[TxRedMan]

[ QUOTE ]
I'm 99% sure that it doesn't cost money to get a players card. I've just never gotten one because it doesn't seem to offer any real advantage to me.

No casino pays out the full jackpot, I've read other threads on here that say as much - it's a buffer for the casino to ride the float.

As for complaining about the rake, I have to find it funny that a 5/10 PLO player is complaining about it, but then I play 4/8 limit and 5/10 O8.

You sound a lot like a guy I was talking to the other day who was saying he could bring a 20/40 game to the room but he would want the rake dropped to $4 instead of $5. Uh, ok...

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I never spoke to you about a 20/40 game. If I ever have enough clout in Texas to get a game together on a regular basis, I'll open my own room or take the game to a place that respects the players. You couldn't pay me to send players up to that bleeding [censored] hole. When Texas legalizes poker, I have every intention of opening a room that gives poker players a fair shake. As a business owner and a poker player, I'm apphauled at the practices in some poker rooms, and the utter lack of common sense and intelligence displayed in some rooms, Winstar especially. It's almost as if some junior college MBA wannabe is running that room, someone with no poker experience, and no business sense. If they legalize poker in Texas, I promise you Winstar's poker room will be a ghost town.


But I really want you to understand the following point, please read it carefully and really try and think about what i'm saying, because it applies to you and everyone else, and it has a huge impact on your hobby or career as a poker player.


When I first started playing, I didn't care what the rake was. I was excited to drag a pot, and I didn't care about the rake, and I used to tip $5 per pot. I was a losing player at that time. Then I found twoplustwo, I got chastised in the forums, and I started to analyze my game and grow as a player. Slowly I started to realize lots of things. One of them was that I played a lot of poker, and I paid a lot of rake. I realized at that point I had played live poker for a year, and that I had likely paid $30,000 in rake alone, combined with an estimated $15,000 in tips. I realized that if I didn't have to pay the rake, I would have been a winning player that year. Then I started comparing the rake in my underground Dallas game to the same game in different places. I realized that in the same game online, I would have only paid about $10,000 in rake, plus I wouldn't have tipped a dealer, making me a winner for the year. The same game in Las Vegas or Los Angeles would have cost me about $15,000 in rake. So if I had been playing somewhere besides Dallas, I would have been a small loser, and if I had been playing online I would have been a decent winner.


At that point I also realized I'll be playing poker for as long as I have the ability to do so, and that I'll be paying rake as long as I do. So where I give my action is dependent upon the competition and the rake. Just to give you an idea of how abusrd your comment about a 5/10 PLO player complaining about rake is- if I gave my action for the next ten years to Winstar at their current rake, the difference in dollars would be roughly $150,000 in comparison to the legal card rooms elsewhere in the country. Just because you might see me dragging a $5000 pot doesn't mean I'm playing at stakes that are impervious to the rake.



That's what recreational players dont understand. It's one game, and it never stops, right? We've all heard that before. Stop thinking about the $150 pot you just dragged in your $4-$8 game, and start thinking about the thousands of pots you'll drag over your tenure as a player, and think about the long term effect of what that extra rake does to your bankroll. I can pay $12 per hour at The Wynn and earn $1.50 per hour in food comps, and I can assure you that Steve Wynn isn't running a poker room that's losing money. He makes money off that room. Same goes for the Bellagio. They've got the biggest market in Las Vegas, they make money, and they dont rip off the players like Winstar does. So why does some greedy and poorly run poker room in Oklahoma get away with charging double, triple, sometimes more than quadruple the rake for the same games while simultaneously being cheap and greedy with a simple food comp? You have a voice, and you have a choice. If you want to play at Winstar I have no problem with it, but for the sake of the poker community, please consider forming an opinion on the rake they're raking and compare it to other casinos, and then write a letter. I wrote a letter this morning.


For me, I'd rather play online or spend more time in Las Vegas than pony up to the table feeling like some sucker giving action to someone who might as well be laughing in my face.




-Tex