Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa (Atlantic City, NJ) -- FAQ in OP, updated 2021.08.16

Would not mind this at all tbh

Hiding the Poker room behind a new horse simulcast room -hardly seems like a good thing to me!!

Poker room loses that walk up and play aspect which is vital to keeping the games balanced ...........and like mentioned above the room is already in decline

SAD DAYS AHEAD..

Preaching to the choir I know, but moving tournaments to what was the high limit room and all the high limit games into the main room is nonsense. I get that they’re trying to enhance their tournament experience but there are high limit players who won’t play on the main floor, and zero tournament players who are going to not play based on which room they’re in

I know I'm in the minority but I always hated when plo games were in high limit. Granted today anything above 2/2 is dead. But in the good old days if a 5/10 plo game was in the back it almost always broke overnight. When it was in the main area of the room it would often run for several days straight and we'd pick up a ton of randoms. People who were stuck late at night would see tons of chips on the table and jump in. They would never know the game existed in the back.

To me this was way more important than tvs at eye level and getting red bulls in the back.

Definitely merit to that although there isn’t much random walk by traffic coming into the room anymore period. It’s not a huge deal to me but have definitely heard some recreational players complaining about it

Which one was/is the high limit room?

I am headed down next week for a convention. I was hoping the Spring Open was around, but that is obviously not the case anymore.

Trying to decide if I should play the Wednesday $250 or to go play golf during the day ...

They held one recently back there idk which one it was but the long term plan is the back room is going to be the spot for all tournaments

Oof.

What is going on with Borgata?? I feel like Borgata now is exactly where Trop was when they went through their quick succession of new owners a few years back - they are lost, confused, and unable to keep guests happy, which is a core tenet of hospitality.

Granted, I donÂ’t come here as much as others in this forum (IÂ’m a turning stone player on the regular), but this trip was bonkers.

DINING/DRINKING
Came on a Tuesday - half the dining options were closed (half the food court too), only two bars open (sports book and lobby bar, and also bye bye tequila bar itÂ’s gone).

RESORT AMENITIES
$30 in resort fees plus tax to make it $41 per night, and the pool complex was closed for a private event - no notifications, no “hey sorry pool closed” upon check-in, no message on the in-room TV, and even the website didn’t indicate a private event closure. Only notice was a sign AT THE POOL accompanied by a security guard. Hah. If I’m being charged resort fees I’m going to use the amenities (I’m not counting Wi-Fi), so it stands to reason if the amenities aren’t available you should be able to ask for the fees to be waived. I tried at checkout and was laughed at.

VIP CHANGES
I had a VIP host for five years. My host left the company at the end of last year, I was assigned a new host. The new host was terrible at communication and I found out HE left the company too. I was told by VIP, “come on property, inform the front desk you are here, and we will send someone out to meet you and set you up with a new host.” Cool. Did just that, and the front desk put me on the phone with someone in VIP, only for them to tell me, via phone while standing at the front desk, “sorry, you’re no longer going to have a host because you don’t lose enough at craps - you play long enough, your average bet is good, but you’ve only had one $1400 loss on record, so we will reach out to you when we feel your play warrants a vip host.” (I’ve had plenty of losses, but the craps pit isn’t very good at rating players and properly keeping track.)

CONSTRUCTION/REFURBISHING
IÂ’m all for improvements and I understand construction needs to happen - no issues there or with Major areas of the floor blocked off, however, I (and other craps players) take issue with the craps tables being INSIDE of an active construction zone with workers on forklifts working ABOVE THE TABLE. thereÂ’s six tables in the craps pit - 4 were tarped off on Tuesday, and 5 on Wednesday. HereÂ’s a noble idea: move two tables to a different part of the casino temporarily (heck they moved the craps table by the sports book out of there to make room for the pai gow pit, so there is precedence) until construction is over. The craps dealers/pit team are MISERABLE right now, that makes the players miserable, so who would want to play there??

POKER

•TERRIBLE IDEA to block the poker room with a new race book. We all know poker is not as important to a casino as slots etc, but burying the room behind a racebook and not accessible directly by a main thoroughfare is recipe for disaster.

•I heard several times that the reason high hand values are no longer on the monitors is because the poker room employees kept forgetting to update them. There’s a very easy solution to this: STOP ROTATING THE VALUES EVERY FIFTEEN MINUTES! No need to constantly change things plus, Players would much rather see a fixed amount (do $200 or $250 every 15 mins) with informative text on the screen than have to guess or wait for an audible announcement - takes the guesswork out. Then if you want to have a HAPPY HOUR special and run higher values for a few hours, you’re only changing the monitor text twice during the day instead of 96 times.

•One dealer let a situation escalate between three players at a table which led to the game breaking - this was easily fixable:
Two players were speaking to each other in a language other than English while one or sometimes both of them had live cards. Dealer should have immediately told them to stop and call the floor to issue a warning (didnÂ’t happen). Another player kept getting aggressive verbally towards the two non-English speakers, and the dealer did not issue him a warning either. On this went for 30 minutes which impacted play, and when the two non English speakers and the English speaker continued arguing, the other four players left the game and finally the floor removed the three aggressors. Three players and a dealer were all in the wrong here, and this could have been avoided if the floor was called at the proper time.

Overall this was a rough trip (despite it being profitable), and Borgata has a lot to do in order to get things properly functional again - itÂ’s doable, but itÂ’s an uphill climb.

_____

I will say though, in order to be positive in some light, that the woman working the front desk and Howard at the back desk were extremely friendly, professional, and service oriented, as was the dealer Butterfly.

Also, that 1/3 Bomb Pot game is a trip - wow that game needs to run at all times, IÂ’ve never seen chaos (in a good way) at a poker table like that gameÂ…

The issue with the VIP host is more than enough proof that casino execs are morons. It shouldn't matter whether you win or lose (and it's not just a problem at MGM properties). It's your theoretical loss that matters. If you gamble at a certain level the casino should do everything within reason to keep you happy and coming back--more so if you win! That said, if they have a low bar for qualifying for a VIP host then that's a problem of their own making. They shouldn't waste everyone's time making small bettors feel like VIPs (I'm not suggesting that applies to you), and then pull the rug out from under them. In your case, you play long enough and bet large enough, so WTF? If you're not happy with the Borgata, I suggest trying one of the smaller companies--Hard Rock, Ocean, Bally's, Resorts, or the Golden Nugget. They might actually appreciate your action and give you better offers. But if you also want poker, you're SOL unless you don't mind leaving the property. The Golden Nugget is a short ride from Borgata. Avoid MGM and Caesars properties unless you need offers/comps for their other destinations.

Yes, the high hand promo situation is absurd. They should just make it $250 per hour around the clock, except during promotion events. Then they don't have to babysit the display around the clock.

I don't know why they bother with the race book. Horse racing has been declining for years and most of those who bet it do so from home.

If you qualify for M-Life Gold you won't have to pay resort fees.

@George, to reply to a few of your points:

Yes, I feel like the rug was pulled out from me - itÂ’s demoralizing to be told youÂ’re worthy of certain perks for five years and then abruptly have them taken away.

I make 2-3 trips to Borgata per year, plus a Vegas trip to an MGM property (used to be Mirage but now Mandalay). IÂ’m sure that if I made 9-10 trips to Borgata per year as I do to Turning Stone (where I have a Sapphire level card which is equivalent to Platinum at MGM), I would not only qualify for Gold level status (and no resort fees/Amorpha access et Al), but IÂ’d still have my VIP services, which to be fair, I only use in order to get free rooms on weekends as opposed to Sun-Thurs comps. Only once did I ever ask my host to comp me a dinner, and only once to get me a pool cabana with no minimum spend, so itÂ’s not like Borgata was/is losing money on me.

Furthermore, my “replacement host” was supposed to initiate a tier upgrade for me to Gold as I showed him via text my sapphire Turning Stone card and how it equates to MGM Platinum - had it gone through, I would joyfully do an equal number of trips to Borgata and Turning Stone each year, but apparently, MGM does not tier match to Turning Stone?! It’s like the ONLY casino group they DONT tier match for?! For this reason, I asked to be upgraded to gold as a courtesy/concession to take the lower tier, but that was brusquely dismissed and then reinforced during my conversation with VIP (via phone) on Tuesday while standing at the front desk.

I steer clear of all CaesarÂ’s properties since they treat tables games players like absolute garbage and their rooms are disgusting (Trop and Caesars IÂ’m looking at you), and that leaves no other casino in AC with poker plus a nice enough resort. IÂ’d do Hard Rock (I get the same Sun-Thur free room offer that MGM gives me), but again, no poker.

When I go to Turning Stone, itÂ’s an extra hour of driving each way, MORE in gas cost, LESS in toll costs, and LESS in room costs because of the resort fees. Overall its less money out of pocket for me to travel farther and get better comp value from a places that values its tables games players, has more affordable dining, and friendlier staff at every corner of the resort.

MGM sucks

All I'll say is if everything gets worse, you get shittier comps etc don't give them the same action. If you do keep giving the same action then they're right too give you less.

how did the omaha tournament series go

They got a whooping 25 ish people for the big O and 40 for the 1k plo.
They also had an impressive 23 tables running at around 11pm on Saturday.

Almost 2 months since the last tier credit dump. No consistency at all anymore.

This year they’ve done transfers on Jan 31, Feb 9, March 31. My guess is it’s every two months from now on, we’ll see 5/31 I guess

Summer Poker Open is July 17-August 1

$10K high roller experience event is interesting

Don't expect more than 2 tables though: https://pokerdb.thehendonmob.com/event.p...

Tier credit dump just hit

Just got mine as well. So I guess it's just whenever they feel like doing it anymore! Crazy

what games are in the beast tournament

Badugi; 7 Card Stud Hi-Lo 8B; A-5 Triple Draw; 7 Card Stud High; 2-7 Triple Draw

Seems like poker tier credits are being dumped way more frequently this month.

Strange, it went from every 30-50 days to every 7-15 days now, at least for the month of June anyway.

now that they changed it to 5/10 limit holdem. it doesnt even run long even more.

Guess this place now plain awful. What a shame.