Excalibur Report
I went down to Excalibur tonight for the opening of their all-electronic poker room. Managed to bump into PokerGrump, who didn't recognize me from our very brief meeting back in early June at MGM. He was easy to spot -- especially after I pulled up one of his recent posts in which he wrote a spot-on description of himself (right down to the "dorky" fanny pack).
A few notes:
* The room is in the same spot as the previous room -- a glassed-off section in the middle of the floor.
* The yellow-blue-green bonus wheel remains in the room. I was told by a floor that they WILL be bringing the wheel back. The details are yet to be worked out.
* I expected more "curiosity factor" visits tonight. When I left at around 8pm, two hours after the grand opening, only eight or nine of the twelve tables were in use. $0.50-$1 NLHE, $1-$2 NLHE, $2-4 LHE, $4-$8 LHE and $1-$2 PLO were being spread. I suspect the PLO will never be spread there again, based on who was in the game.
* CreepyOldMan made an appearance. Maybe Excalibur paid him and Mat to come by? Several other 2+2 regulars were there as well.
* The process of setting up a players card for use with the PokerPro machines and cashing in / cashing out was relatively painless. It took just a few minutes.
* Minor annoyance: Without actual chips, tipping cocktail waitresses is a problem. I had to cancel a beer order because I didn't have any bills smaller than $20 and didn't feel like dealing with the hassle of getting change. Given that drinks are a major cost for poker rooms, this may be part of MGM's strategy in introducing the PokerPro tables. That, and the wholesale elimination of 80% of the poker room staff.
My only previous experience with PokerPro came at the blogger event in December 2006 at Imperial Palace. I wasn't impressed back then and I'm still not impressed. The interface is kludgy and displays your cards quite prominently to anyone standing within several feet of you (I was clearly able to observe one player's cards from the rail). More to the point, fundamentally you are staring at a screen. If you're just going to stare at a screen, why leave the house?
Do these tables have a place in the Las Vegas poker market? *TT* and CactusJack from 2+2 seemed to think so. Both were at my $4-$8 table before moving over to play $1-$2 PLO. (For what it's worth, I expected *TT* to be older.) They felt that the tables would be especially useful for games like PLO and PLO/8 and might otherwise encourage "clueless newbies" to get their feet wet playing poker. I'm not so sure on either count.
People who are going to play PLO and PLO/8 live want to play *live*. Playing on a PokerPro machine is nothing like playing live. Stripped down to its core elements, when you play on one of these tables you are staring at a screen, the same as if you were playing internet poker from your home. Furthermore, I find it hard to believe that people who want to play PLO have any interest in playing in the Excalibur poker "room".
Clueless newbies -- most tourists come to Las Vegas to get what I'll call the "Las Vegas experience". That includes dealers and cards and chips. When they can get all of those things at any other Strip casino (Excalibur has a 6-month exclusive license on the PokerPro machines) why would they play on a PokerPro machine? Yes, there will be some who will be less intimidated by the machines. But I suspect they're the types who will try poker to say they tried it and then never play again.
This is all supposition on my part though. Like the Hard Rock Poker Lounge, time will tell whether PokerPro tables have a place in Las Vegas.
P.S. I stopped by Hard Rock again tonight at 8:30pm to see what games were up. There were three $1-$2 NLHE table, three $2-$5 NLHE tables, two $5-$10 NLHE tables and one $3-$6 LHE table. It's early yet, but that's not a good sign for a room that claimed it was going to spread "anything and everything".