12 Names Deep, Zero Tables Open: MGM National Harbor's Phantom Nosebleed List

Twelve players are queued for $5/$10 no-limit hold'em with a mandatory 10 BB ante at MGM National Harbor in Oxon Hill, Maryland, and the casino hasn't dealt a card.

That's a $5/$10/$100 game. Buy-in window: $600–$2,500. And as of this afternoon, the table count reads zero.

Twelve players are queued for $5/$10 no-limit hold'em with a mandatory 10 BB ante at MGM National Harbor, and the casino hasn't dealt a card.

The Phantom List

A 12-name waitlist with no open tables is unusual anywhere. At a property outside Las Vegas, for a game structured like a nosebleed, it's borderline surreal.

The 10 BB ante turns a standard $5/$10 game into something much bigger. Every hand starts with $100 already dead in the middle before a single raise. Effective preflop pots balloon fast. At a $2,500 max buy-in, that ante eats through short stacks in a hurry.

MGM National Harbor's median waitlist for this game sits at five names. Today's count of 12 is 2.4 times that median — more than double the typical demand, all stacked up behind a table that doesn't yet exist.

Why It Matters

Twelve names is enough to spread at least one table, probably two if the room wanted to run them six-handed. The demand is plainly there. Whether it converts to felt time depends on the floor's willingness to open seats — and on whether those 12 names are still in the building or parked on the list from their phones.

Phantom lists — long waitlists with zero tables running — are a regular feature of Bravo data. They often appear for bigger games where the room waits for a critical mass of confirmed, physically-present players before calling a game. The higher the stakes, the more cautious the floor tends to be.

But $5/$10/$100 isn't a game you see phantom-listed at a dozen deep on the East Coast every day. This is a structure that, in most regional rooms, simply doesn't exist. MGM National Harbor is one of the few properties outside Nevada that regularly attempts to spread action at this level.

What Else Is on the Board

The rest of the MGM National Harbor card room picture will fill in as the afternoon progresses. For now, the $5/$10 ante game is the headline: 12 players, zero tables, and a structure that makes every open pot feel like a $2/$5 player's monthly downswing.

The floor at MGM National Harbor has a decision to make. The names are there. The buy-ins are posted. The only thing missing is a dealer.