Best Bet Orange Park Poker Room Review

BestBet Orange Park is one of three BestBet properties in northeastern Florida. We previously reviewed BestBet Jacksonville, and BestBet St. Augustine. BestBet Orange Park is the oldest of the three properties, and is really showing its age. One of many Florida poker rooms that started life as a race track, Orange Park still hosts an active racebook, along with a poker room and a few poker variant table games.

Setting and Non-Poker Amenities

BestBet Orange Park is located just off Route 295 due south of Jacksonville Florida, and features plenty of parking. There is no hotel or restaurant to speak of in the facility, although there is a small cafe and bar.  There is not much going on in the city of Orange Park itself, but Jacksonville is a vibrant city with a number of amenities. Additionally, Orange park is only a short drive from numerous beach destinations such as Jacksonville Beach, Atlantic Beach, and St. Augustine.

BestBet Orange Park is primarily a cardroom. As previously mentioned, there are no slots or table games, although there are “fake poker” table games such as Ultimate Poker, Three Card Poker, and One Card Poker. They also offer Simulcast and feature a sports bar in the racebook area of the facility.

BestBet Orange Park Poker Room Comfort

BestBet Orange Park is a snug room with 18 poker tables in an adequately lighted but rather dated windowless room. The tables are  well-spaced. Although they do not offer many amenities, they are comfortable to sit at. There are no auto-shufflers, drink cups or USB ports. The room is clean, as are the cards, felts and rails. There is no smoking in the facility, so the air quality is excellent. The room was kept quite cold and I was shivering despite the warm day outside.

The chairs do not have arms, but they are adjustable, have wheels, and are comfortable. The felts and chips are branded. While the felts appear relatively new, The chips are quite old and faded. The cards are not branded, rather they are the same plasticized cards that we play with at home. Play was 8-handed at both tournament and cash tables.

Poker Room Staff

The desk staff was welcoming, and we were able to use our BestBet Jacksonville cards to buy in to the tournament. The tournament floor and dealers were all excellent. They were fast, competent, and personable. We have been extremely impressed by the dealers at almost all of the Florida poker rooms we have played this year. Tables had to be constantly balanced due to player attrition, and the tournament director was on it. Wait staff circulated regularly through the tournament. 

---

• An Extended Poker Road Trip Through Florida
• Map of US Poker Rooms
• A Poker Road Trip Through New England

---

Players at the BestBet Orange Park Poker Room

The players at BestBet Orange Park were extremely varied. Young, old, male, female, a variety of ethnicities, everyone was well-represented in this tournament. The structure of this particular tournament (and relatively low $60 buy in) led to some pretty wild play. However, there were also a number of tight players here, and a few who appeared to be quite good. We even recognized one or two players from our visit to BestBet St. Augustine a few days previously.

Cash Play Activity

When we arrived at around noon on a Sunday, there were five cash tables in play – four $2/$2 tables and one $2/$5 table. As none of the BestBet rooms report numbers to PokerAtlas or Bravo, we do not have historical data to compare. If you are interested in cash poker play in the larger region, be sure to check out our Poker Room Cash Activity Map.

Tournament Structures

BestBet Orange Park typically offers three tournaments a week on Tuesday and Thursday at 7pm and Sunday at noon. The Sunday and Tuesday tournaments have a $60 buy-in for only 5,000 tournament chips. While the structure reads as relatively slow, the extremely short stack leads to a crazy rush to double up or go out and rebuy. There were ultimately 74 players in the tournament that we played, but there were never more than five tables in the tournament. There were many many rebuys. We even saw one couple fighting about whether to rebuy for a fifth time while the buy in period. Buy the time buy-in closed there were only 31 people remaining in the tournament.

The Thursday tournament offers a mere 8,000 chips for your $100 buy in. I can only imagine that the effect is the same.

As the BestBet rooms do not report numbers to PokerAtlas or Bravo Poker Live, we do not know the average number of entrants for their various tournaments. However, if you are interested in tournament activity in the area, check out our Poker Room Tournament Activity map.

Overall Assessment of BestBet Orange Park Poker Room

BestBet Orange Park is a dated poker room which is less attractive than its sister rooms in Jacksonville and St. Augustine. The room offers wild tournament action three times a week which clearly serves as a draw to a cross-section of the local poker playing population. While the room is a bit dated, the staff is excellent and the play can be quite fun.