Niagara FAILS

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 09/01/2011 (5411 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

On Tuesday I arrived in Niagara Falls with a few friends to play in some poker tournaments. Well, that’s what we thought we were going to do, anyway.

It was my first time there for poker. A few of my buddies had been there before and although their experience might not have been the best, we decided to come out and give the place another shot. I think at this point we are all regretting our decision.

The day we arrived, we went straight to the poker room to get in some cash games; but with only one table of 5-10 and 10-25 running and more than 100 players on the list, it was more than unlikely we would ever get a seat.

But wait — there were about five empty tables, so surely they were going to open a few more games to accommodate the amount of players on the waiting list, right?

Wrong! They had no intention of starting up more tables, which meant we would have to go back to our rooms and play online.

On our way out of the poker room, a gentleman came up to us and asked if we wanted to buy a satellite ticket for the super satellite that was going to be running on Wednesday giving away entries into the first tournament on Thursday.

Two of us declined and one of my buddies was about to buy a ticket so he handed the gentlemen $120. To our surprise, the man said that he was selling it for $150. We asked why and he said that he had bought the remaining 50 tickets at the cashier for $120 and was now selling them for $150 apiece. What?

I’ve played poker in many places and basically the way it works is you have a player’s card and buy your entry; once you have purchased a seat you can no longer buy another seat. Well, not here. This man bought 50 seats and was now scalping them outside the poker room in front of all the pit bosses — and they seemed more than OK with this.

So, in other words, all the players who came from out of town would now be forced to purchase tickets for more than what their value was. Interesting.

As far as the actual tournament went, well, it was sold out long before we arrived, so off to the cash games we went again. We put our names on the list and only had to wait about eight hours before we finally got in the game. So again, no poker for us on our poker trip, and the lists just kept getting longer and longer over the weekend.

I leave on Wednesday and unless something drastically changes it doesn’t look like I will be playing much poker on this trip. The sad thing is the World Poker Tour (WPT) used to have a stop in Niagara Falls, but cut this event from their roster.

I don’t know the exact details why they lost the WPT tournament series, but I do know when we travel for poker all we ask for is a friendly, well-run and accommodating poker room. Unfortunately on this trip we have had none of the above.