Pechanga Poker & Ponies

By Brian Robin

Tacked to the wall in Richie Lopez’s glorified cubicle of an office are large sheets that resemble those motivational posters you see in a dorm room or cubicle near you. The motivation coming from these, however, all emanates from Lopez.

That’s not surprising to anyone familiar with Lopez and how virtually everything in the Pechanga Resort Casino poker room emanates from the fertile mind of a ponytail-sporting poker lifer who found his dream chair as the assistant director of the Temecula, California resort’s poker room and OTB parlor. That is, if things aren’t emanating from the unceasing mind of Lopez’s boss – Pechanga’s Vice President of Table Games, Mike May. Or the creative minds of two of Lopez’s chief lieutenants – shift managers Star Pulver and Adam Baker, architects of Lopez’s new wallpaper, whom he calls the “backbone of the operation.”

That’s where the wallpaper in Lopez’s office comes in. One day, he called his supervisors and shift managers into his office, handed them sheets of paper and had them write down everything they thought the Pechanga Poker Room and OTB Parlor needed to make Poker and Ponies better for the guests.

The suggestions were as plentiful as card combinations from the nearby tables during a typically busy Friday evening:

“Social Media – More Info, More Often.”
“Double Jackpots.”
“Get Back To Our Roots – Accountability.”
“More Shuffle Machines.”
“A Car (Giveaway) A Month.”

“My motto is to teach and build from within. It’s not just about poker here. It’s about life training and people skills,” Lopez said. “We have a lot of employees here who have been here for 10 years or more and I believe the longevity here is because a lot of individuals here feel empowered to share their input with the staff.”

Lopez took the suggestions and wallpapered his office with them as a reminder of not only how he can improve on what is already one of the best value bets for Southern California poker players, but how he can keep his 129-person staff engaged and motivated to continue building on Pechanga’s well-earned reputation as the friendliest, most value-oriented poker room in California.

“I play poker, so I’ve played in a lot of different card rooms and when you walk in, you’re basically nobody. They point you to a table based on what you want to play and say, ‘It’s over there,’” said the courtly Pulver, someone so talented and knowledgeable about the poker community that Lopez said he recruited her after she left a nearby card club in Oceanside.

“Here, we actually wait at the seat for you, we greet you (and) we tell you what’s going on for the day. I have my supervisor introduce themselves when they start a game, so those players know who they’re dealing with for the day.”

David Vered, a consultant from nearby Fallbrook, plays at least twice a week at Pechanga. He came for the convenience and stayed for the friendly atmosphere.

“What keeps me coming back is it’s very convenient and it’s very comfortable here. All the dealers and floor people go out of their way to know you by name and ask how you’re doing,” he said.

What keeps Vered and a multitude of others coming back isn’t merely the fact that Pechanga is the largest resort casino in California. Nor is it that their poker room – located on the second floor above Pechanga’s sprawling main casino — is undergoing a renovation that includes new chairs, new big-screen TVs and a new 90-seat OTB parlor that features 22 TVs simulcasting races from tracks around the country and Australia. An OTB parlor – it should be noted — that opened as others at casinos around the area are closing.

The value begins the moment you sit down at one of Pechanga’s 40 poker tables, which feature a $4/$1 drop, one of the lowest rakes in Southern California. When you play one of the daily tournaments at Pechanga, you’re playing a tournament with a guaranteed payout, regardless of field size. And when you decide to check out the OTB parlor, you simply get up from your seat, walk over to the room adjacent to the poker room, look up to see who’s favored in the fifth race at Santa Anita or the ninth at Belmont Park and place your bet at the window.

There is no admission charge for Pechanga OTB – a rarity akin to a unicorn sighting among California OTB rooms. Nor is there a charge for coffee, sodas or water.

What there is at Pechanga are many eyes firmly fixed on the Big Picture.

“The cutesy phrase is Pechanga is all-in on poker and OTB, but what that really means is we’re not here to grind out more money from the customer like our competitors are,” May said. “We would prefer to run more games to make more money as opposed to trying to take more money out of each individual player.

“We know about bankroll. Bankroll is an important thing for us as operators. We understand players come with a bankroll they want to bet and we want to help them have an opportunity to bet their bankroll and not have to worry about paying for parking, paying for drinks and being grabbed for everything. Our perspective is we value our customers and we want to make money by having more games and not taking money out of their pocket. That’s important.”

That focus on the big picture via a relatively small entity in that big picture like Pechanga’s poker room and OTB parlor speaks volumes about how the resort looks at each property and how it looks at growth. Located in the Southern California Wine Country, about halfway between San Diego and Riverside, Pechanga recently underwent a 27-month, $300 million expansion that nearly doubled its room capacity to almost 1,100, expanded its already palatial spa facility to 25,000 square feet and created a 40,000-square foot events center and a 4 ½-acre tropical pool complex that features a dedicated restaurant, swim-up bar, three pools, two waterslides, a fountain and spacious cabanas.

“A lot of people compare us to card rooms, but we’re not a card room. We’re a resort casino,” Lopez said.

While this was happening, May was lobbying the Pechanga Band of Luiseño Indians, which owns and operates Pechanga, to throw in an OTB parlor for his poker room. It took May several months of convincing before Pechanga OTB opened last August, but the reason he did this illustrates not only why Pechanga has gone from simple trailers to its status as the largest casino in the most populous state in the country in a mere 15 years, but how he, Lopez and their staff constantly look for the next opportunity.

“A lot of times, people ask me, ‘Why do you want to take someone off the blackjack table to go play OTB?’ I tell them I’m looking for the player who wants to come here and play blackjack BECAUSE we have an OTB and a poker room,” he said. “It’s all about providing choices for our customers, where people think ‘If I go to Pechanga, I can play all this stuff, as opposed to if I go somewhere else, where I can’t play poker or I can’t bet the horses.

“We’re providing value and choices. You might be someone who is coming here for dinner and we advertise a poker class or a handicapping class. So while your wife is getting a massage in the spa, you’re taking a handicapping class or poker class. If we can have that role in enhancing the overall experience on what Pechanga is, we’re one more part of the pyramid of what this property is all about, which is giving people the opportunity to do something they didn’t expect.”

Something he didn’t expect is exactly what brought Baker from an Indio casino to Pechanga, where he serves as one of three shift managers under Lopez. Even though he cut his teeth in the old-school poker room way of one-person/one-job/stay-in-your-lane, Baker is typical of the type of people Lopez looks for: friendly, adaptable, open-minded and as versatile as a Swiss Army Knife.

Because to work for Lopez, you have to be all of the above. Over just a one-hour span one busy Friday night, Baker handed out chips to players, helped direct a tournament that had just begun, answered several questions from players, then assumed his position on the podium, overseeing “The Pencil.” That’s the Excel spreadsheet that basically provides a blueprint on what is happening at any given moment: dealer schedules, the games going on at that time and the number of players at each table, the drops – you name it. It’s basically the Pechanga Poker Playbook.

When you work for Lopez, you learn that playbook. Shift managers run chips to players and clerks help out as tournament directors. Supervisors run tournaments, help with the Pencil, and coordinate dealer schedules. It’s a movable feast of duties; Baker quipped that “We’re the Henry Ford of poker rooms,” and everyone from clerks on up can handle all of them.

“It’s a different mindset here. It’s not just about poker. It’s about life-training and people. Our model is to prep them so they can go where they want to go. It’s all about leaving a footprint on their career,” Lopez said.

“I have not seen a property that provides as much training for employees as Pechanga Resort Casino. It’s not just gaming oriented, it’s life-skills oriented,” Baker said. “Richie Lopez was really innovative in the way he structured this room. We’re like an onion; there’s so many layers, but everybody plays a role here and everybody can play everyone else’s role.”

This explains the synergy between May and Lopez and between Lopez and his staff that explains why Pechanga’s whole is greater than the sum of its parts. May can conceptualize something like the need for an OTB room, get it approved by the tribe, and then leave it for Lopez to operate. Or Lopez can conceptualize the way he wants to run his poker room, then have May go all-in, make his couple visits a day – he makes a point to make it up to the second floor and check in on things at least once a day — and meander on his merry way, knowing one of his favorite domains in the casino is meandering on its merry way.

But when it comes to roles that are hard to fill, we come to the first face May – or anyone else – sees when they come to the poker room: Mary Lou Sanchez. The 65-year-old Sanchez, who does a credible impression of everyone’s favorite grandmother, is Pechanga’s chief poker clerk and like May – who went from craps dealer to Vice President at Bally’s Atlantic City before coming to Pechanga — thought she’d be a temporary player in the gaming business.

She was hired as a cook 21 years ago, found herself as a server, then a bingo clerk, then – back in Pechanga’s days of having its poker room in the basement – became a chip runner. For the past 11 years, she has literally been the face of Pechanga poker, greeting guests, taking phone reservations for tables and seamlessly directing players to their games.

And Sanchez can do this literally on sight. She is so good at her job that she remembers people by the games they want to play. Pechanga regulars merely have to walk in, say hello, receive a warm greeting back and they’re on their way to an open seat in their favorite game without telling Sanchez what that game is.

Because she already knows.

“The other day, I had a player who was in the hospital for a year. He came in and I said ‘You’re Pat, aren’t you?’ So I put him in the game he liked. I know the games my customers like to play. I talk to my players and I enjoy being with them,” Sanchez said.

“She is the only one who works for me who is allowed to call me ‘Mikey.’ She’s it,” May said. “She is an extraordinary personality here. There are certain people who do jobs that they simply own and she is one of them. She is a cog in the machine here that makes it all work.”

And she is one of the reasons why May frequents the Pechanga poker room more than once during the day. And one of the reasons why Pechanga’s poker room continues to draw players from all over a poker-saturated region that features seven poker rooms within a 50-mile radius.

Value, choices, and endless promotions that Lopez, Baker, Pulver and their staff conceive and execute, as well as impending tournaments with six-figure guarantees in the pipeline. Rest assured, the wallpaper of suggestions in Lopez’s office on how to improve on all this will grow, because if there’s one constant at Pechanga, it’s a constant desire to improve the experience for its players.

“I’ve been in this business for 38 years. I’ve run OTBs. We understand gambling here. I love the horses and Richie will play a horrible poker game every now and then, but we understand that mentality,” May said. “We’re not a couple of accountants standing up in the room looking at it. We have a gambler’s experience and it’s very important that when we speak to the customer that we speak the same language. That’s really important from my perspective.

“We do a thing with the younger tribal members when they come in and I love to remind them what their grandparents built here while other casino corporations were going bankrupt. You don’t have to have a PhD from MIT to make something valuable and make it work and this property is an extraordinary example of that across the board.” ♠