As first reported in Ante Up Magazine, Dover Downs Hotel and Casino promoted Peter McGuire to poker room manager in February. He has been with Dover Downs since 2010 and has managed all three shifts in the poker room. That provided a thorough understanding of how things work between shifts and departments, which in turn made the transition to manager much easier. I recently had a chance to interview McGuire.
How are you running the room differently from your predecessor? I am building on the work of my predecessor. There have been some subtle changes, such as changing the tournament structures. We also offer more guarantee payouts for daily tournaments. Since early April, the dollars and points earned while playing poker have doubled. This is an excellent demonstration of how much we appreciate our poker players.
What can players expect from a room run by Peter McGuire? Three words: friendly, professional and consistent. Additionally, we are expanding the games that are offered. We will soon be offering pineapple and crazy pineapple, which are two new games our players have been requesting. The poker staff is doing everything imaginable to make the Royal Crown Poker Room the best place to play poker in Delaware.
What do you think of the phrase “a poker player’s manager” and do you consider yourself one? Absolutely! We treat all players equally in our poker room. If it is a player’s first time or they have been here a thousand times, the player should feel comfortable in a room managed by Peter McGuire.
Do you play poker and, if so, where? Yes, I like to play when I get the opportunity. I usually play in the other poker rooms in Delaware and casinos in nearby states.
What can we expect from you and Dover Downs? (We are) home to the Delaware State Championship, which will be held on Sept. 8. To attract even larger crowds for this year’s event, we have lowered the buy-in and increased the starting chip stack. The poker championship is our biggest event of the year. There are bigger tournaments and additional promotions in the planning stages.
DOVER CRUISES: Be sure to ask the staff at Dover Downs Hotel and Casino about their Ante Up Poker Cruise giveaways. The cruise will be out of Baltimore on Nov. 10-17.
A-CURE CHARITY EVENT: Rolled Up Poker hosted a charity event to benefit the Lupus Foundation of America on April 7 in Richmond, Va. Former world champ Jerry Yang was on hand for the event.
Dawn Buchanan won the event and a $555 World Series of Poker Circuit seat. She was followed by Mark Yurga ($325 WSOPC seat) and Shawn Rueger ($190 WSOPC seat). The tournament raised $2K for the foundation.
The next charity event for Rolled Up Poker will be June 15 at 7 p.m. at the Holiday Inn in Richmond. Contact Joseph Hutter at 804-484-0144 for more information.
— Michael Young is the Ante Up Ambassador for the Mid-Atlantic area. Email him at anteupmike@gmail.com. Ante Up Ambassador Mark Rhoades contributed to this report.
