Hard Rock blows its grand opening, makes the Grump grumpier than usual

I had read over on Pokerati that today was the grand opening of the Hard Rock poker room. If you're thinking, "Huh? Didn't they open a few weeks ago?" you haven't been around Vegas enough. This is how things are done here. There is a "soft opening," followed later by a "Grand Opening."

I thought it would be fun to be in the room playing while keeping an eye on the progress of the invitational tournament they were holding, snapping occasional photos of the celebrities, etc. So I headed over there. I arrived at 4:15, knowing that the red carpet event would be at 5:00. Got seated in a $1-2 NLHE game. Picked up the cool chip shown above with my first buy-in; it doesn't say 2008 on it, but I'm pretty sure it's a new design for this year's Independence Day.

I had played for only about five minutes when a floor guy came over and said something about us having just ten more minutes. I didn't understand exactly what that meant. We were at a table close to where the red carpet pathway had been set up, so I thought maybe they were going to move us to another table.

To my shock, though, about ten minutes later they came by with chip racks for everybody. We weren't being moved--we were being kicked out! That's right. The Hard Rock commenced the Grand Opening of its poker room by evicting all of the poker players! There was no explanation given. I had not been told of this when I checked in. The press release said nothing about it. I would not have wasted my time driving there and parking in order to play for 15 minutes, nor just for rubbernecking the tournament.

This was completely unexpected. My initial impressions of the room on previous visits had been highly positive (see here and here for details). Nothing had given me reason to think that they would treat their customers with such utter contempt and disregard.

I have never known a poker room to close down its cash games for a tournament. Hell, even the world's largest tournament, the WSOP, imports scads of dealers in order to keep cash games going. As far as I know, Benny Binion never stopped letting cash players in, no matter how crowded the bullpen got. Even the lowly, tiny Hilton poker room kept a cash game available during its monthly freeroll tournaments, despite the tournament usually occupying all but one of its eight or so tables. I've been around all sorts of poker rooms when they have been hosting all sizes of tournaments, and I have never before seen them shoo away the cash game players. I'm not saying it hasn't ever happened, somewhere, sometime, but I've never seen it, and certainly had no reason to anticipate it today.

This was incredibly rude and insulting treatment by a poker room. They communicated very, very clearly to me how little they value my patronage. I am utterly unimportant to them. So are all of the other non-celebrities (three tables' worth, at least) that were all unceremoniously pushed out the door. And they couldn't even be bothered to put a couple of extra people to work in the cage to handle the simultaneous closing of three tables--30 people make for a long line in front of one cashier to cash in chips.

There was no explanation given, no apology, no effort to tell us what time the cash games would re-open, no attempt to offer even a token compensation or consideration for the insult and inconvenience. As far as I could tell, they hadn't even bothered to put up a lousy sign at the check-in desk warning that the room would be closed to uninvited players during certain hours.

I was too pissed off to stay and take pictures, even though I had brought my good camera along. Even now, some six hours later, I still can't believe that the Hard Rock was so stupid and clumsy as to celebrate the grand opening of its poker room by kicking out the poker players! "Welcome to the Hard Rock. Now get the hell out of here. You're in the way."

The Hard Rock poker room is not going to survive by catering to celebrities. They can only sustain a largish 18-table room by attracting a stable clientele including a large mix of local regulars. In my opinion, they took a huge step backwards from this already-difficult task today, by insulting and chasing away players whom they should be welcoming with open arms, even groveling to make happy.

I'm not so headstrong as to say I'll never go back there again, because if I can make money in a poker room and it's reasonably accessible, I'll keep it on the list at least for occasional visits. But today's conduct was perhaps the most offensive, unnecessary, and shortsighted bitch-slap a poker room has ever hit me with, and it seriously eroded the positive impressions I had made of the place on my first two visits.

I'll go back sooner or later, I'm sure, but I'll never feel as positively about it as I did before, now that they have made explicit where I and other ordinary poker-playing Joes stand in their list of priorities: way down there at at the bottom.