Los Angeles Live Poker Rooms Review

OK, I have now played at the 4 cheap tourneys in L.A. Cheap in this case is sub-$100 tourneys.

Bicycle Club
Commerce Casino
Hawaiian Gardens
Hollywood Park

I will comment on the player experience that I had.

Bicycle Club - http://www.thebike.com/

The Bike happens to be the closest and easiest to get to for me. But the walk from the parking lot (not the valet lot), to the Event Center (where the tourneys are held) is at least 1/5 mile. Minor gripe there. The event center is ideally suited for tourneys tho with a cashier outside the 4 doors into the room.

Their tourneys are at 10 seat tables, on used padded kitchen table like chairs. So for me it was tight, and the chairs don't adjust. Those are more serious gripes. The room was nice other than that. They have 3 distinct Card rooms at the Bike, so they can handle a lot of action. The Nooners (their name) are non-rebuy events.

Commerce Casino. - http://www.commercecasino.com/?gclid=CMWJmKGa_7QCFW6CQgodrykAgQ

Other than standard L.A. traffic, it is fairly easy to get to. They claim to have the biggest card room (perhaps in the world), and tho no one could provide actual numbers, one employee suggested there were 300 tables.

Again, 10 seat tables for the tourneys, on similar padded (and worn) kitchen table seats. Most of their tourneys are re-buy events.

There is something about the rooms themselves which I didn't like, but really that is subjective, and I can not put my finger on just what it was. However, it is the closest room to downtown L.A. and does host the biggest tourneys in town. I walked thru the area where the 300-600 ring games were going on, and there were at least 5 tables running at that buy-in. Plenty of action there.

Hawaiian Gardens. - http://www.thegardenscasino.com/

Fairly easy access off a major freeway in South L.A. County. Closest to Orange County. Interesting in that the place is made like Arabian Tents. You have probably never seen anything like it. I know I haven't.
Two tents/rooms, with a large spread of games. Lots of Pai Gow.

Tourney's are at 9 seat tables with comfortable office style chairs on wheels. Murals of Hawaiian Gardens all over the place left me with a warm fuzzy feeling.
Parking is good on 2 sides of the Casino.

From a glance, it appears that all of the cheap tourneys are the same except the buy-ins. Some have bigger buy-ins and offer bigger guarantees. All games seem to be rebuys. I liked my experience here.

Hollywood Park. - http://www.playhpc.com/

Hardest to get to in the L.A. area, but only because it is not on a freeway. So not a serious issue. THis Casino sits next to, literally next to Hollywood Park, the world famous Race Track (horses), they share the parking lot, so in season parking could be an issue. Currently (winter), horse racing happens at Santa Anita, not far from Pasadena and 20+ miles away. It is a sort of long walk from the lot up a hill to the Casino.

Tourney's are re-buys mostly, with varying guarantees. 9 seat tables on comfy office style chairs on wheels. Lots of room between tables, so no claustrophobic feeling at all. Room 'felt' nice.
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I have yet to visit the other Casino that offers daily tourneys. The Hustler Club. It might actually be the closest to me, but not the easiest to get to. Not hard, but not simple. They do not show any sub-$100 tourneys at any time of any day.

The Normandie Casino has tourneys, but the schedule changes so often and they do not promote daily tourneys so I have not played there yet either.

For not living in Vegas, I guess I should thank my parents for moving into L.A. before I was born.....

At this point, my favorites are HG and HP. Both being 9 seat tables on comfy chairs.

Very Nice review. I can't wait to go to LA for a poker session.

I actually live in LA for the time being and haven't been to any of these casinos. Probably gonna try out the bike or HP casino during the summer.

Having done several at each place now, and talking with players at each, I now understand why the Bicycle Club got the better reviews.

The Nooners there are always non rebuys. Every other casino's day time daily games are rebuys. They do have rebuys in the evening at the Bike. I have not done an evening tourney yet anywhere. My guess would be the quality of player might average less than the day games as they might cater more to entertainment value. But that is just a guess.

Another guess is that the better players will be playing either at the Bike, or the Commerce Casino, both have the more uncomfortable chairs. And both start out with 10 seat tables, which is crowded IMHO.

I prefer Hawaiian Gardens. Seems to be a lot more "out for a good time" folks there.

They have a huge limit area. They have 1 table winner take all's. They have an Omaha8 game along with a cupple of Stud and Omaha tables always going.

3 card poker.

And they try. You know. They try

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My quick Cash Game perspective of each:

Bicycle = Great place for cash games and they actually have 100BB buy-in games as opposed to most that don't. Friendly room, not too bad location.

Commerce = Ridiculous amounts of tables. A must see for any poker fan. All their small stakes games have stupid ridiculous buy-ins. For example, the $1/2 game, when last checked, had a max buyin of $80. LAME.

Hawaiian Gardens = Not so much fun if you happen to be me. I was literally threatened and harassed here because of my ethnicity and the dealer + floor staff did SQUAT. I will never return.

Hollywood Park = Has the charm of a Taco Bell's bathroom. Run down, crappy place to play. BUT, whenever I played there I found the games to be good. Not a fan of the buy-in structure but not as stupid as Commerce.

icemonkey9 said:

Hollywood Park = Has the charm of a Taco Bell's bathroom. Run down, crappy place to play. BUT, whenever I played there I found the games to be good. Not a fan of the buy-in structure but not as stupid as Commerce.

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Sometime between when you were there last and now, they moved the casino. The old Casino was on the far south end of the Building. The entrance is now at the top of the hill, and the Casino itself looks pretty damn new.

I had a similar expectation about the place as I had walked thru it several (many?) years ago. Just recently (last week maybe) there was talk of betfair firing all the Casino employees and rehiring some of them. I missed the story, and only heard it 2nd hand.

Normandie Casino Tourney's/Review

Worst Web Page ever. Poker tourneys are listed way down the page full of other promo's.

They don't have daily tourneys per se, rather weekend tourneys. For the most part they are all $40 games with no re-buys, and no add-ons, and I consider that a +.

One long narrow room (narrow here would be a tight fit of 4 tables wide) (long would be maybe 20 tables [end to end] long. Entrance in the approximate center and one side seems to be primarily poker the other Pai Gow, baccarat, and other table games ,BJ for instance.

On the poker side the tables are packed very tight and moving around is a major PITA.

At 7m on Friday night the place had the excitement of a crowded Vegas Downtown Casino, by 10pm it was way way to noisey for my liking. The ring table annoucements were set to overcome the loud din of the crowd and almost hurt my ears.

TOurney;

10 seat tables on old kitchen chairs, I ran across one dealer who I will give a benefit of doubt thing too as it looked like his first day. Other dealers where fine except one guy who insisted on counting chips rather than measuring stacks, the much faster way, so his tables ran very slow.

30 minute levels. Which changed to 20 minutes after the first color up.

Lots of gamblers play here. It is closer to L.A. than Commerce, and gets the Hollywood/West Side crowd, who could easily be described as west coast New Yorkers...if that makes any sense. I cleaned out the seat to my left 3 times in the first 3 levels...must have been the cooties in that seat, right? Lots of physically larger people in this tourney. Makes for tighter than other places tables. Lots of women. Typically older, well dressed, but talented poker wise. The final table, as I left (12th, small profit) looked like it could be 1/2 women. Otherwise the great pool of SoCal players are here, but this place might have been a bit fishier.

Overall experience would be a 5, and the primary reason I would return is because those tourneys are the non-rebuy, no add on type games. That and the apparently free dinner buffet that they somehow squeeze onto a small portion of the floor, along with free lemonade and punch, and 1/4 sandwich (assorted) bites.

Over the too loud speakers I heard about an O8 game, but got no more details. O8 games are fun but largely because they are confusing, and dealers probably hate getting the O8 shifts.

Freeway close, easy access, parking lot just big enough to absolutely stuff the place.

There is a large Showroom, 1 visible bar (10 seats maybe, no tables), and from the outside it looks like there is a 2nd floor, but I saw no way of getting there.

Hustler Casino Review.

This is the last of My Los Angeles Poker Rooms reviews, unless there are rooms that don't advertise around here, I believe I will need to leave L.A. County to find any more local rooms.

Located in Gardena, not far from the Normandie Casino, +/- a mile away. These are 2 of the oldest Card Rooms in California.

The Hustler Casino; http://hustlercasino.com/
http://hustlercasino.com/tournaments/

The main tourney room is the biggest contiguous area of the Casino. Large Paintings of naked women on the walls, very tasteful, yet this is Larry Flints place, so not surprising. Room has a direct entrance so one need not walk thru the whole casino to get to the Tourney room. The walls are primarily dark, but the lighting is good. I had heard that some thought the whole place was dark, and a walk thru the whole casino sort of confirmed that.

10 seat tables with kitchen type chairs, but these were the most comfortable of the kitchen table chairs I have found. Table were not so tightly packed that moving around was difficult.

They do not regularly offer any tourneys in the sub $100 range. I saw that there were some satties to the current Liz Flint Spring Poker Classic (currently the biggest thing going in the L.A. area) for $50 but I didn't see them going for very long (time wise).

Easy access from the Harbor freeway at Rosecrans and Vermont. Limited parking! When I left before sunset yesterday (Saturday) the lot was full, and stree parking is essentially non-existent. Location is too close to a 'lesser area of town' to be thinking about street parking. More Corvettes in the lot than any other casino....

Overall casino decorations were nice, and seemingly well kept. But the bathrooms were small, and the concession booth/room was crowded.

If I drove a Vett, and had a flashy babe or lots of bling on my arm, I would like the place more. I doubt there are as many regular tourney players here as any other L.A. Area casino regs. I did not see any entertainment area in the Casino.

I will only go back to the Hustler for events, like that current Liz Flint Spring Poker Classic, but that is mainly because I have fallen in like with the cheap tourneys at the Bike.

According to this page ;

http://www.thepokeratlas.com/city/los-angeles-ca-usa/567/

there are 7 poker rooms in L.A. The Crystal Casino does not currently offer any tourneys. I talked to a floor guy who I may have mentioned told me they tried for a long time, but seldom covered the guarantees, so they gave up and now have a casino with large empty areas where tables used to be. There is also a confusion factor involved as the Hustler Tourney room is named the Crystal Room and they are 6 miles away. Could have been a brilliant marketing thing by Larry Flints group.

The shame here is that this casino is a healthy walk from my house. It is on the 91 freeway and used to have serious signage in front...they took that signage down! It is the only casino in town on the Metro line, which should have made it the absolute favorite for downtown (actually most of L.A. now) players. They built a block wall at the Metro line entrance they at one time lobbied to get! It is in an industrial area, and adjacent to a shopping complex with good enough parking to fill the casino. It has a pretty good size Hotel on top of it, and it can be a secondary hotel to events at the Home Depot Center where boxing and soccer are regular events (Down the freeway about 2-3 miles). I can't help but think the marking people there suck on the grandest of stages!

After mentioning the Normandie Casino has the worst Casino Web Page ever, I finally found their tourney page, which is still the worst;

http://www.normandiecasino.com/Tournaments.aspx?Imgfile=Weekly%20Tournaments.jpg

I went to Commerce for the first time ever a few months ago and was blown away. SO many games and tables going, it was insane. I use to only play pachanga in temecula so it was a hugggee different. That place is a wet dream for a poker player

5 Cards O8 at the Normandie club.

They host a 5 card O8 game at the Normandie on Saturdays at noon. $45 total includes a bonus stack. For the game yesterday, they did not cover the 1K guarantee, close but no cigar. Possibly the big tourney down the street is the cause.

I had never played 5 card Omaha, just means they deal each player a 5th card, and with 8 seat tables, 45 of the 52 cards WILL be in play. They could play these 9 handed I guess.

Levels in this tourney were pretty short..15 minutes, and for a split game, that means if things purr along 1 orbit per level is doing pretty good. I am not sure they could sustain 1 orbit per level tho. There are just too many distractions, and one I ran into yesterday caused there to only be 2 hands per level.

Omaha being the crazy game it is, that 5th card just made it more likely that huge high hands and nut low hands arrived. I would need much more experience to say the difference is the mere 25% more likely than it appears. But for the simplistic view, where in normal omaha, each hand sort of equates to 6 hands to a holdem mind, that fifth card makes it like 10 hands meaning that 5th card increases the likelihood 67% that you are beat. Double edge sword with increased possibilities of str8's and boats also means that more hands look good pre.

I did not find out about that 5th card thing till the first hand I got dealt. It wasn't posted or published anywhere obvious.

The small field is sort of enticing, and I may go try it again, wearing my tightest leotards!

dj11 said:

I had never played 5 card Omaha, just means they deal each player a 5th card, and with 8 seat tables, 45 of the 52 cards WILL be in play. They could play these 9 handed I guess.

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It's a fun game. They play 9 handed, and a "sit out" button rotates around the table.

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gavind said:

Hi. Does anyone here, plays on Hawaiian Gardens a lot?

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I play tourney's there about once a week. Some 2/4 Stud but not much.

Is smoking allowed in these casinos? I hate cigarette smoke.

nope

New at the Bike. Called the Early Bird....http://www.thebike.com/images/com_tournaments/daily/pdf/1375493514_early_bird_structure.pdf

Tourneys at 8 am. $30+10. 7 days a week. These apparently will never conflict with the Special events games which often mess with the Nooners that I love playing.

I can barely think at 8am.