I recently went on a casino journey, I spent about a week or so traveling different casinos around the country, playing blackjack, slots and poker at each one of them to see how they much they can differ from one to another. But recently I stumbled upon a casino in Palm Springs, first off I hit up the blackjack tables, then the slots, then I moved on to the poker room. I walked in, looked around and didn’t see any players or dealers, so I walked back out to make sure it was the poker room, and sure enough it was. If it wasn’t for the sign I would swear that I was in an abandoned arcade hall, there were about 7 tables, but only 2 people in the entire room: me, and the hostess.

I really could not believe what I had in front of me, anyway, I already was there and I wanted to at list give it a try and check how the things worked in this place, so I took a seat in one of the poker tables. It looked like a regular 10 seat table at the first glance, but instead of having all the regular elements in a poker table, I started noticing that there were no dealer, no chips, and no cards. Instead, they put a 32" plasma screen in the middle, and a 14" screen at each seat. This is how an electronic poker table looks like, I was speechless for the first 30 seconds, and then asked the hostess: "What happened?" and she simply replied with a dull voice – “We changed over to electronic tables”.

She was kind enough to let me try the new table as part of a demonstration, but it just was not the same without poker chips or cards or a dealer, it is more a synthetic version of poker, at list when you play in an online poker room you normally feel comfortable, however, the electronic tables feel more colder and impersonal. Your cards are dealt to you on a screen, face down, and to see them you cupped your hand over top of them and they would flip out. Then on the big 32" screen, the community cards are dealt. The game is a lot faster, but I mean, the reason I go to a casino is to get a break from the online poker bad beats and to play the game in a more personal way. All I know is that the majority of players I know prefer the old way, including myself,  and by the amount of people in the poker room, I think it's safe to say that players in Palm Springs think the same way.