Hella Hold'em

Happy Spring!

Guess what? I played poker! Wheee!

Last weekend, I checked out the poker room at Hollywood Casino @ Charles Town Races in Charles Town, West Virginia. It's about an hour and a half from my house. On Saturday night and part of Sunday, I played $1/2NL. The rest of Sunday, I played $3/6 limit. Then I went back Monday afternoon after work and got seated at an insane $1/2NL table and quickly switched over to $3/6.

The verdict: decent room. Coffee/soda/water and well drinks are free (nice that there's some free booze, even though I don't usually drink when I play). Dealers for the most part were good, if a little slow. They don't strongly enforce things like English-only at the table, or one-player-per-hand, which got a little annoying. But I didn't see any mistakes in the hands or pot calculations/etc. There's a small selection of items available for table-side dining (none vegetarian that I could tell, though they don't have a menu - the waitress just recites everything). Drink service was fast most of the time.

The drive is a bit of a bummer compared to the days when I was 15 minutes from the poker room, but I often opted to drive an hour over to the Indiana boats anyway, so it's not much worse than I'm used to, either. I'm just glad there's a reasonable option!

The only downside on top of the drive is that they don't accept call-in's for seating. The wait for a seat has been 30 minutes or so (even on Monday).

With the exception of the insane 1/2 table I was at for all of 5 minutes, the games are soft soft soft! Back in IN, the 3/6 limit game in particular was usually full of rocks just grinding out their chances at the bad beat jackpot. In WV, it was more of the, 8-people-to-every-flop kind of game... just the way I like it!

With this new addition to my recreational options, I think I may have to fire up my old poker tracking spreadsheet!

I've also been invited to a local home game this weekend. Man, I miss home games!

So as spring starts springing, I gladly welcome poker back into my life. :)