Hard Rockin'

Having not played live poker in almost two months, I've been getting really antsy to feel some real cards and chips. The live poker situation here in central Florida is rather grim. Florida has this ridiculous law that allows poker, including home poker, but makes it illegal to bet more than $2 at a time. This is actually an improvement over the previous situation where the total pot was limited to $10, but it still limits legal poker to the just screwing around level. And from what I've read, the $1/$2 limit games you find in the casinos and at the tracks are everything you would expect from such a game -- exhorbitantly high rake and percent seeing flop approaching 90%.

For some reason, tournament poker has escaped these archaic limits. So, if you're looking for legal no-limit poker, tournaments are the only way to go.

With all this in mind, on Saturday night I decided to make the 60-mile drive to the Seminole Hard Rock Casino in Tampa. Traffic was horrible getting out of Orlando and not much better the rest of the trip. It took me about an hour and twenty minutes.

I bypassed the ground level parking in favor of the parking garage. As I stepped into the elevator to get to the casino level I was hit with a smell that I'd long ago forgotten but which instantly screamed, "Casino!", at me. I don't know if it's some kind of air freshener used only in casinos or if it's just the mix of two dozen varieties of cologne and perfume in that tiny space, but it's a smell I only recall coming across in casinos. It created a feeling of coming back to a familiar place of good memories, even though I'd never been here before. Scent memory is a powerful thing.

The casino itself is little but a giant room filled with slot machines. Poker is apparently the only live game in the place.

I wandered about a bit to get a feel for the place and eventually found my way to the poker room. I've only played poker live in a casino once before (well, twice, but one of those was a lifetime ago, so I don't count it anymore), so I'm still a bit intimidated by the whole thing. I decided to railbird for a while and try to get a feel for how things worked.

Right next to the rail they have a couple "Poker Pro" all-computer tables they use for the cheaper tournaments. No chips, no cards, no dealer. Nothing but touch screens inset in the table at each player position and a large flat screen display in the center of the table. It's like playing online only all the people are physically in the same room. Since about half the tells exhibited by most players involve looking at or handling the chips, this would seem to have little benefit over playing online.

At the live tables they were spreading $1/$2 Hold'em, $2/$2 Hold'em, $2/$2 'Action' Hold'em, $1/$2 Omaha, $1/$2 Omaha Hi-Lo, and $1/$2 Stud. I have no idea what the 'action' part is. I looked around for some kind of explanation but couldn't find any. I didn't bother to ask. There were also tournaments from $120 to $1050.

Maybe it's just a west coast thing, but I was under the impression that most card rooms had gone non-smoking quite a while ago. Not so at the Hard Rock. The main casino floor had a lot fewer smokers than one would find in most Vegas Casinos (at least the last time I was there) and there didn't seem to be all that many smokers in the poker room, but there were some. (No offense to you smokers. I'm allergic and sitting in close proximity to smokers causes me significant discomfort.) They did have a sign posted saying the poker room would be going smoke-free as of 1 November.

After watching the action for maybe twenty minutes, I put my name in for $1/$2. I was tempted to try a $120 tournament, but there no names on the list. I'm not sure if that meant they were running effectively non-stop or if nobody was interested in playing at that level. I might have been willing to go for the $225 tournament, but there were no names on that list either. I figured I'd get my feet wet at $1/$2 and then ask about the tournament situation.

For the next half hour I watched my name slowly climb the list. The whole time I was thinking, "I could be back in my hotel room playing online, earning bonus money, and not sucking in all this second-hand smoke." Based on what I'd seen, I figured I was still 30-45 minutes from getting seated when I decided I didn't want to stand around any longer. So I turned around and left without having been dealt a single card.

I could have sat at Omaha, but I've played just enough Omaha to know I stink at it. Which probably meant I'd have an advantage over about 80% of the other people at the table. I guess I could have played Omaha while waiting for a seat at Hold'em. At least I'd have been sitting rather than leaning against the rail.

I'm willing to give it another try after the poker room goes non-smoking. And given that Neteller has announced they're going to block US player transfers to gambling sites, I may have little choice but to make the run to Tampa every couple weeks. This sucks.