9. Trump Plaza poker plans
Date: Wed Feb 13, 2008 1:47 pm ((PST))Hi Gang:
Hedy and I attended a Signature event party at Trump Plaza last Saturday and
had an interesting conversation with one of the Plaza's hosts we've known
for years. We hadn't been to the Plaza in about a year and a half and told the
host that we were surprised to see that the East Tower casino basically did
not exist anymore. A wall has been built close to the escalators which bring
you up to the main casino floor, closing off about 90% of the area. We asked
if there were any future plans for that part of the casino and I, for one, was
surprised by the answer.
We were told that the plans were for that area to house a poker room (TP
does not have one now) but the real revelation was that the room would be
stocked with the automated Poker Pro tables!
These tables are computerized and have no dealers. It's basically like
playing poker online except for the fact that real people are seated at the
table
and make decisions by pressing buttons.
I have played at these tables on cruise chips in the past but have never
seen one in a land-based casino. I like them for a number of reasons, not the
least of which is that there is never a dispute about side pots or split pots.
Everything is controlled electronically, so there are fewer mistakes such as
betting out of turn, not posting blinds etc. I know there are some former
poker dealers on this forum and putting people out of work is never a very
happy
prospect, but I thought I'd share this info for the poker players out there.
I'd just like to stress, however, that the host we talked to said this was
"THE PLAN RIGHT NOW, but that nothing was written in stone."
Regards,
Thanks for this info. Having heard about these on this forum, I tried them at Four Winds in New Buffalo (?) MI, and personally didn't care much for it. The weirdest part was feeling like you're playing online, and then having someone across the table speak directly to you about the hand in progress!
Also, you cup your hands over the screen's card backs to look at your cards, and the guy next to me was standing up a lot, so I never felt totally secure that he couldn't see my cards (I guess I could have asked him to sit down or stand somewhere else, or asked the floor to talk to him about it).
Anyway, I won't be going back to play those again under ordinary circumstances. If I was in a location with no other poker choices (such as a cruise ship) I might put up with the negatives. All that said, the poker room there was busy. Don't know if it saves the casino that much money, since it seemed to take many more "supervisors" to run the room than usual - but I guess fewer total people than if you had live dealers.
The advantages for the player are the same as online: faster dealing, no playing out of turn, side pots and split pots awarded rapidly and correctly, and other advantages of computer over human.
Most objections, when I've discussed it with friends, are answered by "that can't happen" - because the problems people anticipate are all impossible to occur due to the computer taking care of everything.
--BG
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