my local casino takes $ out of the bad beat jackpot to buy the "free" cookies and hot dogs for the poker room

Yea, live cash rake sucks pretty badly too. I really miss stars/tilt

I play tournaments in Portland, OR where tournament rooms are aplenty and most charge a standard $10 daily membership fee. The law requires that 100% of the pool be distributed to the players, and the dealers must not accept any pay or tips. When you play multiple tournaments in a day, you're getting a great price. When you play the $20 satellite into the 10k guarantee, the $10 price feels outrageous.

Live poker blows. You gotta buy gas and fight traffic just to get to the casino. You gotta put your name on the waiting list and wait an hour for a seat. You gotta tip for each 'free' drink. You gotta tip each time you win a pot. You cannot turn off chat so you gotta sit there and listen to a thousand bad beat stories told by assholes over and over. The House rakes are outrageous. You can only play on one table at a time. I once played in a low limit hold em game at a casino with the same nine guys...the game lasted all night...and ALL nine guys lost money...there were NO winners...except the casino and waitresses and dealers...
I will forever miss party and Paradise and stars and Fulltilt. I really DON'T like or even wanna play live poker.

satch -

I actually agree with some of the stuff you've said. It confuses me why we as a group go to the places that have the smallest rake and the most player-friendly atmosphere possible. If there's 200 or 300 of us that go to one place over another, it'll send a message. Doesn't even have to be pros - every recreational player would want to follow, too.

 

Originally Posted by scarface_79

the wsop is outrageous, it makes hundreds of millions from espn, endorsements, the table action it brings in, and on and on, and yet still, has the highest rake of any major tourney series. its a joke, and I dont see why there isnt an organized effort by the players to stop this, particularly big names that have major pull. And if harrahs doesnt tone down the straight robbery, the top players just make their own tourney series, ppl will follow the names, especially if its better.

came in here to say pretty much this, played two live sessions since black friday, this is one complaint and I am going to be emailing and calling some rooms to give them my two cents. Incentives are mostly terrible to, most comp u like $1 per hour LMAO

one other comlaint is overall smoke, ya some poker rooms are pry filtered nicely, last place i played was decent, still hate the casino air tho. other casino i played at ppl r literally 5 feet at times smoking because tables and PR is that close to reg. casino area

fucking live

please dont play there

 

Originally Posted by jeppg1111

please dont play there

I sat down the first time going there and thought the pot looked funny after i pulled it in, asked how much he raked outta it and found out. If it was in the US i wouldn't consider ever playing with that rake, but kiwis are so far behind the game it is crazy profitable, even for someone who isn't great at cash games at all. Altho the 50bbs is annoying as fck.

these rake numbers r gross, i never realized how steep some were, this needs changed bad, or atleast up my comps yo

Live poker blows! No reasonable comp will be even worth the killer rake these live casinos charge.

Yeah, i was there. It is disgusting. I obv won't play anymore events there. I also made sure to blast them in their B&M thread on that other forum.

 

Originally Posted by Wein

satch -

I actually agree with some of the stuff you've said. It confuses me why we as a group go to the places that have the smallest rake and the most player-friendly atmosphere possible. If there's 200 or 300 of us that go to one place over another, it'll send a message. Doesn't even have to be pros - every recreational player would want to follow, too.

I obviously nominate The Venetian as the go-to place in vegas this summer over the wsop. Last summer the wsop management started a $225 daily tourney to compete with the venetian deep stacks (the tourney announcing guy basically said as much); so, i think the venetian is definitely on their radar. I haven't analyzed the prize pool/buy-in ratio to quantify it but at least the staff at the venetian treats people well, dealers are among the more competent in town, and food service is easily attainable. My experience with harrah's properties has been far less than the venetian in these respects.

I've never heard anyone say anything remotely close to a harrah's tourney staff doing a 'good job'; (unrelated obv) kinda the opposite of the grand lux at the venetian-i've never heard anyone say anything bad about it. imo, we got very unlucky when the wsop got sold to harrah's.

As far as people that don't like live poker (most of this will be completely obv for most)-live poker is a different beast. I could never beat online poker (a sure sign that I suck), but I am at least profitable in the live arena. Another way of saying it is some (obv not all) of the stuff that isn't profitable online can be advantageous live-look for spots to modify your game. Example-I limp or call a raise pf with my big PP's (OMG-that's horrible, right?); yeah, alot of these live players (allegedly) aren't paying attention-but when I show down these hands I always get one or two "you didn't raise preflop?" comments. I find that they are paying attention but view poker as played the 'right' or 'wrong' way-an almost complete lack of flexibility within their frame of mind. I am playing 1/2 NL, btw-not alot of great players. Being in Las Vegas, most of these players (even some of the better ones) are here to 'play some cards' and enjoy the vegas environment. $1 (tip)for a free drink!!!??? that's part of the charm that gets a good deal of these players in a mental state that leads to easy money. I have to tip every pot!!!!??? just how it goes, the dealers are providing a job/service; the casino is providing a venue-it all costs money. Doyle made his millions live; if the internet players are far and away better than the avg live player then the tips won't make a dent in your hourly. but, of course, they will. intenet is an ideal medium for alot of reasons (effectively no overhead and no labor costs) but, for now, that option is gone. adapt and overcome the live scene, quit bitching, as simple as that. I see the same 'old, live, withered nits' walk out everyday having won; do they suck? maybe. but they figured out how to get where they wanted to go. 20-25 hands per hour/single tabling: this is obv going to lead to increased variance-two days ago I had a player shove 37o into my AKo-do I want this? well, yeah. did I win the hand? well, no. and some nights when that happens it's gonna be tough to recoup that loss (in that night). my point being that with a much more limited number of hands you have to adjust your mindset as well as your play. $1/hour comp; fairly standard-bellagio only started comping a couple years ago and that room was packed when they didn't offer comps. Also, i'm not sure how much profit these rooms are making regardless; a dealer at the bellagio the other day said that the room didn't make much and they definitely have plenty of business.

evidently the venetian is going to be remodeling their room sometime in the near future (I guess expansion is part of it). as well as they treat their guests, I think 'we' should be frequenting this room as much as possible to send the message. hell, we make them vegas' number one place and maybe they'll work with 'us' and offer better rake or increased comps, or whatever.

I didn't intend to say anything profound in this novel. just thoughts off the top of my head; been playing alot of 1/2 live lately and, well, it can be boring (especially for me as i've been running kinda bad-see AK vs 37 hand mentioned) which can lead to a non-concise rant.

and no, fuckers, I don't have a newsletter you can subscribe to

I can't remember the exact number but Harrahs makes like 5-6th place $ before every WSOP tourney starts which is fucking incredulous! i don't know how much it costs to run a tournament but I know it isn't 5th place $ every tournament and ppl smarter than I should figure this out and we need a players union.
Obviously this isn't the NFL & players but we need to have a voice and a choice and boycott tournaments that rape us too hard. Big names would certainly help but the online base makes up a hugeeee % and if we stood together (highly unlikely) we could reach our goal.

Oh and if I have to listen to one more fucking dolt asking "how much is that?" or "how much do you have behind?" I am gonna vomit.

Being forced to listen so some of these morons is so lame. Nothing worse seeing an idiot slobbering down his greazy ass food, suckin on his teeth and licking the shit of his fingers.

Perma life tilt after yesterday.

Live poker sucks and ive had two pretty profitable weekends at it. It's slow, a lot of people dont know how the action goes. You get shitty dealers. It's just absurd that they have these issues and have had them for soooooooo long.

I played a $200+30 at foxwoods on Friday. I had a deaf guy at my table so obviously he went a bit slower and didnt understand a lot of things and would take a good 1-2 minutes EVERY hand to make his decision. This slowed our table down and I think we got about 5 hands a level at max. There was a hand where a short stack was all in, one guy flatted and another min-raised all in. it was possibly 3BBs more for this guy to call for an insane amount of chips. He took 13 minutes, THIRTEEN FUCKING MINUTES to make a decision when I called the clock on him.

Live poker sucks, I really miss stars.