So I recently took a trip to Florida and played quite a bit at the Hard Rock!

About the poker room: The two story poker room has 48 tables.

Pros: The room was bumping at 2am on a Tuesday (no tournament series going on). All tables except one were in use for cash games on the bottom floor. I thought this was amazing. In fact I have yet to see any poker room this packed (I was told that only the Commerce was the only poker room busier in the country).  The quality of play was much lower than anywhere I have seen in a while. Heck Mike Matusow called the local players in Florida “Terrible”.  I played the $5/$10 nl game while I was there. The buy-in was $500 to $2000. Almost all the players bought in for over 1k. I am used to playing live where the buy-in is $200 to $1000. So it was refreshing to see this great structure. 

The Hard Rock does a lot of things to make the low stakes players happy. They have a lot of low stakes tournaments going on all the time. in addition, they even have a bad beat jackpot that is shared with the other Seminole properties in Florida. It starts back up at 100k once it is hit.

There was a hi-stakes room where they played $10/$25 nl and higher. You can frequently catch Florida pros in there. While I was there I saw Michael and Robert Mizrachi, and  David Chino Rheem. I even saw Canadian pro Nenad  Medić playing PLO.

Cons: The room is fairly old and could use a little work. I found the room to be fairly dark.  I visited the Pompano Isle poker room and there was clearly a difference. The Isle is a modern poker room that is just gorgeous inside. 

The staff at the Hard Rock did their best however they could have controlled the room a bit better. The one thing I noticed that it took forever to get a table change. New players would enter tables before people who had requested a table change. The dealers were great however some were socializing with the regulars a bit too much.

Overall Impression: A great poker room with great action. Playing poker at the Hard Rock just feels right. It has non-stop action and is the place to play poker in South Florida. I will be back soon enough!

Errol