BestBet St. Augustine Poker Room Review

BestBet St. Augustine is one of three BestBet properties in northeastern Florida. We previously reviewed BestBet Jacksonville, and have also visited BestBet Orange Park recently (review to come). BestBet St. Augustine is the newest of the three properties, having just opened at the end of 2022. As such, it’s clean, shiny, and attractive inside and out. As a Florida poker room, the non-poker offerings are limited (no slots or table games allowed), but as poker players, we didn’t really care.

Setting and Non-Poker Amenities

BestBet St. Augustine is located just off Route 95 and, thus, is very easy to get to. It also has plenty of parking. The area around it is currently fairly barren. However, it’s clear that a number of other businesses are on the way.

St. Augustine is a lovely city and has many great attractions. We visited St. Augustine a couple of years ago and wrote about it extensively in our post about spending a long weekend in Atlantic Beach. We recommend that post if you are looking for things to do in St. Augustine (or Atlantic Beach!).

BestBet St. Augustine 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 large sports bar in one corner of the facility. Drinks are not free at this facility, but they appear to be reasonably priced. This relatively new facility has a very modern, open, and bright design making it a very pleasant place to play or hang out in.

BestBet St. Augustine Poker Room Comfort

BestBet St. Augustine offers 27 poker tables in a large, bright attractive room. The tables are very well-spaced. Although they do not offer many amenities, they are comfortable to sit at. While the cash tables feature auto-shufflers, the tournament tables do not. Nor do they boast drink cups or USB ports. The room is immaculate, as are the cards, felts and rails. There is no smoking in the facility, so the air quality is excellent.

The chairs do not have arms, but they are adjustable, have wheels, and are very comfortable. The felts, cards, and chips are all branded. The chips were very clean when we visited. Play was 8-handed and the tables offer some of the most generous space we have recently experienced. No cringing from the manspreading player on your left here.

Poker Room Staff

The desk staff was very welcoming when we arrived and got us player cards immediately. Interestingly, St. Augustine does not accept the BestBet Jacksonville player cards, so if this is your first trip to the facility you will need to sign up. The tournament floor and dealers were all excellent. They were fast, competent, and personable. Tables had to be constantly balanced due to player attrition, and the tournament director was on it. Wait staff circulated regularly through the tournament. 

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Players at the BestBet St. Augustine Poker Room

The players at BestBet St. Augustine were largely regulars and almost entirely older men. I was the only woman in the entire tournament, and little diversity was represented. The players were overall fairly tight and cautious. However, there were a couple of younger men who brought aggression and some wild play to the table. However, note (here and below) that there were major tournaments going on at both BestBet St. Augustine and Daytona Beach Poker Room the day that we played. This may well have had a notable impact on both the number and quality of players in the room.

Cash Play Activity

When we arrived at around noon on a Saturday, there were only two $2/$2 cash tables in play. By the time we left, there were four $2/$2 tables. 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 St. Augustine does not seem to have settled into a regular tournament schedule. We thus recommend that you refer to PokerAtlas if you are interested in playing there. Overall, buy-ins appear to range from $60 to $300, but stacks are small across the board. The $60 tournament currently on the schedule offers only 5,000 chips, and even the $300 tournament only awards 15,000 chips.

The tournament that we played on a Saturday afternoon offered 12,000 chips for a $160 buy-in. While there were no add-ons, re-entries were plentiful. The tournament started out with only two tables (16 players), but rose to the mid-20s (entirely due to re-entries) once the buy-in period was over. While the structure was actually quite gradual (100-100, 100-200, 100-200-200, 200-300-300 etc.) and the levels were 30 minutes long, the small starting stack went fast. Players who are used to 20k or 30k starting stacks could find themselves low-chipped very quickly.

Overall Assessment of BestBet St. Augustine Poker Room

BestBet St. Augustine offers an attractive and comfortable room in lovely northeast Florida. While the player pool was quite small and uniform the day that we visited, it is possible that large tournaments nearby affected the turnout. The staff was uniformly friendly and extremely competent. If given the chance we would definitely play here again.