Our trip through South Florida was a whirlwind. It included a three night stay in Miami, followed by two nights in Key West, and finished with four nights in Hollywood Beach. The Miami and Hollywood Beach days included a lot of poker. In fact, we played at seven different poker rooms in seven days. We cover our experience of the Miami area lifestyle (as well as our Key West diversion) elsewhere. Here we want to share our experience with South Florida poker rooms. You can also find individual reviews of each of the seven rooms we played – Seminole Hard Rock Hollywood, Seminole Coconut Creek, The Big Easy, Pompano Park, Magic City, Gulfstream Park, and Dania Beach – in our Room Review category.

We recently ranked the Top 5 poker rooms in New England (our home turf). However, with such limited experience of the South Florida rooms (a single visit for all but Seminole Coconut Creek), we do not feel qualified to create such a ranking. Rather, we thought we would share key elements of the South Florida poker scene overall, including a few standout aspects of various rooms.

Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino. 1 Seminole Way, Fort Lauderdale, FL 33314, USA. Tel: +1(954) 327-7625 ext.4 Visit Web-site ». CARD ROOM & POKER EXPLORE! RIGHT HERE IN DANIA BEACH The finely appointed Card Room at The Casino @ Dania Beach is home to 21 of the hottest tables in South Florida! Huge jackpots, No-Limit Texas Hold’em, electrifying tournaments and an exhilarating variety of promotions are the rage in this card room! NEW HOURS SUN - THURS: 2PM - 1AM. Holiday Inn Fort Lauderdale Airport is a 3-star accommodation within 3 miles of Big Easy Poker Room. Built in 1995, the venue was fully renovated in 2007. Opposite to expressway, this hotel offers non-smoking rooms with garden views.

Dealers in South Florida Poker Rooms are Very Strong

Most dealers were fast, professional, and friendly. Perhaps the healthy and consistent activity (see Cash Game section below) makes dealing in South Florida a desirable job. Whatever the reason, the dealer quality was strong. Not quite Turning Stone strong, but always solid to excellent.

Players are Generally Friendly

The player mix varied from room to room, with Seminole Coconut Creek skewing older and The Big Easy offering great diversity in age, gender, and ethnicity. Players at most rooms were generally friendly. Seminole Coconut Creek stood out most in this regard, and this was one of the reasons we played there twice. Coconut Creek’s Crazy Pineapple tournament was fun partly due to the openness and patience of the players. Understandably, dealers occasionally forgot to collect discards before starting to deal the turn. These moments were met with laughter and good cheer rather than irritation. Gulfstream had the most serious players among all the venues we played, and therefore felt the least welcoming.

The number of women playing poker varied from a low at Magic City (Heather was one of 3 women in the entire room, tournament or cash) to a high at The Big Easy where there were a healthy number of women. Gulfstream Park also had only a handful of women playing either the tournament or at the cash tables.

Tournament Structures are Insane

If you love rebuys and innumerable, complicated add-ons, you’ll love playing poker in South Florida. Some rooms, like Magic City, feature tournaments with very short stacks and quick blind levels, encouraging fast action and repeated rebuys. Gulfstream Park offers unlimited rebuys to the end of registration and 3 different add-on options. The Big Easy’s “free” tournament offered 500 chips followed by a variety of add-on options from the get-go. Blind levels were 15 to 20 minutes in most tournaments, so the combination of rebuys/add-ons and short levels made for a lot of crazy play. The gambling end of the poker playing spectrum will love this; others, like ourselves, not so much.

Dania Beach offered the craziest structure we have ever seen. The original buy-in was $60 for 10,000 chips, and whenever you fell below 5,000 chips you could add on $20 for 5,000 more. Many players availed themselves of this option repeatedly during the early stages. At break, there was an add-on of 50,000 chips for $80. Yes, an add-on 5x the starting stack! The tournament had nine players alive at break. Then eleven new players bought in for $140 and 60,000 chips apiece. Suffice it to say, the tenor of play completely changed. This was Dania Beach’s Monday tournament, and the exact structure of other tournaments vary. However, the 50K add-on is generally a part of most of their structures.

Tournament Rakes are More Insane than the Structures

If you navigate the gauntlet of South Florida tournament structures and manage to cash, you might be disappointed by the pot at the end of the rainbow. You’ll often hear poker professionals harp on the importance of knowing the rake. “Anything over 15% is impossible to profit!” some will shout. However, those of us playing local tournaments with entries below $200 know that the rakes will be higher, and we live with that. Poker is more pastime than profit opportunity when small tournaments are your base.

However, a pastime should not bankrupt you. Many of the South Florida poker rooms had rakes far beyond what we have seen before. Gulfstream’s tournament rake was 37%! Coconut Creek punched in in the low 30% range. Pompano Park seemed to offer a rake around 25% which we would usually balk at, but it felt like a welcome respite in the South Florida poker landscape. We breathed a sigh of relief when we returned to New England with typical rakes in the low 20s.

Due to the complicated rebuy and add-on structures, some South Florida tournament rakes were hard to calculate. Also, frankly, we stopped wanting to know exactly what was being pulled from the prize pool. Our fiscally conservative sides would have called an end to poker tournaments on this poker vacation had we looked too closely. How so many South Florida poker regulars can afford to play tournaments with such brutal rakes is beyond us. It seems like you would need to be a top 1% player to break even. To be fair, some rooms featured monthly point system awards and included tournament players in room-wide high hands. So that must help.

Poker Is Valued Differently Across South Florida Venues

Unsurprisingly, South Florida poker rooms are valued very differently by their venues. At the two Seminole casinos, Hard Rock Hollywood and Coconut Creek, the poker room is considered an important part of a larger, profitable gambling complex. At the other extreme, Gulfstream Park’s bell cow is their beautiful racetrack. The casino clearly falls behind both live and simulcast racing in importance. And the poker room – dark, dingy, and tucked in the back – falls at the bottom of the heap of Gulfstream’s offerings.

At The Big Easy, the poker room seems a key element of the entire casino. It was even more active and vibrant than the slot areas. Magic City gives the poker room its own space altogether. The Magic City poker room feels like its own freestanding entity in a larger complex housing various activities. Dania Beach offers an attractive midsize casino with a nicely designed poker room, but not a lot of action beyond tournament regulars. Pompano Park is another midsize casino featuring more healthy cash and tournament volume.

Cash Games are Very Active in Most South Florida Poker Rooms

We spent a few weeks tracking both the cash and tournament activity across South Florida poker rooms. Most South Florida rooms have vibrant cash games, with the exception of Dania Beach. On a typical Saturday night, there may be 10 to 30 tables (with Seminole Hard Rock Hollywood at the high end) of cash going in a given room. About half of those tables will be $1/$2 NLH. While most rooms, especially the larger ones, fall off during weeknights, cash activity remains high. At some place like The Big Easy the drop off is negligible; they may average 15-16 tables on a Saturday night, and only be down to 12-13 tables on a Tuesday evening. The nightly “free” 7pm tournament may help to keep the volume steady. We have detailed activity for each individual room in that room’s Poker Room Review.

So there you have it: the pros and cons of the South Florida poker scene. We were surprised to find our poker experience in South Florida so different from what we see in New England. It was a great place to visit, but not quite our style for tournament play long-term.

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1 Seminole Way,FL 33314Fort Lauderdale

Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Hollywood features 13 restaurants, 20 bars, a 69 ft² concert venue, 9144 ft² casino and a 4.5 acre lagoon-style outdoor pool. Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino includes free WiFi and is 7.3 mi from Hollywood Beach.

A mini-bar, flat-screen TV, and iPod dock are standard in Seminole Hard Rock rooms, as are polished hardwood furnishings, leather accents, and music décor. A pool view is included with some rooms.

Rock Spa® features massages and beauty stylists while the pool area features water slides, cabanas, and a sun terrace. Guests can stay entertained with on-site bars, lounges, and comedy clubs. The gaming area features 200 table games, 3,100 slot machines and a 45 table poker room.

Council Oak Steaks & Seafood and Kuro offer American and Japanese-inspired fine dining. Asian Fusion, Caribbean, and Italian cuisine are offered at 3 other restaurants. Snack bars are also available.

Everglades National Park and Sun Life Stadium, home of the Dolphins, are 15 minutes’ drive from this Hollywood, Florida property. Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport is 8 mi away.

Rooms: 6

Hotel Chain: Hard Rock

Facilities of Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Hollywood

General

• WiFi in all areas

Activities

• Golf course (within 2 miles)
• Stand-up comedy

• Happy hour

• Live music/Performance

Food & Drink

• Restaurant
• Room service
• Bar

• Breakfast in the room
• Vending machine (drinks)

• Vending machine (snacks)

Pool and Spa

• Sauna
• Fitness center
• Spa
• Massage
• Hot tub/Jacuzzi

• Turkish/Steam Bath
• Outdoor pool
• Outdoor pool (year-round)
• Waterslide

• Pool with view
• Pool/Beach towels
• Swimming pool

Front Desk Services

• 24-hour front desk
• Newspapers

• Baggage storage

• ATM on site
• Concierge

Common Areas

• Sun deck

Entertainment & Family Services

• Babysitting/Child services
• Casino

• Entertainment staff

• Nightclub/DJ
• Evening entertainment

Cleaning Services

• Daily housekeeping

Business Facilities

• Meeting/Banquet facilities

• Fax/Photocopying

Shops

• Hair/Beauty salon
• Gift shop

• Shops (on site)

Miscellaneous

• Non-smoking rooms
• Facilities for disabled guests

• Elevator

• Air conditioning

Safety & security

• Safe

• 24-hour security

Safety features

• Staff follow all safety protocols as directed by local authorities
• Shared stationery (e.g. printed menus, magazines, pens, paper) removed

• Process in place to check health of guests

• First aid kits available
• Face masks for guests available

Physical distancing

• Physical distancing rules followed

• Screens or physical barriers between staff and guests in appropriate areas

Cleanliness & disinfection

• Use of cleaning chemicals that are effective against coronavirus
• Linens, towels, and laundry washed in accordance with local authority guidelines
• Guest accommodation disinfected between stays

• Guest accommodation sealed after cleaning
• Property cleaned by professional cleaning companies

• Guests have the option to cancel any cleaning services for their accommodation during their stay

Food & drink safety

• Physical distancing in dining areas
• Food can be delivered to guest accommodation

• All plates, cutlery, glasses, and other tableware sanitized

• Delivered food covered securely

Internet

WiFi is available in all areas and is free of charge.

Parking

Free public parking is available on site (reservation is not needed).

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Policies of Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Hollywood

These are general hotel policies for Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Hollywood. As they may vary per room type, please also check the room conditions.

Check-in

16:00 - 22:30 hours

Check-out

06:00 - 11:00 hours

Cancellation / Prepayment

Cancellation and prepayment policies vary according to property type.

Children and Extra Beds

Free!One child under 3 years stays free of charge when using existing beds.

Free!One child under 3 years stays free of charge in a crib.

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One older child or adult is charged USD 30 per night in an extra bed.

The maximum number of extra beds in a room is 1.

The maximum number of total guests in a room is 3.

The maximum number of cribs in a room is 1.

Any type of extra bed or crib is upon request and needs to be confirmed by management.

Additional fees are not calculated automatically in the total cost and will have to be paid for separately during your stay.

Pets

Pets are allowed on request. Charges may apply.

Accepted credit cards

• Mastercard
• Visa
• Carte Blanche
• Discover
• Diners Club
• American Express

The property reserves the right to pre-authorize credit cards prior to arrival.

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Food & beverage

The Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Hollywood has a variety of restaurants and bar that serves an extensive selection of dishes.
Guests can enjoy fresh seafood at the Bluepoint Ocean Grill, the famous chicken wings at Hooters, or oak-smoked BBQ at Renegade Barbeque.

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Travel information

Your Florida vacation paradise is easy to find. Located on State Road 7 (U. S. Highway 441), just north of Stirling Road in Hollywood. Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino is easily accessible from the Florida Turnpike, I-95, I-595.

Important Information

If your reservation includes a food and beverage credit, please note that the credit is only valid at select outlets and must be used during your stay. Unused value does not roll over to subsequent days. Please contact property for details.
The resort fee includes:
• Wireless internet
• Unlimited local phone calls
• Fitness center access
• Self-parking
• Personal assistance with printing your boarding pass
• Access to Hard Rock and Guitar pools as well as Lagoon Complex and pool towels

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