While this is still not a stand-a-lone poker room, rather just a cordoned off area of the pit, the look and feel of the room is improved over pre-Harrah's days. Most notable is the addition of auto-shufflers. However, the atmosphere is very cool and vibrant in comparison from the old Planet Hollywood and Alladin days. My gripes would be that some of the chairs do not have up/down variability (broken or non-existent control) and that the wooden racetrack around the outside of the tables are shabby with the varnish coming off.
I was somewhat disappointed that the competition wasn't a "5" as I had heard. I played from 1pm - 5:30pm on a Tuesday and I knew 40% of the players (I'm a local grinder), and most of the players were competent. A couple of really bad players were in the mix however!
Friendly and competent dealers for the most part. One young lady wasn't very good with either her pitch or game control. The dealers seemed to be happy enjoying each other's company when they weren't in the box, which is a good thing.
Fast, efficient and with looks that could give the Rio some competition in the Harrah's group of casinos.
$5 rake which is the norm with Harrah's properties. When the game became six-handed or less, Wayne the shift-supervisor was loath to give even a dollar off the rake. In fact, he told me that six-handed was not a short game and did not deserve a rake reduction. This is way above the rakes at other non-Harrah's poker rooms, and the other Harrah's rooms do not enforce this miserly attitude either. The dealers blamed it on Kim, one of Harrah's overall poker managers, but again other Harrah's rooms are not even close to this bad. Another thing that Wayne did that many supervisors are guilty of, is trying to start additional games when there aren't enough players. At 3:30pm he tried to start a 3rd game five-handed. Very quickly one of the original games collapsed, leaving them with the two they started with originally.
Standard $1 per hour, but the Total Reward card is the best in the business, and even if you can just get to Platinum level the additional benefits and freebies are very good.