Cellar level, under the Stüva
The Sensor Room
The Sensor Room is this hotel's own casino: a room in the cellar of the post house, under the same roof as the bedrooms, staffed by people who also work the desk upstairs.
It isn't a neighbour or a different address, and nobody steps outside to reach it. From the desk you walk along the hall, go one flight down the stone stair and follow the cellar passage for thirty-five steps, past the boot room, to the door. Someone is at that door every minute it's open.
- Hours
- Wednesday to Sunday, 20:00 to 01:00.
- Size
- Seven tables and a short bar.
- Age and ID
- 18 and over, passport or identity card on every visit.
- Dress
- No ski boots and nothing damp from the warm room.
The room itself
On a weekday in November three tables are usually enough. Over Christmas, through February and on the weekend of the ski marathon the casino floor runs all seven, and then the door keeps a count and asks new arrivals to wait in the lounge upstairs until a seat comes free.
The walls are the original rubble stone, limewashed, and the floor still carries the two iron rails the sledges were dragged out on, set flush into concrete in 1964. It's a quiet room. No music plays in the casino; the ventilation hums and the low larch ceiling takes the edge off voices. There's a clock over the bar, and staff will tell you the time whenever you ask, which gaming rooms are not famous for.
The dress rule is about the route, not about style. The passage runs past the boot room, so ski boots come off there and stay there before the casino door: on the old rails they're lethal and on stone they're loud. Nobody comes in damp from the warm room either, which happens more than you'd think when it's one corridor away.
Age and identification
Swiss law sets the casino age at 18. Article 72 of the Federal Act on Gambling (Geldspielgesetz, SR 935.51) requires every casino to keep minors out, and The Sensor Room applies it with no exceptions, guest or not.
Identity is checked each time you come down, not once per stay. A guest who ate in the Stüva an hour ago still shows a document at the door. A passport, a national identity card or a photo driving licence is accepted. A picture of a document on a phone is not a document.
At no hour does anyone under 18 go through that door. That includes the morning, when the room is empty, the doors stand open and the cleaners are working; there's a locked gate at the foot of the stair for exactly that reason.
Limits and stopping
Staff on the casino floor will set a limit with you. Name the amount before you sit down, they write it on a card and they hold you to it. If you don't ask, they offer.
Stopping is arranged in person at the desk upstairs, never at a table and never by phone. Self-exclusion starts the same evening and is lifted only by coming back to that desk, in person, and asking for it.
There's no credit in the casino and no cash machine anywhere in the building. The bar stops serving half an hour before the tables close.
This website offers no gaming
The Sensor Room is a land-based casino inside a hotel in Sils Maria, and that is all it is. This website describes the room and the house. It runs no games, takes no bets, opens no accounts and handles no money.
To play, you come to Via da Marias 12 in Sils Maria, show a document at the door downstairs and sit down at a table. That door is the only way in, and none of it takes place on this page or anywhere else online.