2010 South Florida Poker Scene

I recently returned home to South Florida from a 3 year stint in Manhattan. When I left in 1997, the Hard Rock casino was the top poker room in the area. The pari mutuals (Jai Alai, dog and horse tracks) had small rooms (maybe 20 tables) that offered limited hours but the Hard Rock had over 70 tables and was open 24/7. I live about 15 minutes from the Pompano Harness track and when I left they also had a small (maybe 30 tables) poker room with limited hours. If you wanted to do any serious poker playing back in 1996-1997 you headed over to the Hard Rock. In fact, when I first started going to the Hard Rock around 2003-2004 you could still smoke at the poker tables.

Now I have many posts on this blog regarding my experiences in Atlantic City while I was up in New York so I won't go over that again but I will say that when I left South Florida back in 1997 I was actually looking forward to playing in AC as the South Florida scene was somewhat limited. Now that I have returned home I can say that I like the South Florida poker scene better than AC. In the 3 years I have been gone the various casino operators down here have invested heavily and we now have a good number of really good poker rooms. In fact the Hard Rock has actually lost ground in my opinion as they have moved the poker room out of the casino proper in favor of more house lucrative tables games like black jack and 3 card poker (they also have a texas hold'em vs the house game that looks interesting).

The Hard Rock poker room in my opinion is not even in the top 3 for this area anymore. I actually prefer the Pompano Harnes track as it has more tables and a better selection of ganmes and tournaments. The Hard Rock doesn't even spread Omaha anymore.

The Isle of Capri who owns the Pompano Harness track has built an entire new building devoted to slots and the poker room. They also added restaurants and bars as well as a vegas class buffet. The poker room is great. It is on the second floor and has over 70 tables. It is new and clean and almost always crowded. They spread Omaha Hi/Lo, Stud, Sit n Gos and tournaments. As of July 1st there will be no buy in limits (previously it was $100) and there is always plenty of money being passed around. They have some great weekly tournaments and best of all, no card shuffeling machines are used during tournaments (a quick note - the Hard Rock used to make sit n go players with less than $150 buy-ins play on computerized tables; no dealer. Since I am back I noticed they got rid of those automated tables). My favorite tournamnet is held every Thursday at the Pompano Harness track. Its a $150 buy-in bounty tournament. It pays $50 for each bounty and draws between 70-120 players. Payouts are usually around $3k for first, $1.5k for second, $1k for third. It typically pays out to 12-13 places. You start with like $5k in chips and it usually runs until 12-1am.

Anyway, I'll post more about some of the other poker rooms in the area over the summer. It will be interesting to see how many players we get consistently now that the snow birds have returned North for the summer.