Coles Notes: Worth a visit, especially when driving to and from Montreal.
OLG Casino Thousand Islands is in Gananoque, Ontario, around halfway between Toronto and Playground Poker Club. When a forumer and I first went there during WPT Montreal, I was expecting electronic tables like the other OLG poker rooms, but this one actually had four live poker tables. It has been our best pit stop on the drives to and from Playground. You can play 1/2 Spread Limit poker ($100 maximum bets),
five tournaments/week and weekly
High Hand promotion, along with getting free self-serve drinks.
It is a much better pit stop than the OnRoute stations, where you get ripped off on the unposted gas prices, then you get ripped off again on the fast food. For example, I bought just enough gas at the last OnRoute Canadian Tire gas station for 144/litre to make it to the Canadian Tire near the casino where I filled up for only 127/litre. Along this King Street East, there are also McDonald's, Tim Horton's and other stores.
My roommate in March wanted to make one lucky bet at the casino before continuing on to his first-ever WPT Main Event. He not only won the bet (blackjack) but also made it past almost all the pros to finish in the final 5% of the million-dollar guaranteed ME. I have to remind him to make another lucky bet before the $2 million guaranteed PokerStars Canada Cup.
In our latest pit stop, I played the new
$200+$30 NLHE tournament. My ex-roommate made the blunder of pre-paying for all 3 nights at the hotel with only one bed, so since I'm not like pkrfce9 who loves bro jobs and spooning, ;) we ended up doubling our expenses by staying at two different hotels and always driving separately in two different cars. I informed him that I would have to leave before 10 AM to register for the tourney, but he somehow made another blunder by leaving too late and arriving at the casino past late registration.
The rake is 13%. The prize pool was top-heavy, with the final two getting 85% of the pool. It was all casual players so there were huge mistakes. I made it heads-up. I have told compuease & pkrfce9 the details of the Casino Rama deal I made when I was the big chipleader heads-up, and pkrfce9's reaction was "You bastard!" >:D I made an initial proposal again this time and to my pleasant surprise, it was accepted again. Pkrfce9's reaction would be, "You Jon Snow!"
After we agreed to the deal, I asked the poker manager about the tipping procedure to the dealer. The other casher overheard which made him suggest tipping $5, which JohnnieH knows is an insult, but I guess it's better than the nothing that the tournament dealers usually get. As usual, I asked for a cheque to prove to my better half (who is almost as skeptical as compuease!) that I keep winning at poker. After I pocketed my four-figure win, I gave the dealers a bigger tip.
I then played the cash game. The tables had slots where you put your Winners Circle card. Unlike Woodbine, most of the stacks had 100 BBs or more. The players were again worse than at Playground. Max. rake is only $5 (10%) so this is much preferable to paying unbeatable $15 max rake. I saw my friend in another table getting some racks and picking up his chips so I did the same just before my BB.
I asked the female manager where we can have a celebration steak dinner at Gananoque, but my friend wanted to stay at the
recently renovated casino restaurant with the
new menu. We both had the New York Striploin dinner, and I would order it again in the future. Since I was the big winner that day, I was going to pay for dinner, but he reminded me that he had cashed yet again in a recent tournament that we had swapped a piece, so he paid.
My next stop to the 1000 Islands Casino may be on May 21. I will first play the Great Blue Heron tournament and when I'm done, I'll try to make it for the 8 PM
10 Seats Guaranteed Super Satellite at Playground.