1st time B&M, Spirit Mount in Oregon

A friend and I decided to head to Spirit Mountain for a day of poker. I've never been to a B&M and he'd only been once. We played 3/6 (which is my normal online amount). I thought about playing higher limits, but figured I'd just hang out and try something that might be relatively easy. Table waits were also a concern. We got there about 11:30am and had a 60 minute wait. By 1pm, the wait was probably 3 hours.

Play was mind bogglingly passive. I watched a table for about 20 minutes and never saw a preflop raise. Many pots were checked down, even with the near nuts. Players were either near 100% to the flop or very tight. Not many people seemed to play in between.

Bluffing is non-existant. Value bet things to death, but you won't push some of them off even ace-high.

So, pluses:
- Loose, passive tables
- Non smoking. Can't even begin to say how important that is to me. There's smoke in the casino in general (just not in the poker room or slots just outside of it), so there's a waft of it, but it's pretty tolerable.
- Comfy chairs, noise level is tolerable, all around decent place.

Cons:
- Slow. Maybe 20-25 hands an hour.
- The drive (about 70 minutes for me)
- The rake. It's unbeatable at low levels. It's 10% with a $3 cap, plus $1 goes into a jackpot every hand. You just can't beat that in the long run. Nearly 3x the effective rake I pay online. If I tripled my online rake I'd be a massive loser instead of a 3BB/100 winner.
- Did I mention slow?

It was fun as an experience, but it's hard to imagine playing to actually win money unless you're playing 10/20 or more. At those levels the rake would be beatable. But even if you're were a 4BB/100 winner, you're talking about $20/hour at best.