The M Resort poker room

After my experiences fighting the opening-day crowds and traffic at Eastside Cannery and Aliante Station, I decided that casino grand openings are not for me. The new M Resort opened Sunday, and I stayed away. But I was out there today for another project (which I will be telling you about within a few days), so naturally took some time to scope the place out and play a little poker.

Here are a few random shots I took. (The rest will be saved for "Guess the Casino" posts.) It's really a lovely facility.












The poker room is right by the parking garage, which is great. It appears to have 12 tables, an amazing 8 of which were in use on this Wednesday afternoon. My guess is that that is the result of curiosity on opening week, and will not be sustained--but who knows? There were two tables of $1-2 NLHE (buy-in $100-$300, rake 10% to max $4 plus $1 jackpot drop), one of $2-5 NLHE, and the rest $2-4 limit and $4-8 limit.

A whole bunch of observations, in no particular order:

They run the tables ten-handed. Chairs may be the most deeply padded I've seen in any poker room. They are not on wheels and don't adjust, but my tender buttockals still found them mighty comfortable to sink into. Similarly, the padding on the rail may be the softest and thickest in town. No built-in drink holders, though. Tables have autoshufflers. The place was freezing, even though I was wearing my usual long-sleeved shirt and a sweatshirt over that. Those stuck with short sleeves and/or shorts were really suffering.

In the time I played, I'm not sure there was a single tourist at my table. I definitely recognized at least six locals that I've played with before, and the rest talked like locals. The play was completely typical of a locals joint: lots of limping, lots of weak-tight play, low action, people playing totally level 1 poker (i.e., narrowly focused in on their own cards). I made $85 in two hours, and felt like I was wringing blood out of rocks to do that well.

The poker room is effectively open to the casino on three sides, with only half-walls marking it off. Noise and smoke might therefore be problems. But they weren't today. I never smelled smoke. I have tentatively listed it as a category 3 in my ranking of degrees of smoke-free poker rooms. The noise was subdued, though the casino was not very busy. It is adjacent and open to the sports book, rather like the Rio's arrangement, so I suspect on big game days there's going to be a cacophony coming through.

The restrooms are literally as close as they could possibly be without actually being inside the poker room. Even better, there is a convenient half-hidden door right next to the tables, and the restrooms are about five steps past it. But, strangely, the door is one way only; you can exit but not re-enter. To get back to your seat, you have to trek all the way around the perimeter of the room back to the main desk. I was told that the reason for this is to cut down on the sports book patrons cutting through the poker room, which would indeed get disruptive. So the proximity of the restrooms is kind of a mixed blessing.

They do not have the typical modern proliferation of big-screen televisions. There were three on one wall in the main poker room, plus one above the desk, plus two more in the auxiliary poker room, which appears to be reserved for the higher-stakes games ($2-5 NLHE today). Space between tables was about average--less than the luxurious spacing in rooms like Aliante Station, but more than the notoriously tight places such as Bellagio. Perfectly adequate, in other words. The overhead light was kind of harsh. I found it glaring, and if I went back I would wear a baseball cap to shade my eyes. It also cast a lot of shadows on the tables.

I didn't order any drinks, but watching those who did it seemed to be quick and accurate service. There are progressive high-hand jackpots. The tables appear to have betting lines, but a dealer clarified that any forward motion ahead of one's cards constitutes a bet; the line is only a "courtesy line," meaning they ask you to move the chips that far forward to make it easier for the dealers to reach them. The felt is a lovely tan, but I fear it will quickly become visibly soiled and start to look cruddy. Cards are standard Kems. Footrest rail is the standard. I did not see any magazine racks, but I would guess those will be added soon. They use the common software for showing tables and waiting lists, and the same player-management card-swiping system at the tables as one sees at Station properties, MGM, Imperial Palace, etc. There is no water cooler in the poker room, but, as an unusual touch, the casino floor has at least two self-serve soft drink stations.

There was a huge line for signing up for a player's club card, but fortunately they had forms in the poker room which one could fill out and a card would be fetched by a runner. Nice service, except that they spelled my name wrong on it. Grrrrr.

I never once got dealt the mighty Deuce-Four, so apparently the fix is in.

Some photos:











Nobody threatened to back-room me for taking these pictures, which was a pleasant change.

The cashier was obviously new handling chips, and couldn't cut them into stacks quickly. The dealers were fine, except one who wasn't paying enough attention and made two significant errors in one hand. One of the dealers had had the "M" logo painted on her fingernails, and she kindly allowed me to take a picture of them:



The M is about 17 miles from my apartment. Though it's certainly nice enough, right now it's hard to imagine taking the time and effort to pass by all of the Strip rooms to get there, when the closer places will consistently tend to have better action and a lot more drunk tourists. On the other hand, I do sometimes make trips out to Silverton and South Point (approximately once a month, I guess), so maybe I'll start including the M and make those three-for-one casino days.