Report of Playground Poker

First of all I'll say I'm probably the worst person for someone to sponsor to attend an event since I have pretty absurd values in a lot of ways. I always feel kind of torn when I am sponsored for anything since I feel like when I am being compensated for attending I should do my best to compliment the person who has been kind enough to sponsor me, but on the other hand I feel like when representing the experience to the public I should give them the most honest picture, and most importantly since I am self-concerned I feel that the main thing that I care about is maintaining my own integrity in situations like this and since my values are so absurd, lots of things that certain people may find perfectly normal I find compromising.

Anyways, that opening paragraph probably makes you guys think it was a negative experience, but all-in-all I've had a blast and there is just one little thing that irked me more than it should have.

I'll write this report in 2 sections, 1) what the club is like, 2) what my individual experience was like

The club:

The club itself seems really nice on the inside. On the way there 2 girls in our limo bus had to go to the washroom really badly and since it was rush hour going over the Mercier Bridge it took like 45 minutes for a ride that should take 10-15 minutes. When we got off the bridge Roy Winston joked that we should just pull over to this corner store type thing so they could go to the washroom but apparently that was the club. Inside its VERY nice and spacious and we were definitely judging the book by its cover. The chairs are the most comfortable I've seen in a poker room, and the room is so spacious that I feel like most poker clubs would have tried to fit ~20% more tables into the room. The restaurant had very good food and it may have just been since we had a big group and it was their opening night but it took probably ~2 hours to get our food. Everything is free when you are playing poker and I didn't hear any complaints about the food itself. If attractive waitresses are what bring you out to a poker club, then playground poker is 2,000,000% the place for you. I talked to someone who worked for the owner's other company and she mentioned that when they were holding interviews for the waitressing jobs people who worked in that building and saw the girls coming in and out of their office thought they were shooting porn. The one tournament I played seemed quite well run despite being the first one they've run at the club. The dealers were very good overall and the only real complaint I had about the tournament was that with 5k starting stacks, they gave people who rebought 1 5k chip which really was a nuisance for making change when average stack was maybe 6k.

Rake in the games seemed quite high to me(5% capped at $14 in 5/10, $25 in 10/25, and $100 in 25/50 PLO which is considered a private game) but at the same time I haven't played any live cash in Quebec so I have no idea what the norm is. Overall I think the club is definitely worthwhile to check out and the other pros who were there(Marc Karam, Erik Cajelais, Roy Winston and Nenad Medic) who have actually been to a wide variety of poker rooms in Canada feel that this is by far the nicest.

My individual experience:

My friend Justin Kelly contacted me about a month ago asking if I wanted to come up to Montreal the 17th-19th and just show face, play some poker and just have a good time while having all my expenses paid for. I hadn't played live poker in 4 months and had my last exam on the 16th and most of my friends are in school until the 21st or so and thought this was pretty much perfect timing. Before leaving I sent him a text asking where the hotel is relative to the airport and wondering whether I should cab or train or whatnot. He said there will be a limo bus driver waiting to pick me up and I realized this was going to be a sweet trip.

I had no idea what a limo bus is but knew it sounded cool. In the end it was just a nice shuttle van but I'll take it. They do a fantastic job of giving us all the red carpet treatment and events like this make me realize how prone I am to being wine and dined. I'm at the point where I really don't care that much about earning money but at the same time I still care enough about money that I don't unnecessarily spend it. That means at an event like this even if they gave me twice as much money to show up but didn't pay for rides, meals, bottles etc I could have easily just paid for all of the perks and left the trip in a better position financially but enjoyed the trip much less. I realize that doesn't make a ton of rational sense but I am just very much a huge fan of getting free stuff. Anyways, both nights I went there they had a 25/50 PLO game running, the first night I played 10/25NL after losing the tournament and the game was EXTREMELY good. I eventually got a seat at 25/50PLO and it wasn't a great lineup(Erik, Marc, Nenad and Sam Chartier were all in the game) but there were a few spots.

Part way through the night they called me over to do one an interview for the site. If I were to guess I'd say I've probably done 1-200 interviews but I've never had one anything like this. Before every interview with an interviewer I haven't worked with before they always tell me to reiterate the question in my answer.

In this one he elaborated to tell me how I should elaborate on my success and tie that into my answer about being at the poker club for people who don't know me. I did that and then he stopped the interview and mentioned I need to be more upfront, say numbers of how much money I won in my various EPT finishes etc. I did this and then he stopped the interview again and told me I need to put more emphasis on how much I'm enjoying the club and why my opinion should matter a lot to the viewers.

This went on probably 6 or 7 times until I correctly mentioned playground poker enough times in my sentence, did enough bragging about myself and did enough incorporating my success into why I'm entitled to make the judgement on what is/isn't a good poker room. All-in-all this left a VERY sour taste in my mouth and this was the one experience of the trip that I was referencing during the first paragraph. I want to be as honest and upfront with everybody as possible and although I was enjoying the club/experience and wanted to be able to tell people about it , I don't want to be some puppet who is just used for them to encourage their brand.

The next day I got lunch with Roy, checked out the gym and then met up with Marc to head to the club. Once we got there we had the option of playing the $100 tournament or just playing cash. We all played $1/$2 and they made a rule that anyone who bluffs one of the pros out on the river gets $500. I thought this was a super cool promotion and got everyone at the tables talking, got more games started and gave people the opportunity to win some money. Trying to think about strategy adjustments was pretty interesting but at the same time way less interesting in practice since most people are pretty scared of losing their money and expect me to read their soul so there was still very limited bluffing going on. Eventually I moved to a 5/10 table and they removed that $500 promo but one player followed me to the game and then bluffraised the river against me. When he went to collect his $500 they informed him and he was kinda disappointed and then told me that he'd never have bluffed me if it weren't for that rule and he apologized for disrespecting me.

After a while I met up with Justin Kelly and his friend Brian and decided to go out to this club called Globe and see what Montreal is like. Playground gave us a ride there in the limo bus, arranged for us to walk past any lineup and bought bottles of grey goose for our party. Originally I assumed this was probably going to be one of the few things playground wasn't paying for but at the end of the night playground's hostess took the bill and said playground was covering it. After that everyone decided to head back to my place and despite everything being closed at 4am she managed to get a bottle of alcohol and mixers delivered to my room(there was no mini-bar or alcohol through room service at the Westin for whatever reason).

All in all I feel like the extent that Playground went to in terms of trying to please the players was very impressive. The weekend was a lot of fun and although I had one pretty poor experience with that one interview I thought it was a great place. I obviously haven't observed the poker room from the eyes of their average player which is obviously the most important thing to anyone reading this, but it seems as if they are very customer oriented in my dealings with them. All in all I had a fantastic weekend and I definitely recommend everyone try out the place.