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Ed. note: For those who might have missed it before, we're reprising Robert Woolley's series of articles for poker players who are new to live poker. The series is great for newcomers, and likely useful as well to those with experience playing in casinos and poker rooms. Below find an introduction that answers some of the questions players have when deciding to play in a live poker room for the first time.
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This series of articles is intended for people who have played poker online and/or in home games, but have little or no experience playing in a 'brick-and-mortar' casino.
Casinos have rules, procedures, and points of etiquette that can trip up players on their first few visits — or at least confuse and mystify them. I hope to explain these for you in advance so that you don't get intimidated or embarrassed. Understanding them might also keep you from losing money by inadvertently breaking a rule during the game.
Articles in this series focus specifically on how poker in casinos differs from what you have learned from playing online poker or in home games, particularly in what might be termed its 'procedural' aspects. I work from the assumption that readers have enough experience under their belts at one or both of those other types of poker games to feel comfortable playing them and would like to try adding casino poker to their repertoire.
For this first installment, I'll give you a step-by-step guide for getting into a cash game. I'll cover entering a casino poker tournament in a later column.
Figuring Out What Games Are Available
So you've taken the trip to Las Vegas, Atlantic City, Tunica, Los Angeles, or any of the other many poker destinations that are now available in the U.S. and around the world. You've selected which poker room to patronize. Now what?
Your first step is to know what games are available. Poker rooms vary in how they communicate game availability to would-be players. Most now have a large-screen TV listing the games and the names of any people waiting to play. Some use a manually updated white board. The smallest rooms sometimes still use one person behind a desk with a simple piece of paper, and you have to ask what games are available.
Let's say that by one of these methods you learn that the choices are listed as follows:
- 2-4 limit hold'em
- 4-8 limit hold'em
- 1-2 no-limit hold'em
- 2-5 no-limit hold'em
- 4-8 Omaha-8
Often you'll see a number in parentheses after such listings, which tells you how many tables of each game are in play. Some places display the actual table numbers. (Each table in a poker room has a fixed identification number.) If there are names under the game heading, that tells you who is waiting to play.
What the Numbers Mean
The stakes of the game are communicated by the pair of numbers in front of the name of the game. Confusingly, the numbers mean different things for different games.
In hold'em and Omaha (i.e., the so-called 'flop games'), fixed-limit games are named by the size of the bets you can make. For example, '4-8 limit hold'em' means that the bets and raises are each $4 for the first two betting rounds of each hand (before the flop and on the flop), and $8 on the turn and river. The blinds in these games are typically one-half of those values, or $2 and $4 in this example, though some casinos use different structures.
Stud games (and draw games, if you can ever find one) follow the same convention — the numbers in the name of the game represent allowable bet sizes.
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But just when you think you understand that, you discover that no-limit games are listed differently. '1-2 no-limit hold'em' does not mean that the bets are $1 and $2 — that would violate the whole concept of a 'no-limit' structure. Instead, these games are named by the size of the two blinds, in this case the small blind being $1 and the big blind $2.
To make it even more confusing, a few casinos — most notably the largest ones in southern California — eschew the conventions I've just described in favor of a bewildering hodge-podge of buy-ins and blinds as the titles of their games.
For example, a '$40 NL' game will mean no-limit hold'em with buy-in of exactly $40 — no more and no less — with blinds unstated but understood to be $1 and $2. There are other variations used in these places that are too numerous to detail here. But don't worry — just tell them that it's your first time there, and they'll be happy to explain what the words, numbers, and abbreviations mean. Just about everywhere else, the explanations above will serve you well.
Buying In and Taking a Seat
Okay, so let's say you've decided which of the offered games you'd like to play. Now just approach the person poised to greet you at the entrance to the poker room and tell him or her what you're interested in. You will either be put on the waiting list for a opening, or, if you're lucky, directed or escorted directly to a vacant seat in an active game.
If you have to wait, be sure that you don't wander off to someplace where you can't hear your name being called. Some poker rooms now offer to call or text your cell phone when it's your turn, in which case you're free to go do something else while you wait. However, I think it's a better idea to stick around and watch (from a respectable distance) a game of the type you plan to play, in order to get a sense for what's happening.
Next you'll need to convert some cash into chips. But how much? The amount for which you can or must buy in to a game is related to the sizes of the blinds and/or bets, but not in any obvious or standardized way. Most commonly, the buy-in is capped at 100, 150, or 200 times the amount of the big blind in no-limit games. However, you can find poker rooms with substantially smaller buy-in caps, and some with no caps at all.
There's no reliable way to figure this out on your own; you just have to ask an employee. Limit games are often officially uncapped, but you'd be looked at oddly if you bought into a fixed-limit game for more than about 50 big blinds, because stack sizes are not usually an important factor in how the game plays.
Let's suppose you're going to play $2/$4 limit hold 'em, and you've decided to buy in for the maximum this casino allows for this game, which is, say, $200. There are four different ways you might exchange your cash for poker chips.
- The person at the front podium who signs you in might also serve as the room's cashier.
- He or she might direct you to a separate cashier's 'cage' to purchase chips.
- You might be instructed to buy your chips from the dealer when you sit down.
- After you take your seat, they might have a 'chip runner' take your money and bring you chips.
Again, which method a given place uses (and it can change depending on how busy they are) is not usually obvious, even to experienced players — you just have to ask.
Congratulations! You're past the first set of hurdles, and seated in your first casino poker game, with a fresh stack of chips stacked neatly in front of you. In the next entry, I'll start to delve into what the casino expects of you as a player at one of its tables.
Robert Woolley lives in Asheville, NC. He spent several years in Las Vegas and chronicled his life in poker on the 'Poker Grump' blog.
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Mason Malmuth, head of popular online poker community TwoPlusTwo, has taken the decision to stop accepting advertising from offshore poker room Americas Cardroom (ACR).
The decision has not been taken because ACR continues to accept US players without any regulatory oversight in the USA. In a post on TwoPlusTwo, Malmuth explains that he has become aware of several security issues affecting ACR and that despite raising these in a letter to ACR and Winning Poker Network (WPN) CEO Phil Nagy, he has not had a response.
“… according to many posters on our site, some problems have developed on Winning Poker Network and we in Two Plus Two management agree that they need to be addressed.
So, to this end, on Saturday February 24, we sent their CEO Phil Nagy an email letter where we addressed four issues: late tournament registration (which we now understand has been addressed), bots, possible super users, and other possible collusion. We also made some suggestions as to how some of these issues could be addressed.”
TwoPlusTwo doesn’t make money from subscription fees and relies on advertising and affiliate income for its revenues, so it has a strong incentive not to reject ACR’s business, nevertheless Malmuth explained:
“As of the time of this writing, March 1, 2018, we have not heard back from them and have decided to take the following action. Two Plus Two Interactive LLC will not accept any more advertising from Winning Poker Network and their sub-forum will be closed. Of course, this can all change if we do get a positive response from Winning Poker Network and they still want to advertise with us.”
Chicago Joey Ingram raises the alert
The current situation has come to the attention of poker players mainly because high stakes player and popular online poker blogger Joe “Chicago Joey” raised the issue on social media.
At the beginning of February, Ingram released the first of three YouTube videos attacking Americas Cardroom. He accused Nagy of failing to provide fair games that, in his opinion, were full of collusion and bots.
Ingram presented prima facie evidence that there was a security weakness in the algorithm for seating tournament players and showed statistics on players that provide strong indications that bots were active in SNGs and cash games even at the lowest stakes.
The evidence was presented alongside clips of Nagy explaining in interviews what his attitudes were to running an online poker room. Joey also said that he had discussed the issues directly with Nagy, but that he was unsatisfied with the response, and their “friendly” relationship had now been ended.
Any streamers & players that continue to promote @ACR_POKER to their audiences I will never work together with, promote, want anything to do with, etc. until ACR addresses the massive security concerns & their overall not giving a fuck attitude changes.
— Joey [GTO] (@Joeingram1) March 1, 2018
In short, Ingram’s complaint is that ACR rightly prioritizes player fund protection and making sure that players always get rapid access to their money, but that this isn’t enough. To genuinely look after the players, ACR must also address the very real issues of game security presented by collusion and bots, mainly emanating from Eastern European countries.
Phil Nagy responds to USPoker
USPoker contacted Phil Nagy to get his side of the story. In a long Skype call, Nagy’s frustration with the situation was very evident. He clearly feels that the criticism is unfair and believes that he takes game security more seriously than most of his competitors in both the US facing and rest of the world market.
Firstly, Phil acknowledged that some of Ingram’s criticism was fair. ACR did have an issue with the tournament seating algorithm.
Players who entered a tournament at the same time would indeed find themselves sat at the same table – a loophole that was exploitable by colluders. However, this algorithm has now been changed with a “hotfix” that was not widely publicized, although some players who had been affected by the problem were emailed about the change.
Nagy said that it was true that Ingram contacted him about the issues, and that he agreed to speak further about the issue. But when he had the conversation with Joe, he was on holiday with his family at Macchu Picchu in Peru, and didn’t therefore get a fair chance to reply before Joe posted his first video only eight days later.
Nagy says that any claims of being unable to talk to ACR about these issues are unfounded.
“We take phone calls, we take live chats. He could have got on the phone and talked to me!”
Nagy explained that he had even given Ingram his own personal Skype details so he could make contact.
Privacy issues are a barrier to communicating on security
One issue which Nagy raised which definitely rings true is that ACR doesn’t publish details of any accounts that it has banned for reasons of privacy. Talking off the record with a member of the PokerStarssecurity team, I have been told that they are also caught in this trap.
The operators would like to name names, but privacy laws and data protection provisions as well as general law make this difficult for them to do. The PokerStars security guy told me that contrary to popular belief, the vast majority of bots and collusion are identified by their own procedures well in advance of any complaints by other players.
As at ACR, action to ban these accounts is taken privately and in line with the site’s terms and conditions. Using the law to prosecute is beset with problems and only works in the most blatant cases.
“It’s my job to investigate, but not to say. That’s privacy, just like if your ex-wife called me to find out if you were playing.”
Phil Nagy explained that while hand histories have a value in identifying bots and collusion, “following the money” is much more effective.
“I know exactly where the money comes from and I know where it goes,” Phil explained. “Have we banned people and their bots? Yeah! Have we caught them? Yeah.”
But, he continued, if ACR were to abandon its privacy policy to “out” these players, everyone would hate the consequences – and mistakes would inevitably be made as some honest players could be banned in error.
Phil stands by his emphasis on making sure player funds are safe, something that both Mason Malmuth and Joe Ingram have praised, but he thinks that his efforts to ensure game fairness have not been appreciated.
He explains that the reason he has not taken to social media to counter Ingram’s claims is that to do so would be counter-productive and simply give credence to claims which he rejects as unfair.
From a business perspective, this PR strategy makes sense. Phil, himself explains that despite the appearance of this criticism on 2+2 forums and social media, “it hasn’t hurt the business.”
The real problem lies with US politicians
Watching Joe Ingram’s videos, a viewer can’t help but feel that he has a point. Security at ACR isn’t able to prevent collusion and bots. But then again, there is a war between cheats and online poker operators, virtually an arms race where the crooks constantly seek new ways to abuse and evade security systems.
2 Plus 2
The question is whether ACR and the Winning Poker Network are doing enough to make the games as fair as possible. Phil Nagy would say “yes,” and he too makes a persuasive case.
2 Plus 2 Poker Blog Online
In a free market, players would be free to make their own decisions, to enjoy the big money tournaments and VIP scheme that distinguish Americas Cardroom or to go to another site of their choice.
Unfortunately, that isn’t the case in the US.
As Ingram points out, for US players outside the states which regulate online poker, the choice is pretty much between ACR and Ignition – and Joe says that the problem of bots and collusion is if anything worse on Ignition.
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Players who want to play online poker in the US still have little choice. In states where politicians have failed to establish a safe, regulated market, the consequence has been to hand over the market to offshore sites like Americas Cardroom and Ignition or real-money sweepstakes sites like Global Poker.
No matter how much personal integrity someone like Phil Nagy brings to running his company, players can never have the same legal protection as they would have if their state allowed online poker under a legal framework.
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