The Arena Poker Room at Casino Arizona's Talking Stick Resort (Scottsdale, AZ) -- FAQ in OP

41 cash games at 12:40 on a Thursday!

West parking garage is next to the poker room, same as it used to be before the temp building.

Looking strong so far

Imagine if they allowed drinking!

Grrrrr @ almost 50% of tables being 2/3 and 3/5.

I sure miss the days of 3 tables of must move 20/40, 2 of 40/80 and a 60/120.

floors dedication not to run midstakes PLO is impressive. real commitment to the bit

24 ppl on the list no game.

Open tables with available dealers?

Showed up at 5:05, sat immediately in a fun 2/3 game.

Room is nice.

They need a new liquor license just because the room moved? Very odd.

Or maybe they're just not serving because the restrooms are in another building?

No betting lines. Chips flying. New felt. Easy to lose track of things in a place like that but don't lose track of your bodily demands because it's a long walk to the bathroom and the nearest one might be overrun if it's busy or a tournament's on break.

It's good there's a bar in front of the room but the liquor license situation is ridiculous. How are we supposed the get Pope back in a chair?

The smoking balcony is cool except it seems only a matter of time until some dumbass jumps or falls off it. I could also see someone peeing off it because they can't find a bathroom. Perhaps the lack of liquor license will forestall these eventualities.

I also think they should put the biggest games at the back of the room so that the further back you go, the bigger the games get. I'd have put the 20-40 limit games where the 10-20nl games were yesterday, then put the 40-80 and 5-10 games a little further back, then the 10-20 nl then the big plo right at the back. Playing at the back of the room yesterday I felt pretty isolated from the main part of the room and I don't want to feel that way unless I'm playing the biggest game - our mid-stakes games were positioned in a place that seemed too significant for the significance of the games.

I'll be back tonight.

The bathroom is literally right outside the inside entrance to the poker room. However, it is a little on the small side for a 60+ table room and slot floor. 4 urinals, 4 stalls.

You would think that a multi-year million dollar (??) project, they could figure out how to transfer a liquor license from a temporary building to a new permanent location, but, no, they couldn't. As of yesterday at least, you could not order or bring in (from the bar right outside the poker room) any liquor or beer. I was told this would be corrected by Big Game Sunday, or maybe even today, but who knows.

I played a 3 hour session yesterday, made $0 dollars except for that sweet sweet hourly comp. Walking back to the East parking (not the closest), the whole casino was packed at 8pm. $25 craps tables were jammed packed. The auto-craps/BJ/roulette spots were all full. Every bar seat I saw was occupied. Golf bros everywhere!

In the old room there would be open tables and dealers and they regularly refused to open a 5/5 plo game even if there was 5-8 people willing to play. They basically said unless they get a full table + list they won't start the game.

I played in the first 11:15 a.m NLHE tournament in the new poker room. There were 197 entries which was a lot more than usual I was told (I'm vacationing from out of town). Because of so many players I think the tournament lasted much longer than usual. The result was the blinds were consistently insanely high. Everyone was short sacked including the big stacks. Final table blinds at the end were 40,000/80,000 which is massive when I think there were only a shade under 2,000,000 chips in play for the entire tournament.

In front of the dealers just a shade right of middle on the table were indented sections for card shuffle machine, buttons for calling for service, etc. The problem for the dealers was moving chips and cards from their right to the center of the table. because they kept slipping into the indented areas. Dealers didn't much care for this.

The LED screens everywhere are impressive I guess, but I was busy watching my cards the whole time so the screens were a non-factor for me. I suppose if you have sports bets going you may care, but if you are there to play cards I don't see the use of so many sporting events playing as useful. I suppose multitaskers will disagree.

I heard one of the poker tables already has a big gash on it. The wheels on the chairs make movement easy. Dealers were talking that there is more room between tables. I think I heard someone say there are now 69 tables in new poker room as compared to 43 in the old room.

Bathrooms were just outside the entrance of the poker room. Someone commented that there are more sinks than urinals, which they found odd. Someone also said the woman's bathroom is much more spacious than the men's bathroom, which seems odd given the heavily weighted male-to-female ratio of the tables.

I had to delete a few posts that had pic or videos of players in the room. Reminder no identifying info is allowed of players. Same goes for commenting on players by name.

Is the food still criminally expensive?

Very clear they rushed to open the room early for the Super Bowl.

I played from about 10am - 3pm.

Some of the issues:

No side tables available when I started at 10am

By 12:30pm the dining tables were also out, servers were going to tables requesting food and saying they couldn't serve any food because of no tables.

Handing guys coffee mugs that they either had to hold or put under their chairs with wheels because again no tables.

Ran out of white chips by around 10:30am, 4/8 games being played with blue chips.

The carpet looks like absolute **** already. Clearly didn't spring for heavy duty carpet with the rolling chairs coming in.

“”In front of the dealers just a shade right of middle on the table were indented sections for card shuffle machine, buttons for calling for service, etc. The problem for the dealers was moving chips and cards from their right to the center of the table. because they kept slipping into the indented areas. Dealers didn't much care for this.””

This ⬆️⬆️ is going to be a problem going forward I think. Some dealers were having a hard time getting cards out of “THE SANDTRAP”. I’m interested to see if its going to be addressed or, just something to live with.

Also, one excellent dealer moved players to sit between the stitching which made it much easier to see from the 1 and 8 seat. As he suggested, add new red stitching to make it obvious to everyone where to sit.

All other issues IMO are merely growing pains. Dealers, floor, servers, chip runners are for the most part excellent, especially when compared to the two other venues.
This room should be the prototype for any new room going forward. Nice job TSR.

In front of the dealers just a shade right of middle on the table were indented sections for card shuffle machine, buttons for calling for service, etc. The problem for the dealers was moving chips and cards from their right to the center of the table. because they kept slipping into the indented areas. Dealers didn't much care for this.

This ⬆️⬆️ is going to be a problem going forward I think. Some dealers were having a hard time getting cards out of “THE SANDTRAP”. IÂ’m interested to see if itÂ’s addressed or, just something to live with.

Also, one excellent dealer moved players to sit between the stitching which made it much easier to see from the 1 and 8 seat. As he suggested, change the stitching to red to make it obvious to everyone.

All other issues IMO are merely growing pains. Dealers, floor, servers, chip runners are for the most part excellent, especially when compared to the two other venues.
This room should be the prototype for any new room going forward.

They couldn't just bring the tables over from the old room? Or there were really so many people eating that they ran out when using them?

I found the tables more than spacious enough. When nine-handed, there was plenty of room. Even when it was 10-handed with 10 remaining in the tournament I played in, it wasn't awful. Much more room than nine- or 10-handed at tables at the WSOP when it was at the Rio.

As for the comment about the "sandtrap" and how it might be addressed, I don't really see a solution short of completely replacing the tables, which I can't imagine them doing. I think the problem is baked in and the dealers will just have to get used to working around it I suspect.

As for the positive comment about the employees being excellent, I concur. All of the dealers I had were very good (highly competent and friendly), and the floor/staff were extremely helpful the couple of times I dealt with them.

I don't eat at the table, so I can't comment on food service.

My one minor suggestion was at the final table of the tournament I played in, they only went up to chip denominations of 5,000. With 2,000,000 chips in play (give or take), when it got down to the final handful of players it would have been helpful to have chip denominations of 10,000 and 25,000.

They did bring the old tables over. 43 or whatever tables compared to 69...50% more tables.

Yes to the general suggestion of getting some higher denomination chips. But a huge NOOOOO to 10K chips. Please no, not ever. Just go from 1K to 5K to 25K to 100K. 10K chips are just a waste of money, are not a number players are used to dealing with, and lead to errors when counting stacks and such. My advice to every room everywhere, NEVER buy a 10K chip. Also, never buy/use plaques (you know, the big rectangular chips). They are a pain in the ass to stack and count. Thanks!

A jump to a 25,000 chip would have been just fine with me.

Are all the PLO games there hi-lo or am I misreading Bravo?

HL stands for High Limit, a different board and games that are time instead of rake.

Thank you - what do you mean by different board?