[RR]

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Watch the money lending. Every underground room I played in had to lend money or stake players at some point to keep games going. Don't let it get out of hand and be prepared to write off some losses.

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Money lending is the key to a good underground game. We often lent moeny to peopel we knew weren't going to pay us back, it was like paying a prop. What you have to be prepared to do is if someone owes money and quits coming you have to get them back in the game. Normally what we did if someone was one th books and quit comming around we would call them up and tell htem not to worry about that jsut to come back. If they still didn't come around we would call them again and offer an incentive to return ("don't worry about that $1k you owe us, come down and I'll put you in the game for $100 and see how you do"). The key to this is being on top of how much you are loaning out versus how much the game is dropping. If the game drops $150 an hour it is a good move to "loan" $100 an hour to keep it from breaking up.