Poker in Florida

I <3 Dainia Jai-alai...my old man used to take me there when I was a kid. He also used to take me to bet on the dogs at Hollywood Greyhound.

I'm on the other coast. Near Ft. Myers. We have a few choices here. Closest for me is the Indian casino in Immokalee. I was going out there quite a bit and not doing too bad on the 1/2 hold'em tables. They also have a badbeat jackpot that got up to I think $45K which brought out the $20 table sitters that were there just in hopes of catching a piece of the jackpot for being at the table. I hadn't been out in awhile and went one day and found out the rules had changed. There was now an ante on every hand. Even though it was only a $1 ante, it was enough to screw up my game. Playing hands you shouldn't because you were in the pot. Besides that, Immokalee poker is basically "best of". Everyone calls everything and the best hand wins. It was easy to pick 'em off before the antes started. I started going less and less. There is smoking in the building too so you come home smelling like a cigarette. I haven't been back in quite awhile but intend to start getting into some of the tournaments out there. It's the only place I've tried a live tournament (twice).

Next closest would be the Naples/Ft.Myers dog track. I haven't had the opportunity to try that venue but hear good things about it. The biggest negative I hear is the limited hours.

For a bit of a trip there is the Hard Rock Casino in Tampa. This is a brand new casino which replaced a cramped and crowded slotino LOL. I was at the old one once or twice before I was interested in poker so I can't even tell you if it HAD poker back then. The new casino is very nice. The poker room is large and the players there aremuch more pokerlike than in Immokalee. They also have tournaments listed.

Both Immokalee and Tampa use a rewards card program. The first time I saw those was years ago in Vegas and I poo-pooed them. Now I am a strong advocate to use them, even in the cardrooms. There are comps, they change monthly usually and also get you entries into drawings.