Written by Tim Lavalli
 NEWS/Thursday, 08 November 2007

I walked into the Orleans casino three weeks ago to find one-half of the poker room under a huge black tent. The 35 table room at the Orleans was being remodeled, so the construction sign said, for “player comfort”. Now I had to believe that because the poker room at the Orleans does very well. They always have at least half of the room full and they run a full schedule of player friendly tournaments. So I stopped back several times until the “new” room was unveiled.

There is new carpet, of course, every remodel has new carpet and there are new table felts, either you like the butterscotch color or you don’t but they are new. Beyond the cosmetics, the Orleans really has improved the room for the players. First and foremost there are all new poker chairs. Fully adjustable and very well cushioned these are really great chairs and they are at all the tables. Next, the Orleans poker room has always been open to the casino on two sides, which meant a lot of noise and often a lot of smoke. Now the room has chest high partition walls that really keep the slot players away and they have moved the public cigarette ashtrays across the aisles away from the poker room. The addition of these walls really makes the room feel more like, well a room!

For the tournament area they have added a separate tournament cage. This has already made the sign-up process go much better and made it clear when sign-ups for the various tournaments begin. Also the tournament information is now posted in that area and makes the whole tournament versus cash game confusion much less an issue.

We were told new dealer uniforms were coming soon, now if they would replace just a few of the dealers too, the remodel would be perfect.