Another reason to avoid the Sahara

As if having the worst dealers in town weren't enough, last night the Sahara gave me another reason to stay away. There was a horrible, pounding bass beat resounding through the poker room. It was coming from a new show that recently started in the theater a little way down the hall: "Fuego Raw Talent Live," about which you can read more here. There is a gift shop associated with the show, and they had loudspeakers set up in it. In other words, the noise wasn't just bleeding out through the theater doors; they actively go out of their way to impose it on casino patrons who are not attending the show. As I got closer to check out where it was coming from, it seemed that there actually was some sort of music beyond just the bass beat, but that's all I could hear from the poker room. It was horrible--loud enough to drown out the overhead canned music, and loud enough to start giving me a headache after 15 minutes or so. I asked the poker room staff about it, and they said that everybody complained, but they could do nothing about it. The show lets out at about 10 p.m., but the awful pounding continued until about 10:15. It was seriously so bad that I will never play poker there again while it is going on, which means going only on Wednesdays (when the show is dark) or after about 10:15.

Nice work, Sahara. You start off by having the worst dealers in town, add to that snatching the biggest percentage juice from your tournament prize pools of any place in town to rip off your customers, let people smoke about 3 feet from the table so as to make a complete joke of the "non-smoking" status of the room, give no comps to players, and now add an utterly intolerable sonic irritant to the mix. Hey, Sahara poker room--are you deliberately trying to drive away business, or is this all just a massive coincidence that makes it look like that's your goal?