Before I get into the review let me give you a little background on my prior experience with The Poker Room in Jacksonville and I will move on to my recent experience.

I lived in Jacksonville for 5 years prior to moving back to Colorado. At that time some pretty devastating things happened in my life. A job layoff, nasty break up of a long term relationship, and a couple of my best friends went to prison. I saw an opportunity to get things back on track in a job offer from a company in Florida. I had started playing poker but only played online and had not played any live poker. As the years passed, I started to play more and became a regular at The Poker Room located in St. John’s County. The highest limits they had were $2-2 Limit hold’em. Tournament buy-ins were $65 or more and the juice was $15. Needless to say, I didn’t play a lot of tournaments and usually ended up playing Stud.

Fast forward to 2008. I go to visit the friends I made in Jacksonville about once a year and this time I decided to go right after the new year. I was pretty excited because there was a recent change in the law where the room is now allowed to have No Limit cash games and the betting limit was raised to $5. Everyone had to work, so in some sense this was a poker vacation of sorts. I had read in the forums that the no limit games were fast and loose. I had taken $500 to play poker with but I was a little uncomfortable to sit down with all of it on the line in a $5-5 NL game. Plus I had under calculated the cost of binge drinking for a whole week. I didn’t end up going as much as I had planned only going 2 times.

I went on Monday after noon and played for about 8 hours. I had elected to play $2-$4 limit hold’em to get a feel for things. I was pretty surprised that a couple of the dealers remembered me even though it had been well over a year since I had been there. I immediately recognized several players I used to play with all the time. I even ended up playing with a couple of them. I mention this because I find it funny that I remembered them, their names, their tendencies, and they couldn’t remember me. What I found amazing on this trip was that none of the players had changed the way they played. This was even more true of the players I played with in my normal home game (which I played in on Friday). Nothing really exciting happened until later in the evening when everyone is trying to get even. As you know, I don’t post many hand histories here or discuss hands much so I’ll spare you the boring details. I finished $275 up on Monday and -$175 on Thursday.

Facility

The Poker Room is located at an old dog track that is no longer used. It’s not actually in Jacksonville but is in St. John’s County which is about a 45 minuet drive. They are open everyday except Tuesday (I found this out after making a trip out there) from noon until midnight. Parking is always a bitch at this place. I usually just park far out rather than trying to find a close parking space.

There is a simulcast and you can place bets on greyhounds, horses and Jai Alai while you play if you’re into that kind of thing. The room has 40-50 tables and covers a lot of floor space. It is kind of crowded and cramped and is not well laid out IMO. There are plenty of monitors but they tend to all be on one side of the room and hard to see from certain tables and seats.

Food and drinks are ridiculously expensive.

Staff

The dealers do a pretty good job and are courteous and friendly for the most part. A few stand out as really good and there are a couple who just plain suck. This seems typical in every room I’ve played in.

The floor managers do a good job. I got into an argument with a guy when he knocked over all of his stacks and claimed I grabbed some of his money. The floor did a great job in addressing the problem and kept the situation from getting out of control.

The chip runners are sufficient and they also handle the seating responsibilities. This use to be pretty bad, but they have new software and displays which made this process more efficient.

The cashiers a friendly and prompt.

Wait staff is slow and not that great. It will take you a long time to get a drink or food and you will overpay for it as well. I usually just walk to the bar when I need something or if I want it right then.

My biggest problem is that there is no type of comp system in place and they don’t offer any kind of reward or benifits to their players. There is also no jackpot or bad beat pool.

Games

It used to be only $1-2 and $2-2 limit hold’em, Omaha, Omaha 8, Stud, Stud 8, Pineapple, and Crazy Pineapple. Since the law has changed Pineapple has been completely eliminated and all other games are still available. No Limit hold’em is the main focus of the room now and the limits for all games range from $1-2 to $5-5.

They have added more tournaments and the rake isn’t such a killer though it’s still too high for me. Here’s a list of their tournament schedule.

The games are fast and loose for the most part and with the raise in stakes it’s probable you will make some good money if you can sustain the bad beats. I didn’t get an opportunity to play in any no limit games, but man did I want to. I took some time away from the table to walk around and check out the action. The play was just atrocious! I did see one game were there was several grand on the table and it was just crazy. When I asked why they quit spreading Pineapple they said it was because those players were all now the no limit players. Pineapple was always the game if you wanted to gamble so you can imagine what the NL games are like.

In closing, the poker room has made some improvements. I enjoyed my time there but of course there are no other options when in Jacksonville.

Cheers!