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Played at the Casino Arizona for the first time today. I have to say, it was not a great experience. It did not help that I ended up down $200 for the day. But that is not my main complaint.
First of all, the lowest limit available is $3/$6, the upper edge of my comfort zone. They also have $4/$8, $6/$12, and some "high stakes" games including I believe a $5-$150 NL game.
But as if $3/$6 weren't high enough, ALL games are played with a full kill! So if anyone wins two hands in a row, the betting suddenly goes from $3/$6 to $6/$12. OUCH. One raise preflop and you are already in for $12! Not very nice if you are used to playing $1/$2 like I am.
It gets worse. The house rakes the small blind ($1) as soon as it's posted in order to feed the progressive bad beat jackpot. The jackpot ($7,500 when I got there) is awarded to the whole table when aces full of tens (or better) loses to four of a kind and the pot is over $30. Our table just missed it 2-3 times.
Anyway, it is really weird to have the small blind disappear immediately, so only the big blind ($3) is out there when it's time for UTG to act. People are CONSTANTLY calling their SB with $3 or $6, forgetting that they've already paid their $1, and so the dealer is always correcting them. So unnecessary.
The house rake is $4 per hand, $1 more than I'm used to in Atlantic City and other places. They take the first $2 when the pot hits $10, another $2 when it hits $30. That's well over the standard 10%.
Add in a $1 toke to the dealer and you're basically losing $6 to the house every damn time you drag a pot.
Oh and I almost forgot: when someone leaves on their button, a dead button is declared and then TWO people must post a big blind in addition to the small blind. And when there is a kill pot, the person who just won two hands in a row must pay a blind of $6 in addition to the small and big blinds (which remain $1 and $3). This is all totally insane in my opinion, and serves no purpose other than to juice the pot so the house can rake more.
Oh yeah, and the tables only seat nine players, not the standard ten, so you end up paying the blinds more often than normal. Also, they only use white chips at the $3/$6 thru $6/$12 tables. No reds. No $3 chips. So every time someone raises $6 to $12, there is a delay as people count out their chips into little $12 piles. It is ridiculously inefficient.
Finally, adding insult to injury... YOU HAVE TO PAY FOR THE DRINKS!?! There are no comps whatsoever offered at Casino Arizona. What kind of bullshit is that?
Okay, so that's enough about the house. Now, the players.
In a word, they sucked. There were 2 tight guys near me and the other 6 players were absolute morons, playing any suited cards or any unsuited face card with no kicker. We routinely had 6-7 players to every flop, even after 2-3 preflop raises. They were textbook calling stations, chasing every backdoor draw they could find, no matter how many bets or raises were involved. As a result, my KK and QQ got rivered by bizarre straights and flushes in kill pots where I had capped the preflop betting at **$24**.
I think the best pots I won were the ones where *I* sucked out flushes on them, instead of vice versa. One memorable time was when I had K3s on the button and four players limped to the flop. I checked in the dark and the BB bet at a low flop with 2 of my clubs. One guy called and I raised, so naturally the two guys called. Turned nothing, bet, they called. Rivered my club, bet, they both paid me off.
In contrast, every single time I flopped a set, including my JJ that I raised preflop from UTG, I got crushed on the river by some cold calling jerk with a flush draw.
I've played low limit hold em for a year, and I've consistently beaten calling stations who suck out nice hands from time to time. But I've never seen anything like this, except at the play chip tables on UltimateBet. The players at the $3/$6 tables have no clue whatsoever what they are doing. They have no concept of pot odds or risk/return. They don't seem to give a shit about the money they are throwing around, especially since they catch so many lucky river cards and win back their chips. They chase any possible hand. They have no fear of being beaten no matter how much you checkraise or cap.
I only played for 4 hours so I fully realize my results were very short term and over the long run the cards would have started coming my way. But I didn't have the bankroll to keep waiting. At the 4 hour mark, I was completely wiped out of my $200 ($120 initial buy-in plus two embarrassing rebuys). That's over 33 big bets, way outside my tolerance and normal performance for a session. And I was not maniacing it up or chasing cards. Looking back, I can't see any place where I played badly. It was just very bad luck.
Having said that, I have to believe that the house rake/jackpot/kill/blind structure contributed significantly to my losses today. I know for a fact that the two kill pots I entered (again, with KK and QQ) cost me about $80 each. I wanted to just avoid playing any kill pot hands but what am I going to do, fold KK??
Well as you can see I'm still pretty frustrated about the whole situation. Tomorrow I will look into other Phoenix area casinos and see if there is another one that offers lower limits, better rake structures, and/or no kills. Will report back later.
ChezJ
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I tried out Fort McDowell in Fountain Hills. MUCH better poker room. I wasn't paying attention to the rake, but I was told it was only $2 at the $3/$6 tables (the lowest limit), vs $4 at Casino Arizona. They also raked an extra $1 for the progressive bad beat jackpot.
The room is designated non smoking, and it really is, as opposed to Casino Arizona where you still breathe plenty of smoke from the people puffing away 5 feet away from the table.
They have a comp card and you earn $10 at signup plus $0.50 per hour of play. Non alcoholic drinks are free.
They give out free raffle-like tickets during football games every quarter and if the last digits of the score match your ticket, you win like $120.
One bad thing, all tables are kill tables, just like at Casino Arizona. I lost $24 in a kill pot with AK that went absolutely nowhere.
They had two NL tournaments going on ($16-$30 buyin + rebuys) on the day I was there, one at noon and one at 7 p.m. Maybe 50 people enrolled.
The $3/$6 game was unbelievably bad, with people playing all kinds of crap and even raising with it. 5-7 players to every flop, no matter how many RPF's. (9 players max seating.)
Sadly, I had ANOTHER day when maniacs raising with 62o would flop straights and punish the better players. And my cards sucked so hard I could not understand it. I sat there for 4.5 hours folding nearly every hand preflop, including many BB's against a raise, and left down $157 (26 BB) after winning a mere 6 hands.
The best hand I ever caught was a set of 6's which got crushed on the river by a one card flush. But the idiot had K7o and his 7 completed the flush! The best pot I took down was with AJs which flopped Jxx. I got re-raised by a maniac and ended up capping it. She called me down and, incredibly, my one pair held up. This shows how bad the play is at $3/$6.
And yet, I don't understand why my cards have been so awful this week. I'm down $360 (60 BB) in 8.5 hours of play. Normally it takes me 1-2 hours of folding to catch a nice juicy rush of hands, but I'm in a dry, dry spell right now. I swear I am playing the exact same way I have been playing at $0.50/$1 and $1/$2, where I've accumulated $700 this year. The only difference is the luck, as far as I can tell. Why did I have to hit this cold streak while I'm playing $3/$6???
I want to go back one more time and prove that I am not a total loser but my bankroll has been devastated. Is it worth one more shot or should I just stay home and lick my wounds?
ChezJ
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Played again at Ft. McDowell today and finally broke my cold spell, hitting a couple HUGE pots (over $100 each) and few other decent sized ones. Of course, I bled away $120 before the cards hit me. But I ended up +$84 (14BB) in only 3.5 hours (+4BB/hr). That's more in line with my normal win rate. Would have stayed but I had to go home for Xmas dinner.
They had the free football jackpot game going again, and the guy next to me won over $100 based on the first quarter score. They also had their daily tournament starting around 7. I was told the winner gets paid a few hundred.
I verified that the rake is only $2 plus the $1 bad beat jackpot rake. The jackpot had gone up from $39,000 to $40,000. I was told it goes up a grand a day.
One other thing I forgot to mention earlier. The felt at Ft. McDowell feels like a real felt, whereas the tables at Casino Arizona have this tight rubbery stuff that does NOT make it easy to peek at your cards. This is yet another reason Ft. McD. is better than C.Az.
ChezJ
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Just to add a happy ending to my story, I went back to Ft. McDowell two more times and the poker gods decided to stop torturing me with bad beats. I made $265 in about 5 hours (+8.8 BB/hr), so I broke even for the week. Got lots of nice food comps along the way, so really I came out ahead.
What's really amazing is that from my lowest low to my final chip count, I actually had a +$500 run. Wish I had an extra day or two to stay in AZ and extend the run!
Once again, I strongly recommend Ft. McDowell over Casino Arizona, any day of the week and twice on Sunday. It's just infinitely better.
ChezJ
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