ES
I moved to the Lehigh Valley about 2 years ago and have been slowly taking the time to evaluate each poker room within an hour's drive so that I can decide which I'd like to be my main room.
Though there were some rough visits over my first year, I had this October off and so I've visited 10 times in the last 3 weeks.
I always like to start my criticisms out with something positive and to that point I will say that it is nice to have phone chargers that work, choosing Poker Atlas over Bravo, and (specifically for Lehigh Valley players like me) driving 20 minutes instead of an hour and paying tolls are all great.
In my experience, the MA, NH & NV poker rooms that adopted Poker Atlas did so because the management loves poker and realizes what poker players really want and they want to go out of their way to provide the best player experience. Unfortunately that appears to not be universal as Wind Creek does come close to delivering. Issues include:
* No door or walls to the main casino floor, leading to the constant smell of stale cigarettes, $1200 jackpot announcements to the tune of Electric Slide, and unnecessarily loud live music (or worse, karaoke) from the nearby bar on the main floor
* Poor training and supervision of dealers and floors leading to slow games, frequently misread showdowns, sloppy pitches exposing cards, and inconsistent rule interpretation/application
* Poor rule selection (e.g. missed small blind having to buy the button rather than post a dead small on the button, no match the stack, and more)
* Tolerance of frequent rule breaking and angles by regulars as well as distraction of dealers by regulars which slows even the good dealers and leads to more errors
* 8-handed tables so that the room can absorb more rake from the players which frequently causes games to be played with 5 or 6 because of frequent player absences
* Unprofessional dealer conduct including participating in non-English conversations and throwing markers at regulars/knocking over stacks when they're frustrated with them or joking with them
* Cage closes after midnight and they don't even have a chip cart to color you up so you're left traversing the noisy, smoke-filled casino floor with several racks of chips on display for everyone who might want to follow you to your car to see
* Placement of the Poker Atlas tablet in the dealer tray significantly reducing the bank for the dealer leading to frequent fills and players buying into 1-2 with 3 black chips and a stack of red
* Table-side beverage service is very limited in options and when I ordered a white russian I got cream with a splash of vodka.
* Open collusion by players including checking back the nuts and agreements to call a raise to play for high hand or bad beat and check it down. I asked a floor and was informed this is acceptable (yet exposing your cards to someone at the table can supposedly nullify the eligibility of a bad beat hand 🤷♂️)
So I guess it is Parx and Live! for me. At least they keep their cages open and discourage collusion, mediocre dealers are the rare exception rather than the norm. It is too bad as the traffic clearly indicates this room could rival Parx's numbers, if only management from the top-down cared enough to roll-out some standards and reinforce them.
