Category: Poker Room Reviews

The Isle Casino Pompano Park poker room is a key part of the busy South Florida poker scene. With 38 tables and a fairly active cash and tournament poker scene, Pompano forms a big three with Seminole Coconut Creek and Seminole Hard Rock Hollywood. Seminole Coconut Creek is the closest competitor to Pompano Park, lying about 6 miles to the northwest. There are also a slew of other smaller rooms around Miami.  Pompano Park certainly has natural advantages, being only a few miles inland from the Atlantic coastline and near Ft. Lauderdale. However, as it is further from Miami than many rooms and in a very competitive poker scene, Pompano faces a challenge in distinguishing itself.

Casino Setting

The Isle Casino Pompano Park poker room is about 20 minutes north of the Ft. Lauderdale Hollywood airport. It sits about five miles inland from the Pompano Beach coastal area. Pompano Park is off of Route 845, just south of where it intersects with Route 814. Route 814 East toward to coast will take you to downtown Pompano Beach  and its restaurant row.  For golf aficionados, Pompano Park is directly across from the Palm Aire Country Club. This area, like most of South Florida, is pretty congested, so if you’re heading in for a tournament, leave yourself plenty of time.

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The Magic City poker room is one of the smallest card rooms in South Florida. Magic City carves out a specific niche in the southwest corner of Miami away from the larger rooms to the north like Seminole Hard Rock Hollywood and Isle Casino Pompano Park.  Its closest rival is the larger Hialeah Park (which we were unable to fit in on this trip). Magic City’s poker room has a diverse clientele (except in terms of gender).  The room’s proximity to Downtown Miami and Little Havana presents nice opportunities for a day of sightseeing, cultural immersion, dining, and poker.

Casino Setting 

The Magic City Casino lies on the west side of Miami, right outside the northwest edge of  Little Havana. It can be accessed via the Dolphin Expressway (route 836) to the north, route 968 to the south, and route 953 to the west. In other words, it’s conveniently accessed  from any direction – at least as convenient as possible considering South Florida traffic and stop lights!

If you have the time, walk around and definitely eat in Little Havana.  The Calle Ocho is a great area to stroll around and grab lunch or dinner. Ice cream fans might enjoy Azucar.  They had some creative flavors like Burn in Hell Fidel, a chocolate spiced with cayenne, Guava, and Mango. Poker players will enjoy checking out the intensive domino action at Maximo Gomez Park. The day we visited, there were some heated chess matches going on as well.  If you head west down 8th Street toward Magic City, you’ll come across Versailles Cuban Bakery, offering a range of goodies from pastries and cakes to sandwiches and meals.

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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’s target opening by a full year. With the first legal poker room in the state, the MGM Springfield is an early indicator of Massachusetts’ ability to match up against the established Connecticut poker scene. Economic indicators in the first months have been mixed, but generally the start has been strong. The MGM Springfield poker room has been growing over its first 4 months, recently adding a few weekly tournaments.

The Caveat

We celebrated the 2019 New Year with a visit to the MGM Springfield poker room (a 75 minute drive for us) and its standing Tuesday morning tournament. We came away unfortunately frustrated, and able to assign only an incomplete score to the MGM Springfield poker room itself.  In short, we came to play a New Year’s Day tournament, and despite arriving just 5 minutes after the start, found we were alternates 14 and 15.  This seemed surprising, as the room was not nearly full. We discovered that the MGM was only able to run 2 tournament tables because (they claimed) several dealers had called in sick.  A regular player, however, commented that management did not plan for an uptick in volume on New Year’s Day. This indicates that the Tuesday tournament has a small showing in general. So buyer beware if planning to play a tournament here in the near future.

One of the floors did open a third table during the second level and dealing himself, but that still left us out in the cold.  By level 3 the alternate list was back up to 15-18 people beyond the 30 seated. As that level neared an end with no additional dealers in sight and the next level bringing the starting stack  down to 50 blinds, we abandoned hope, got our money back, and headed to Foxwoods.

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