Canadian National Exhibition Casino (Toronto, Canada)

The Canadian Ex casino has opened, as it does every year, and if you are nearby here's the advance report. First, the stats:

TABLES: 25-30 (approx., I didn't count.)
TYPES: Limit only
LIMITS: From 5/10 up to at least 25/50, and there may be 50/100
BAD BEAT JACKPOT? None
RAKE: 10% to $6 max at 5/10 and 10/20; not sure about higher limits

The CNE casino runs only from late July through the run of the Exhibition, so this year it's July 29 to September 2 (not including today, August 3, when it closes, inexplicably, during Caribana.) The casino is in the Better Living Centre on the Exhibition grounds, a convention building to the southwest of BMO Field, the stadium where Toronto's horrific soccer team, Toront FC, plays. Getting there is easy if you take a GO train; it's maybe 300 yards, at most, from where you step off the train.

The casino offer house table games on one side, and on the other the poker room, which is separated by glass. The table games side has blackjack (which, stunningly, pays 2 to 1 on a blackjack and no I'm not kidding) War, roulette, and a few other games. I didn't look carefully, really, but there's no craps, no slot machines, and I don't think they offer more exotic table games like Mississippi Stud or Pai Gow.

The poker room at the CNE is infamous for its shoddiness; I'd never played there but every player and dealer at every other cardroom in the province chortled at the CNE. I had to try it, though, because aside from the players there being infamously terrible, it also drains the action from the other casinos, so I figured I might as well try it.

The casino runs from non to 6 AM, and I arrived at about 11:45. People were already waiting outside, but not many of them, perhaps 30-40. I started getting worried I wasn't going to see much action and might be up against regulars who would not be such easy marks. But what the heck. Once it opened up, though, people poured in at a truly astounding rate; by 1 PM, 20 tables were running, and this on a Friday.

In terms of the quality of the room, it was bad, but not as bad as I'd been led to believe. You cannot phone in to get on the list; that'd be a huge, huge strike against the place at prime time, though it didn't matter at opening. To their credit, they do a reasonably good job of getting tables open as quickly as demand allows, and use a projector rather than monitors to display the waiting list in 20'x30' glory on a wall of the poker room, an innovation I'm surprised I don't see more often. Even when the place was really busy the lists appeared to be kept to a reasonable length - that's on a weekday, though, so please don't assume it'd be like that Saturday night. The tables are cheap, with lousy felt and no drink holders (rolling drink stands are provided) and the chairs equally cheap. The chips are standard casino chips embossed with CNE logos but are - even by the dismal standards of casino chips - astoundingly gross, just dirty beyond belief. I may come down with smallpox; I'm pretty sure smallpox was not yet eradicated when they last cleaned those chips. I mean... it's a temporary casino and it shows. I mean, it's in a convention center that was built in the 70s; it's like playing in a high school gym. You don't go there for atmosphere (though as to that there is no smoking, which pleases me.)

The other major strike against the place is that you pay for everything - even soda and coffee. Coffee is an outrageous $2.25. The waitresses, while overworked, are friendly and cooperative.

Dealer quality ranged from poor to good. Nobody was great, but I didn't see anyone pitch a card onto the floor or seriously screw up a pot. Some of the younger dealers needed help with some more unusual rules; one dealer wanted to make a player post for changing seats into INFERIOR position. Another did not grasp the concept of buying the puck (I actually had to pick the man's chips up, explain the surrender of the small blind, and demonstrate how to do it and why it wouldn't mess anyone's blind up.) The hands/hour ratio was not sensational but, again, it was not as bad as I'd been led to believe.

The quality of player, though, was every bit as bad as I'd been led to believe.

I first sat down at $10/$20 because that's what was available and was swiftly up despite a truly horrifying beat (a set of kings defeated by runner-runner quad aces. Ouch, bro. Okay, so technically I lost on the turn.) But I really wanted to play $5/$10, as I assumed that's where the really terrible players would be and I wanted to see if I could take their money.

I was not disappointed. The quality of play was abysmal. It was worse than Great Blue Heron, which is saying a lot. Everyone loved to call and nobody wanted to raise; they were easily bullied, and it was painfully apparent that many of the players had no concept of the idea of position, and so would call in early position and then be visibly crestfallen when they were raised. The amount of chasing, given the ineptitude of the preflop play, wasn't as bad as you might expect, which was a perfect combination; you could get the money in early and then push people out when the bets got big.

I had poor cards most of the session and still made $400 in just three hours of play, which is a hell of a rate for $5/$10. I don't even think I played well, to be honest; I adapted well to the table, but I still identified a number of errors I made. More discipline and watching overconfidence is key there.

Player behaviour was generally okay. I saw nobody flip out or throw a punch, which the CNE has a reputation for. Etiquette was not super fantastic - one guy pulled a just-barely slow roll with quads, and the older gentleman to my right seemed to love to act before his turn, which drove me crazy and I finally asked him to top. (He was a doofus and busted out three times, finally giving up after the third, so that problem went away.)

Overall, I wouldn't want this place to be my regular cardroom, but for a temporary experience and incredibly easy money, if you know how to play limit poker, for God's sake go. Well, don't sit at my table.

NOTE ON THE BLACKJACK GAMES: I'm going to ask tomorrow when I go back, but I double checked and CNE blackjack tables absolutely so say 2-1 on a blackjack. I looked at three of them to make sure. It wasn't Spanish 21. The house must also stand on a soft 17. This strikes me as being flatly insane; unless there is another house rule that tilts towards the house that MUST give the player an edge. I'll look into it further. The house must win a push, or something.