Morning tide
Wave after wave after wave
the schoolbus departs
Slice of pizza-
A Boardwalk seagull gives the sideye
Boardwalk sunrise-
A dab of butter on my bagel
Bare Exposure-
She removes all but makeup for money
"Jezebel"
A single long braid
her spine
Arizona-
So little snow
so many flakes
Ten degrees-
Exhaling clouds
he bums a cig
Dear John Letter-
The ocean retreats
comes back again
April morning-
The Storm Drain clogged
with cherry blossoms
Polar Vortex-
The hole in my sock
saying Hello
Spring morning-
Following the butterfly
on her ankle
Went to check out the new poker room at Ballys. While the one room is very nice, the space is spread out and they have more tables than there is likely to be demand for. The player base for poker is shrinking in AC due to all the new rooms in surrounding states and unless they have a plan to bring players back to AC they are going to wind up with a lot of dead space. A reasonable estimate is that they can double the action they had in the upstairs room in the months preceding the move. As hard as Dan and Julio are trying to make this room work there are signs everywhere that the executives above them are morons who don't understand poker, its culture or how to make the room succeed. A room this big needs players and things like Destination Tournaments, yet there is no evidence that they have any scheduled. Casears used to have a WSOP Circuit event, it was their one destination tournament, but if they plan on having one here there isn't a single ad or flyer or other piece of evidence that attests to that fact. Secondly, they put in a new gaming pit in the Wild West near the poker room that doesn't have a Craps table. It's almost impossible for me to explain how stupid this is. When some poker players lose, they often go chase their losses in the pit. The two most common games that they play when doing this are Craps and Blackjack. The Borgata has the highest grossing poker room in AC because they understand poker players, when you walk out of the Borgata poker room the first gaming table you see is a Craps table. This isn't an accident, they know that poker players on tilt will often head straight to the Pit, and Craps is the number one destination. Another example of how stupid the Ballys management is, is that I had a Security Supervisor almost throw me out of the room because I was sitting on a dead table. I've been playing poker for over ten years in AC and have never heard of this. In every poker room I've ever been in guys sit on dead tables while waiting for a game. It's a normal part of poker culture, I was also told that players would no longer be allowed to have people sit behind them while playing. These are bad signs for a new room, the Revel poker room failed in part because of similar missteps when they first opened. It doesn't look good for this room either, throwing people out for sitting on dead games is almost like saying you want the room to fail. Overall I'd say if you played at Ballys before, you probably will continue to, but if you didn't there's no reason to start doing so now.
Until next we meet, may all your potatoes be sweet (and dusted with cinnamon.)
