The New Caribbean Cardroom

I played at the new Caribbean Cardroom in Kirkland today, and I think it is going to be the best place to play poker on the East side.  They opened a little ahead of schedule, so they are still in the last stages of decoration and getting the TV monitors on the walls, but already it feels so much nicer than the old room.  They used to have just 3 tables for poker, which were almost always full, meaning you had to wait sometimes as long as 2 hours for a seat.  So far they now have 6 poker tables and one blackjack table in the new poker room.  I was a little surprised to see the blackjack table, as I had hoped those table games would remain in the casino section of the building.

The bad beat and Monte Carlo money that had accumulated prior to the new room must remain with the old room.  This is apparently because of Washington State gaming regulations, so for now they left one poker table in the casino area, where players can play until the bad beat and Monte Carlo money has been used up.  Seats are provided on a lottery basis, where players can sign up for a drawing to get a seat.

The new room established brand new bad beat and Monte Carlo jackpots, which as you might expect are starting small ($1000 for the bad beat) but will grow quickly.  I actually don’t care much about the bad beat and Monte Carlo jackpots, except that I pay $1 for each pot I win into the jackpot fund.  Well, it also draws weak players to the tables who might otherwise not play.

The new room is bigger and quieter than the old room, and already looks nicer.  The lighting might need to be tweaked; some of the tables seemed to sit partway in the shade.  They also had new chips created for the cardroom, which are standard weight, but look a little fancier than the old chips.

I hope this catches on.  I also hope that The Caribbean strongly considers hosting some higher limit games like $8/$16 and even $20/$40.