The tropical décor of the original Seminole casino in Hollywood seems sedate next to the frenzy of the new Seminole Hard Rock across the street. But that's okay. This place provides a nice counterbalance with its extremely flashy and youthful casino hotel neighbor.
This was the original Seminole casino in town, and it's still a formidable room with 25 poker tables, spreading limit and no-limit hold'em and stud, and many tournaments each week.
Apr 18, 2019 The Seminole Hard Rock Hollywood poker room is just a 10-15 minute drive from the Fort-Lauderdale Hollywood airport. It lies on Route 441 slightly north of the junction with 848. The casino sits a fair distance from the coast and is more isolated from other attractions than more coastal casinos like Isle Casino Pompano Park or Magic City. Aug 14, 2019 Seminole Hard Rock Poker encompasses four major poker series held annually at Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Hollywood, Florida. In August 2013, the Seminole Hard Rock Poker Open (SHRPO) was introduced to poker players around the world and featured a $10 million guarantee championship, the largest guarantee in history. Poker players can experience the thrill of top tournament play at Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Hollywood’s award-winning Poker Room outfitted in a comfortable setting and live sports action on its large screen projector and flat-screen televisions. Dec 18, 2019 As part of its $1.5 billion expansion project, Seminole Hard Rock Hollywood is now home to a total of 1,271 luxury guestrooms and suites, including 638 rooms in The Guitar Hotel, 168 rooms in the seven-story Oasis Tower at Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Hollywood and 465 newly renovated guestrooms in the existing Hard. About Seminole Classic Casino. Seminole Classic Casino is a 73,500-square-foot casino with over 1,000 slot machines, live action table games, and an over 250 seat high-stake bingo room. Amenities include four casual dining restaurants and two full service bars.
I visited the room on a Sunday morning. There were eight tables going at that time – two low limit games and six no-limit games. The blinds for the no-limit games ranged from $1/2 to $5/5. By law, however, you are not allowed to buy in for more than $100. This makes for some interesting dynamics, as I'll explain.
When $1/2 no-limit first came on the casino poker scene about four years ago, it was often spread with this $100 cap to the buy-in. This was to prevent deep-pocketed players from bullying everyone at the table with their enormous stacks. Most of the organized poker world recognized that $100 was really too small an amount. Most increased it to $200, $300 or even $400 and $500 in some places.
Florida law, however, has only recently allowed no-limit poker. Up until July of 2007, there was a $2 betting limit. The legislature, I guess, felt pressure to allow the enormously popular no-limit, but protectively wanted to keep players from losing too much money, and therefore limited the buy-ins. The $100 cap, however, doesn't do anything but make for multiple buy-ins – which are not limited by state law. Players can buy-in for $100, lose it in one all-in bet, buy in for another $100, lose that, and continue the pattern until they have lost as much as they have brought. It's like the government trying to force people to lose weight by limiting the size of the fork. Sure, each forkful will have fewer calories, but if you can eat as many forkfuls as you want, what's the point?
This is especially true at the $5/5 blind no-limit game. I watched the $5/5 blind no-limit game at the 'Old Seminole' for about 15 minutes. The game was fairly young at 11:30am when I was watching, so most of the players still had a starting stack. In nearly every other hand, someone went all in. If he won, he double or tripled up depending upon whether he had one or two opponents. If he lost he just bought in again. By the end of the 20 minutes there were at least $1,000 more in chips on the table then when I first started to watch. In fact, I was told by a local player, that in some games this was done automatically as a matter of convention until all players had $1,000 or so in front of them. I'm not sure exactly how it would work. But I suppose it wouldn't be too hard for ten players to just go all in pre-flop and then fold in turn on the flop – allowing each player in turn to win the $1,000 in chips until everyone had $1,000 in chips. It makes the buy-in limit seem pretty silly, no?
I played for a while in the $1/2 no-limit game, spending more energy interviewing those around me than on the game itself. Monte casino bird park operating hours san antonio. The players here tended to be retirees from the area – making up probably 60-70% of the room. The staff were enormously friendly, going out of there way to welcome me, seat me, and explain where all of the facilities were. Sid Cole, the shift manager, explained this to me by telling me that they really worked at this friendly image. The place has mostly regulars so the dealers seemed to know nearly everyone at the table. When I asked the dealer at my table how many of the players she knew, she laughed, looked around, and then said, without hesitation, 'All of 'em!' And then the players laughed, too.
One of the players, an elderly gentleman about 80 or so, told me 'It's better than that new place (pointing in the direction of the Hard Rock). It's not a bunch of kids going all-in all the time. You get to build up your stack with some skill over here.' And so he had – with a stack of $132 – built up, no doubt, from his initial $100 buy-in.
The room has the expected promotions. $1,000 is given to any player who gets a royal flush. There was $55,000 in the bad beat jackpot, and $20,000 in the secondary one. It takes aces full of jacks beaten to qualify; $1 comes out of the pot to subsidize it. The pot is raked at 10% with a maximum of $5. They take $1 no matter how small the pot and even without a flop – as I found out when I raised to $10 and won only $2 instead of the $3 I expected. I was humorously razzed for my 'wild' play.
I don't think the hold'em games would attract me to this place, though I didn't mind the relatively sedate and friendly atmosphere here. Still, I'd probably gravitate toward the juicier no-limit games across the street. But I was told that they get a stud game much of the time. It's a $1–5 spread-limit game with no ante. But even so, I think I could enjoy some time, playing in it here.
The 'Old' Seminole is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Seminole Casino
4150 North State Road 7
Hollywood, Florida
954-961-3220
Tags
Live casino poker
The Hard Rock Casino in Hollywood, Florida is a poker player's dream. I drove to this East Coast poker destination while staying in the middle of the state in Lake Placid, while visiting my Dad and his wife. It's about a two-hour drive from there. Fortunately, however, there are over a million people living on the east coast of Florida in the West Palm Beach, Fort Lauderdale, and Miami area who can visit here in 30 minutes or less. It's well worth the trip.
The Hard Rock casinos are the latest jewels in the gambling crown of the Seminole tribe of Florida. They have three of these huge and beautiful facilities – two on the east coast and one on the west coast in Tampa. This is in addition to three smaller rooms, including Immokalee and Brighton, that I've already reviewed, which have been around for about ten years.
The best adjective I can think of to describe the Hard Rock's poker room is 'snazzy'. There are 50 new tables, tastefully laid out in a beautiful, softly lit, nicely carpeted room. The ceilings are enormously high, giving the room almost an open-air feel. The chairs are well padded and very comfortable (but no wheels or height adjustments). The chips are new, as are the cards. This is poker at its best.
The games are great, too. Florida law does not permit limits higher than $5, nor no-limit games with higher than a $100 cap on the buy-in. Nevertheless, within those confines, the games are dynamic.
They have no-limit with blinds of $1 and $2, $2 and $5, and even $5 and $10 (yes, with only a $100 buy-in). For a short time, they tried to spread a $10/25 no-limit game with no cap on the buy-in. It went smoothly for three days or so, with pots into the five digits, until the state came in, with great fanfare, and shut it down permanently. Apparently, some Florida rooms have attempted to skirt the lawful limits by having players go all in on multiple hands in a row, until all players have $1,000 or so. But that's just a rumor.
In addition to the no-limit games, the room spreads $1/2 and $2/4 limit hold'em and Omaha-8. They 'offer' stud but never get enough players for a stud game (though the old Seminole casino literally across the street gets stud going, I later found out). They rake 10% up to a maximum of $5.
Unlike the other Seminole casinos I had visited prior to coming here, the crowd is young, vibrant, and full of gamble. Games run 24/7, so I had the pleasure, early on a Sunday morning, of playing with a few young folks who had been up all night playing poker and drinking. These were not the timid affairs of the no-limit games at Brighton or Immokalee. In my first hand, the player to my right raised blind to $25, 'because,' as he said, 'I have two green chips – hahahahahahahah.' I looked down and saw two queens and went all in after him. He called me blind with his remaining green chip as did a very attractive woman, dressed like a hooker.
'Why not – any two cards can win,' she said. She only had $50 or so. She turned over K-6. He turned over 6-3. My queens held up and I won a nice little pot.
The game proceeded much like that for the hour or so that I was there, with unbelievably loose and wild play punctuated with laughing. Unfortunately I didn't have any other quality hands during my time at the table – and I lost a little of it back trying to push a couple of guys off a hand when I was under-gunned. But I managed a $100+ win for my brief stay.
I also found out that the room runs terrific and fairly big tournaments. There's a daily bounty tournament with a $100 - $350 buy-in, depending on the day of the week. On Saturday there's a $500 tournament with one $500 rebuy. The house charge for that is $75. If you take the rebuy that's only a 7.5% vig, pretty small by most standards.
The poker room is non-smoking but there is no wall separating it from the rest of the casino, which is smoking. There's just a rail. Smokers lean on it while watching the action. My table was next to the rail. A player literally would stand up when he was out of the hand, smoke a cigarette at the rail, and then come back in when he was done. The smoke often carried into the room and over the tables.
The place is filled with young guys and gals – in couples and alone – vacationing and having a grand old time. There was an equal mix of what looked like older tourists, maybe grandparents with their kids and grandkids. The average age on this Sunday morning seemed to be about 40 or so. As is befitting a mixed-age crowd like this there are a lot of eating options. I walked into the most elaborate buffet I had ever seen – custom-made omelets, sushi, exquisite pastries, beef tenderloin, eggs benedict, baked Alaska, smoked salmon, stir-fried prawns in pepper sauce, and just about anything else you can imagine. There are also other restaurants on the premises, and a multi-restaurant food court with a full array of Mexican, Italian, Chinese, and standard American fare – none of it terribly pricey.
I'd love to come back. And unlike the other Seminole properties, this is a place that I could bring the wife and kids, who could find many ways other than poker to amuse themselves.
Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino - Hollywood
1 Seminole Way
Hollywood, FL 33314
General phone: 954-327-7625
Seminole Hollywood Poker
Tags
Live casino poker