Poker draws a gambler back to Mountaineer

Cleveland, OH -- My only previous visit to Mountaineer Casino, Racetrack & Resort across the Ohio River from East Liverpool had been brief.

I blew $20 on slot machines, waited for a buddy to make a few losing bets on the ponies and then departed the premises, not intending to ever return. There wasn't anything to keep me there. Even amateur gamblers like me know that any game that needs to be fed coins is negative E.V. (expected value).

But I had to return to Mountaineer recently because of a far more attractive option - poker. The house has no edge in that game. You are playing against other people and the house collects a few bucks in rake (a maximum of $5) from each hand.

Poker has exploded thanks to the exploits of Chris Moneymaker and the subsequent popularity of televised poker. Like a lot of the other cool kids, poker went from fun diversion to minor obsession. I began playing online, reading strategy books and attending home games with a dedicated group of like-minded degenerates.

I've played some poker in Las Vegas, but have never bothered driving to Detroit or Salamanca, N.Y., which had been the closest poker rooms to Cleveland. Mountaineer, which is just two hours away from my home on the East Side, is squarely in my motoring wheelhouse.

I arrived there on a Friday in early November, a few weeks after Mountaineer's expansive poker room opened. With 37 tables, it is one of the largest in the country. A 20-table poker room opened at Wheeling (W.Va.) Downs at the same time.

(Mountaineer is scheduled to offer other table games - craps, blackjack, roulette and three-card poker starting Dec. 20.)

The poker room is in a low-ceilinged room at one end of the track's grandstand. I stopped at the front desk and got my name on the list for a $1/$2 no-limit Texas hold 'em game and then headed to the snack bar at the far end of the room for lunch. I had barely made it through half of my ham-and-Swiss sandwich before a seat became available.

For those of you still living in the poker dark ages, hold 'em is essentially 7-card stud with five community cards. Each player is dealt two "hole" cards, which initiates the first round of betting. Three cards, known as the flop, are then placed face up on the middle of the table and a second round of betting commences. There are betting rounds after the fourth (turn) and fifth (river) community cards are placed on the felt. You then try to make the best five-card poker hand using any combination of your hole cards and the community cards.

A chip runner promptly provided me with some chips. (The maximum buy-in for the $1/$2 no-limit tables is $300. The minimum is $50.) The competition, as I had hoped, was "fishy" - poker parlance for folks who aren't very good at the game.

Yet in less than an hour I had lost a big chunk of my buy-in when the straight I had "flopped" lost to a full boat that arrived on the river. Stupid me. I bought more chips and waited for some cards. I more than recouped my losses an hour or so later when my pocket fives became three-of-a-kind on the flop and a hyper-aggressive woman paid me off after making a pair of aces.

The dealers, slow and inexperienced in the weeks after the room opened, have reportedly gotten better. Mountaineer officials recently banned smoking from the entire poker room and not just at the tables, which has helped clear the air.

Unlike casinos in Las Vegas and elsewhere, alcoholic drinks are not free but coffee and sodas are provided. The food at the snack bar is serviceable.

While $1/$2 no-limit is the most popular game at Mountaineer, there were a few tables of limit poker being spread when I was there. Higher-staked no-limit games are played in a separate area in the poker room.

Management has been willing to open up tables for other games, such as Omaha, when enough players express an interest.

By Mark Gillespie
The Plain Dealer

News Added: 07 December, 2007

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