated, and I had to start all over again. Floor people were so busy that there was an uncomfortably long wait for even minor decisions and problems.

But such problems are to be expected when an operation like this first gets off the ground. I'm willing to assume they'll work out the bugs fairly quickly.

The playing competition was a little better than I typically see at $1-2 tables, probably, again, because opening day will draw a disproportionate number of people who are true devotees of the game, and fewer casual tourists. Still, I certainly didn't feel intimidated or outclassed, and made $170 in 2 1/2 hours. Not great, but perfectly acceptable (especially given this month's history so far).

Nearly all of my profit came in two hands. In the first, I had A-Q on the button, and was one of six players to call a preflop raise to $12, so there was already a decent pot. The flop was queen high. Small blind bet $15, got called in three or four spots, and I decided to shove with TP/TK. Nobody called.

The other hand was a lot more fun. I cracked somebody's aces with my favorite junk hand, the ol' 2-4. (For the history of why I'm so fond of that hand, see here and here.) The flop was 2-3-4. Mr. Aces bet $25, I raised to $75, he shoved, I called. I hit another 4 on the river for a full house, just to rub it in a little bit deeper. My opponent was--um, how shall we say this?--displeased. He had a few unflattering things to say about my poker skills, before he stormed off, never to return. Hee hee hee! Clearly, the man does not grasp the raw power of the mighty 2-4 offsuit!

Well, that's about all I can think of to say about Las Vegas's newest poker room. It appears to be one of the best yet, and hits on nearly every aspect and feature that I care about. (Hmm. I just realized that I forgot to inquire about their comp policy. Dang. Oh, and I might as well point out that they have the absolute worst parking garage in town. The designer should be forced to drive around and around in it until he goes insane--though on second thought he may have already been insane when he drew up the blueprints.) Among other great things is the fact that I don't have to go anywhere near the Strip to get to it. If they can keep the tables full, I predict that you'll be hearing a lot more Hard Rock stories from me in the future.

You can see much nicer photos than mine over at Pokerati, here and here. My guess is that by Friday, when most people will be reading this, you'll also be able to find photos and/or reviews at Prof's poker blog and http://www.allvegaspoker.com/.


Addendum, August 22, 2008

Well, I was sort of right about allvegaspoker.com having early reviews up. What I missed was the fact that they already had them posted before I wrote mine! It took me about two hours (from when I got home around midnight to 2 a.m.) to write my thoughts and arrange the photos, and by then I was just too tired to explore whether anybody else had written it up yet, so I just threw in that final paragraph at the last minute to sort of cover myself.

You can read the official editor's review here (including some additional details on how the button straddle works, and how comp dollars are given), and comments from other site users beginning here. (Thanks for linking me up, Minton--it always feel a little too self-indulgent if I post a note on the forum directing people here.)

I was pleased and a bit surprised that Michael (LasVegasMichael, that is) liked the room as much as I did, and apparently for largely the same reasons. That's surprising because in the past he and I have tended to have very different opinions of what we like in poker rooms. He can be every bit as fussy as I am--just in different directions. So the Hard Rock has hit on a formula that is apparently appealing to quite different tastes--not an easy thing to accomplish.

Now we just have to sit back and wait to see how the action holds up.