Concord Casino Poker Room Review

The Concord Casino is one of the newer entrants to the New Hampshire Poker Room scene, having just opened in the middle of 2019. It currently resides below (cash and table games) The Draft sports bar on Main Street in Concord. While the casino recently expanded into the space beside The Draft, the poker room remains, sadly, subterranean.

Despite the dark and dank abode, the Concord Casino offers tournaments with good structures, and the most comfortable chairs you will find in a poker room.

Setting and Non-Poker Amenities

The Concord Casino is happily situated in downtown Concord. With numerous dining options, hotels, and cultural opportunities just steps away, the location is pretty ideal. We spent a wonderful night at the Hotel Concord, just a few blocks away, and can recommend it highly for those who are willing to pay a bit more for a nice room in a lovely spot. It was a real treat to be able to stroll back to our hotel after a few hours of poker, rather than settling in for a long drive home.

In the southern foothills of the White Mountains, Concord offers ample opportunities to enjoy the natural world. While there we took a short drive out to the Swope Loop Trail and enjoyed a short but challenging hike. The big payoff came about halfway through when we got a clear view of Long Loop Lake from the side of the hill.

The Concord Casino building itself hosts The Draft sports bar on the main floor. The Draft offers a solid menu with everything from pub food to sandwiches, full dinners, pizza, and seafood. True to their name, the draft beer menu is truly impressive. We counted 24 beers on tap, including several excellent IPAs. The restaurant has even won a number of regional awards for their food.

Concord Casino Poker Room Comfort

The Concord Casino tournament poker room fills the top floor of the building. While the room is relatively small, it hosts five attractive poker tables, decently spaced apart. The ceilings are generous, and the room is ringed with large televisions. The room was generally quiet, free of smoke, and well-lit.

The tables are clean and attractive with padded rails. But the chairs, oh the chairs! The chairs in the Concord Casino are easily the most comfortable chairs we have ever sat in at a poker table. Fashioned after video gaming chairs, the seats are large, wheeled, adjustable, and well padded. These chairs boast neck support and even adjustable armrests. I wish I could take these chairs with me to every venue I play.

The tables, cards, chips, chairs, and the room as a whole were all clean. The cards were just quality home game cards and not branded in any way. Tournaments run eight-handed, leaving a comfortable amount of space around the table. While poker tournaments used to play in a lovely room upstairs just next to a breezy deck, they are now confined to the basement level of the facility. If I were to make one adjustment to the room, it would be to get the poker tables back out of the basement.

Poker Room Staff

The dealers at the Concord Casino are generally good. We were happy to see one of our old dealers from Hampton Falls (now defunct) dealing here. The waitress supporting the tournament room was exceptional. She kept people in drinks and dinner despite the fact that she had to run up and down the stairs each time there was a new order to fill. The staff is uniformly friendly, courteous, and welcoming.

The tournament director did a good job keeping on top of the tournament when he was present. Unfortunately, one of the downsides of having a poker establishment split across three levels is that there was often no floor in the tournament room. Tables occasionally got quite out of balance. Fortunately, one of the dealers would generally take it upon himself to get the tables back into balance.

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Players at Concord Casino Poker Room

There were 27 entries in the tournament that we first played, initially spread across four tables. Sadly, it turns out that 27 is pretty much the high point for tournament numbers here. While tournaments generally do go off as scheduled, they are generally confined to one or two tables. The players at the Concord Casino are generally quite friendly. There are some regulars here, along with some players checking out the room who regularly play at other New Hampshire venues. They players are open to newcomers, and the atmosphere is typically jovial and quite pleasant. Player quality is a fairly typical mix of styles and ability. There were a few very tight players, but others frequently took shots at pots.

Tournament Structures

The Concord Casino offers tournaments on Friday and Sunday afternoons and Tuesday evenings. The Sunday tournament is a $150 entry with no re-entry, the Tuesday is an $80 entry, and the Friday $75. All tournaments have a $10 dealer add-on for 10,000 chips and generally feature on-time bonus chips as well.

One interesting twist compared with other local rooms is that Concord Casino has 30-minute blinds for the first 3-4 levels, then switches to 20-minute blinds for the remainder of the tournament. This allows for some nice extended deep stack play. The structure allowed you to settle in and have time to get a read on other players. The blind escalations are pretty gradual as well, having 6-levels through the 600/1200 level. The only really big jump was from 1,000/2,000 to 2,000/4,000. This tournament also had no antes! Neither traditional antes nor big blind antes. All of this led to pretty reasonable play throughout the tournament.

Overall, the Concord Casino gets huge props for providing a variety of interesting tournament formats. If there is a downside to the New Hampshire poker tournament scene right now, it is that there is a sameness to a lot of the existing structures. The Concord Casino, along with the Lakes Region Casino, breaks this pattern.

Overall Assessment of the Concord Casino Poker Room

If you are looking for a smaller, more intimate, poker room in central New Hampshire, the Concord Casino offers an excellent choice. Set at the end of downtown’s main drag, the location is excellent, and Concord offers plenty of interesting activities for a two or three day stay. The poker room, while dark, is comfortable, and the poker chairs are our new favorites. Players and staff alike are friendly and welcoming. With well-structured tournaments, reasonable buy-ins and a lack of antes, this is a room we return to again and again.

Updated: 9/27/22