Burst Water Pipe Impacts Play at New Encore Boston Harbor Poker Room
Tales of plugging leaks abound after players at the brand new Encore Boston Harbor poker room was partially inundated by water from a burst water pipe that players and casino staff alike rushing from the tables as torrents of water rained down onto a portion of the upscale room on Friday evening.
The indoor water storm forced a temporary halt to action in the 72-table room as the casino’s engineering staff rushed to control the problem. A couple of hours later, play was able to resume at 62 of the room’s 72 tables. The 10 other tables, in a single upscale parlor, received the brunt of the water damage and will require more repair or replacement.
Several players captured video of the event, which opened for play just one month ago. Here’s one such piece of footage, posted on Twitter by local player @justatrucker99:
Uh oh!!! Encore Boston. #encoreboston pic.twitter.com/iC86yCIq4Z
— DICKARULES (@justatrucker99) October 18, 2019
The need to rush for cover took a moment to register with players. “All of a sudden, like, it’s raining from the ceiling,” player Nicole Straight told a local news outlet. “I was like, ‘I better get my chips because who knows, chips are cash.” Most of the room’s players were quick to grab those chips, but few fled while leaving said chips at the tables. Straight herself thought that at first the falling water might have been one of the “artistic flourishes”, as a local report described them, that are common elsewhere in the csino.
“I said wait, this is actually water falling down here, this is not a water feature,” Straight added.
Encore Boston Harbor staff was quick to notify the public of the unusual situation, offering several public updates on Twitter. Here’s the core of the event.
6:20 pm:
Unfortunately tonights 7 p.m tournament will be canceled due to flooding, sorry for any inconvenience.
7:12 pm:
Still hopeful to reopen the poker room at 7:30. There is a huge crew working as fast as they can.
7:35 pm:
The poker room is back open, thank you for your patience.
12:50 am:
The poker room will be worked on through the night. We are running with 62 available tables for the time being. Huge thank you to the players for your patience with this water damage. The 11 a.m. 30K tournament will run as normal.
Such events of course occur, though most often they occur during torrential weather and at older structures, as happened when the arrival of monsoon weather caused numerous leaks and brief delays in the Brasilia Room at the World Series of Poker in mid-July of 2018. Here, though, the newness of the facility almost certainly infers a construction issue that will result in an insurance settlement from one of the casino’s construction contractors.
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