22 Names, Zero Tables: Encore Boston Harbor's Phantom $5/$10 List

Twenty-two players signed up for $5/$10 no-limit hold'em at Encore Boston Harbor on the night of May 23, and not a single table was running.

Not one table. Not a short game. Not a must-move. Zero.

That 22-name waitlist is the highest raw count at any stakes, at any room, across all of New England — and every single one of those names was staring at a screen waiting for a seat that didn't exist.

That 22-name waitlist is the highest raw count at any stakes, at any room, across all of New England.

The Numbers Behind the Phantom List

Encore's $5/$10 NLH game typically carries a median waitlist of about 10.5 names. The 22-deep list logged late on May 23 more than doubled that median — a ratio north of 2x normal demand.

The math is simple and slightly absurd: 22 divided by zero tables is undefined. You can't calculate a per-table waitlist when there are no tables. The demand was real. The supply was not.

Everett, Massachusetts, is not a city most poker players outside the Northeast think about. But Encore Boston Harbor — the $2.6 billion Wynn Resorts property that opened in 2019 — has quietly become one of the most active poker rooms on the East Coast. A phantom waitlist this deep at $5/$10 says something about the player pool that raw table counts miss.

What a Phantom List Actually Means

A waitlist with no open tables doesn't mean the room is broken. It usually means one of two things: either the room hasn't spread the game yet and is waiting for critical mass before opening a table, or existing tables broke and demand rebuilt faster than the floor could react.

Either way, 22 players put their names down for a $5/$10 game in a region where most rooms top out at $2/$5. That's notable. The buy-in range for $5/$10 NLH at Encore typically starts at $1,000. Twenty-two players willing to sit with that kind of money on a late-May evening — and willing to wait — tells you something about the appetite in that room.

Boston Keeps Showing Up

New England poker doesn't generate the same volume of chatter as Las Vegas or even South Florida. But Encore consistently posts some of the strongest mid-stakes demand numbers in the country relative to its table count.

A 22-deep phantom waitlist won't make national headlines. But if you're a $5/$10 player within driving distance of Everett, you already know: the game is there. The seats just aren't — yet.