Mohegan Sun's New Poker Room: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

Since I played $1-5 Stud on the opening night of Mohegan's first poker room back in '96 (wow, time flies), I just HAD to be there when they opened their new poker room, in their also-new Casino of the Wind...good excuse.

THE GOOD: the new room, and the entire Casino of the Wind for that matter, is super-duper-ultra-uber chic and gorgeous...take a look here. It took less than 30 minutes for me to get on a $1-2NL game, which I didn't expect for a Friday night, opening night, Labor Day weekend night. Must be the economy talking. The tables are slick- blue felt, silverish faux-snakeskin padding, auto-shufflers, with players club card swipers built in (ala the MGM Grand in Vegas). The chairs are oversized and very plush, with an adjustable-height lever...reminded me of Borgata's poker room chairs. Some people might not like this, but they take a $4 max rake instead of a $5 half-hourly "time" fee. It annoys me when I get dealt rags for like two hours at Foxwoods, and have to pay twenty bucks for such pleasure...I'd rather pay The Man after I win a pot.

THE BAD: the tables are jammed together pretty tightly...my chair was smashed into a few times by people getting up/sitting down at the table behind me. I'm sure some a few of the 40-plus tables will be removed after the inital new poker room buzz dies down, making it more roomy & comfortable. No drink holders of any kind, no side tables, nothing. I wonder how many times over opening weekend a game had to be stopped to clean a spill? They also use jumbo index poker cards...Harrah's poker room in AC uses the same size. Not easy to squeeze out your hole cards, have to shield them more than usual from nosy neighbors when you take a peek. I also didn't win a hand in an hour and a half, but my card-deadness kept losses to just $60.

THE UGLY: Oh my everloving Maker, the dealers were the worst I've ever encountered. Slow, very clumsy with the cards and chips, clueless...and that was just the first dealer. Players had to instruct dealer number 2 how to divide a side pot from the main pot. A min-raise was declared as an all-in by the same dealer, followed by a "so sorry!" I got to hear her say "so sorry" about 15 times during her down. Twice I kindly asked dealer number 3 to give me a second card, in back-to-back hands no less. We had about 6 misdeals in 90 minutes. The combination of zero pots won + crappy dealer tilt = me leaving the poker room. Supposedly these dealers had to graduate from a lengthy school at the Sun, but who knows what they were studying for that month or so.

I'm hoping the dealers were just experiencing opening night stage fright, and that my next visit will be less agita-inducing. Or at least that they hire some Hurricane Mikey-quality dealers. But the bottom line is I now have live poker 15-20 minutes closer to home than before (Foxwoods), and both the wife & I like Mohegan Sun so much more. If you've been to both casinos, I'm guessing you feel the same way.

Next goal: qualify for Mohegan's $750k guaranteed tourney at the end of October...