Having been to the Hollywood Casino at Charles Town Races in the fall of 2022, we decided to take in a second “just over the border into West Virginia” poker experience by dropping into the Wheeling Island Casino poker room in October of 2023. Instead of taking an excursion from the Maryland line, now we…
The Meadows Racetrack & Casino was rebranded under Penn National Gaming’s Hollywood franchise in late 2021. Now Hollywood Casino at the Meadows, it is only a short jaunt from Pittsburgh, where we had played at the Rivers Casino Pittsburgh the day before. We were interested to see how this Hollywood offering measured up to the…
We were eager to visit the Rivers Casino Pittsburgh poker room having been to two of its sister rooms, in Philadelphia and Schenectady. Rivers has been one of the more actively growing small casino chains in the country over the past few years. and the Philadelphia poker room was one of the nicer rooms we…
If you are a cash poker player the best predictor of success is clearly how you play your hands. When blinds do not escalate and you can leave the table whenever you want, hand analysis and execution are king. In tournament play, choosing playable hands and executing them with skill is certainly critical as well….
The opening of the MGM Springfield in August 2018 brought in the era of full-scale casinos in Massachusetts. It beat the highly anticipated Encore Boston Harbor’s opening by a full year. MGM Springfield and Encore became Massachusett’s answer to the Connecticut poker scene, represented by Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun, and the many small venues in…
In his PTO Poker 101 course (PTO stands for Player Theory Optimal), Joel Wald provides what most players need: the fundamental filler for the holes in their games. The gaps in some experienced players’ games are often striking. For example, a player leads out for half-pot on the river on a wet board. This indicates…
Recently, we reviewed the national norms for poker tournaments. The purpose of that article was to give tournament players some idea of tournaments across the country to evaluate their own typical weekly games. However, both from our experiences traveling and looking at the data it’s clear that there is a lot of regional variation in…
“Is this a good poker tournament?” How many times has that phrase been uttered? For those who crave a good poker tournament, it is a deceptively complex question. Some players seek large fields with high buy-ins which can lead to big paydays. Others seek a longer period of “quality” play before the shovefest stage sets…
Success in tournament poker requires a diverse set of skills. Hand analysis, understanding the impact of structure on overall approach, bet sizing, and proper management of varying stack depths are all critical. But there is no more crucial ability than the ability to master shortstack poker. Unless you go on an epic run through a…