Thai Food and I headed down to the Motor City Casino to try their poker room.
It's nice enough. Covered parking, free water, prezels, chips and soft drinks for players. A computerized waiting list with pagers. Automatic shufflers at each table.
I like the auto-shufflers - Thai Food does not. I say any time you can get a human's hands off the deck you are safer in a game with strangers.
We called in to get on the list and move up during travel time. You have one hour to check in after you call in.
Called in at 11:30 am, got there at noon and I got on a table at 1pm, just to give you an idea of the wait time. I signed up for the $3/6, $5/10 and $10/20 limit and the $50/$200 NL action.
I got called to the $3/$6 table. Played 6 hours. The rake is brutal - especially at that limit. It is 10% to a max of $6. This table was the classic NO FOLDEM Holdem game. I was licking my chops as I waited for the blinds to get to me. Six or seven players saw each flop!
It was a 10 handed table, and full half the time. Nine players the rest of the time. The staff was very very slow filling our empty seat.
Since there was so much action, we didnt get the usual 30 hands an hour. I would say we got maybe 25 an hour. The casino raked $6 x 25 hands x 6 hours I was there. That is $900 evaporating from the players in a $3/$6 game. Ouch!
The table had exactly two winners for the six hours I was there. One cashed for around $200 and the other was up around $800 when I left. In a $3/$6 game with that punishing rake! The table was so loose, but these two guys seemed to be the only ones that raked in pots consistently.
I saw approximately 150 hands. I won exactly three hands all night and not the ten to fifteen or so I should statistically expect to win - hence a sound thrashing and a loss of around 19 big bets.
Better luck next time.- Nik Faldo
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3 comments:
How did Thai Food do? What was his opinion?
Very interesting, after reading that I think I would rather lose my money right at home on pokerstars.
Matchy
Matchy, you can't beat the atmosphere of a live game. I hate donating to the coffers of Kwami, and am worried about getting killed leaving the casino, otherwise I would try to get down there more often.
But my point in the article was just to point out, playing higher stakes makes more sense. It is the same rake but it is a smaller percentage of the stakes. This is critical to winning long term.
That is why you cannot beat NPP for a poker game.
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