Center - Tampa

I play poker quite often there and I must say hands down it's the best poker room around. Gretchen goes above and beyond to ensure everyone has a great experience. I had an issue with a guest Gretchen came over listened to both parties and was very professional. The guy ended up apologizing and we enjoyed the rest of the evening. Gretchen deserves a raise! Thanks, Vic

We hit this Hard Rock Tampa Casino twice a year and enter the Poker tourneys and play cash games. The poker room is massive with 46 assorted game poker tables. They have a great food bar at the back of the poker room and an area to eat. A small but beautiful full bar near the food bar. Very friendly poker dealers and the managers always say hello and seem to handle any issues quickly and professionally. Many crazy good restaurants and bars in the casino. Beautiful wall to wall decor and rock memorabilia. Very clean bathrooms and amazing hotel room. Great place to play and have fun.

This place is HUGE. Every turn I found new rooms with more tables and slots. There are two floors with the 2nd floor being non-smoking. While walking the entire establishment I found a non-smoking section in the first floor and I found a basement-level Poker room. Poker room is an understatement as the room was the size (sq foot wise) of a basketball floor. Massive number of tables. Spent some. Lost some. And, won some. I did leave with less than I arrived with, but not by much.

Another review update, six years after my last. Due to the smoke, this was the first time I've been back, to see a show. The new hotel tower is quite nice. The rooms are large, with electronic doorbell and privacy indicators so you aren't looking for a do not disturb that someone stole off your door. Ours had a huge shower with both super hot water and super high pressure/flow, which is helpful to pressure wash the caked on cigarette smoke residue off your body when you come back to the room. The casino... ugh, still as bad or worse than it always has been. I think with the additional square footage it may actually be worse. You simply can't escape the constant stale cigarette smoke. I've spent hours and hours in some really nasty dives in Vegas, but the past three years have been split mostly between Vegas Park MGM and Baha Mar in the Bahamas, both of which are smoke free. Walking in this place last night it was like walking in the door of a dive bar and having someone come blow their smoke in your face. I have no clue how this property has invested countless hundreds of millions in expansion and can't afford air filtration. There is an upstairs smoke free area, but no craps table, so I couldn't go up there since that's all I play. I played craps for four or five hours last night till 3am, and even getting back to the room exhausted, I had to shower because I just can't go to sleep smelling like that. This issue ruins the meals too. The smoke drifts right into Council Oak and Hard Rock Cafe. So, probably will be another six years until I visit again, which is very sad because I could play craps all day every day, and now that they have real craps at this location, I'd be there frequently.

Disclaimer: I did NOT come here for the games (I don't gamble), but I did come here for an event with my partner. This is actually a really nice venue where we went to go see the Impractical Jokers perform a live show. We came hours and hours early so we had plenty of time to kill beforehand, which is not at all hard to do at the Casino. We checked out the displays of the guitars and outfits worn by famous musicians that are accompanied with a written description of each item, so we used it has something of a museum for music through the ages. They had displays of guitars for various musicians like Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam, a jacket worn by Justin Timberlake, and outfits worn by the likes of Gwen Stefani, Cher, and Nicki Minaj, which was interesting to check out. The facility is clean and easy to navigate around, and we had no problem finding the event hall. The staff there were helpful in showing us to how to find our seats, which were quite comfortable, and we were able to enjoy ourselves for the night. I've been to events before where it's hard navigating in and out with uncomfortable seating, so this was a nice change of pace.