Club 52 Melbourne Poker Room Review

A drive down Florida’s east coast provides not only a plethora of beaches, but also frequent opportunities to play poker. About halfway down the state, not too far from Cape Canaveral, you will find one such opportunity: the Club 52 poker room in Melbourne. We were intrigued with Club 52, because while not one of the most well-known rooms in Florida, it was not a small room. According to their website and PokerAtlas, the room featured an impressive 40 tables. As we ambled down the Florida coast this winter, with our eventual destination the Palm Beach area (and their even larger poker room), we decided to stop in.

Setting and Non-Poker Amenities

The Club 52 Melbourne Poker Room is located a bit inland from the coast, southwest of the Kennedy Space Center. If you are in the area for a few days, the Space Center is definitely worth a day of your time, as it is one of the most unique museum-ish sites in the country. Club 52 is near the intersection of Routes 95 and 518 and very near the Melbourne Orlando International Airport. The American Muscle Car Museum also sits nearby. And, of course, there are plenty of nearby beaches. So there is plenty to do in the area for the non-poker player in the family.

The exterior of Club 52 is white, boxy, and plain. A snack bar serves the players upstairs, while three bars and a cafe serve the downstairs off-track betting area. As with most poker rooms in Florida, there are no slot machines or traditional table games like roulette, craps, and blackjack. However, there are a few tables of faux poker games like Ultimate Texas Hold’Em if you want the table game experience. Oddly, there were also some intense go-kart races going on outside in the mostly abandoned parking lot.

Club 52 Melbourne Poker Room Comfort

The Club 52 Melbourne poker room holds, by our count, 29 well-spaced tables. The count of 40 tables may include the available faux poker table games. The carpeting featured a rather busy black and red pattern with gold painted walls. Small TVs ringed the outer walls. While a good-sized, well-lit and clean room, the overall feel was definitely a bit old school, with not a lot of bells and whistles.

The poker tables seem a bit old, but are branded and the felts are fairly new and in good shape. The rail is thinly padded, and there are no USB ports in the tables. However, there are auto-shufflers. The chairs are also very basic: they have no wheels and are not adjustable. The padding is fairly thin. These chairs are definitely not among the most comfortable chairs we experienced on our Florida poker room excursions. The cards are in decent shape, but not branded in any way. The poker chips were fairly clean the day that we visited.

Play was 8-handed for cash play.

Poker Room Staff

Another Florida room, another set of very strong dealers. Most of the dealers at Club 52 Melbourne were solid to very good. In fact, one of my dealers was among the fastest I have seen anywhere. The dealers were generally able to ride with the crazy action and kept control of the table. The competent floorperson got me a seat right away when I checked in and circled to oversee things consistently. Waitstaff also circled and took drink orders at a reasonable frequency.

Players at Club 52 Melbourne Poker Room

The players at Club 52 Melbourne poker room on the Thursday afternoon we visited represented a decent mix of ages (although tending to the older side, as most mid-week games do) and ethnicities, but there were almost no women. Players tended to be fairly serious and focused, with not a lot of banter and a distinct edginess to the atmosphere. To say the players tended to be loose-aggressive just does not do justice to what was happening in the room.

Players would bet big pre-flop and post-flop and generally got a caller or two. Players young and old were aggressive, relentless, and stubbornly refused to leave pots (as I discovered when I got all-in well ahead and got called, and of course, rivered). These were the biggest pots for a $1/$2 game that I have recently seen. If you come to the Club 52 Melbourne poker room for cash games, be prepared!

Cash Play Activity

At Club 52 Melbourne poker room, you will find two to four $1/$2 and one or two $2/$5 tables on weeknights (Monday through Thursday). You may find an occasional “other” table of something like Big O mixed in as well. Friday nights see the $1/$2 numbers grow to around six tables, while the $2/$5 tables stay at around two tables. Saturdays expand to 9-10 tables by evening.

On this Thursday afternoon, there were three active $1/$2 tables There was a high-hand promotion going on hourly as well. If you are interested in checking out cash play in Florida, you can find cash poker activity in the region on our Poker Room Cash Activity Map.

The Club 52 Poker room is a good-sized venue with excellent dealers and aggressive players. While a clean and well-lit room, the chairs were not very comfortable.Click To Tweet

Tournament Structures

The Club 52 Melbourne poker room offers regular tournaments on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday nights at very reasonable $60-$70 buy-ins. Entries range from around 50-60 on a Wednesday night to 130 to 150 on Friday. Tournament structures are fair for this buy-in range. You’ll need to build your stack quickly to be able to have enough play to survive late in the tournament. Club 52 Melbourne also will cycle in other special tournaments or larger buy-ins on other days as well, so check out the Club 52 Melbourne poker tournament schedule on PokerAtlas or go directly to the Club 52 poker website and check out their tournament calendar.

If you are interested in tournament poker play in mid-state Florida, check out our Poker Room Tournament Activity Map.

Overall Assessment of Club 52 Melbourne Poker Room

The Club 52 Melbourne poker room offers a good-sized venue with excellent dealers and some of the more aggressive $1/$2 players we have seen. Get ready to gamble if you visit, but if your hands hold up, there is profit to be made. While a clean and well-lit room, it’s not very modern or fancy. The chairs are simply not comfortable, which is one of the weaker aspects of the experience. The room provides some nice low-buy-in tournaments with the fast structures expected at this low buy-in level. All in all, this is a room worth visiting if you are in the area, but probably not one you will put at the top of your Florida poker room list. Other than seat comfort, there is nothing significantly wrong with this room, and again, the dealers are top-notch. But the facility does not offer many extras other than OTB.

Comfort
Tournament Structures
Personnel

3.7

Summary