Does NL ruin card rooms? (longish)

[DrMega]

Sorry if this isn't the right forum, and/or if it's been beaten to death before...

Our local card room just re-opened poker after a couple-year hiatus. They're spreading 2/4, 5/10 and an occasional 10/20 game. They recently began offering a once-a-week pot-limit HE game and in a week are going to offer a weekly 3/5 NLHE game.

People have frequently been asking about no-limit and after the recent announcement have asked why only once a week. The reply is that it will ruin the cardroom by decimating the limit games. One employee even said it would take away from the "high-limit" games; this puzzled me as I'm rarely able to partake in a 10/20 game during the week (it's pretty consistent on weekends though). The same response for why they'll never offer 1/2 NL. It will take away from 2/4 and 5/10 limit.

To be fair, it's a new cardroom in a fairly rural area that doesn't get much tourism this time of year. They typically have only about 3-5 tables running weekdays and 10 or more on weekends. But at the Monday night PLHE game I see a bunch of faces I NEVER see during the week.

Question is, do NL games really detract from a cardroom that much? It seems like bad business to me, but at the same time I can't imagine a casino not doing what's best for them financially.

Could it be that limit players don't bust out as fast so they pay more rake over a longer time? Anyone heard anything like this before?

[RR]

Until the poker boom most rooms would not spread NL. Their thinking about what NL can do is pretty accurate.

[MicroBob]

Mason has written a lot about this in various essays.
NL had no chance and kills poker-rooms.
It was dead for a reason.

This was before television made NL so popular. Now NL is actually thriving because everybody wants to play that game where "you get to go all-in."
Nobody knows how long it will last.

Your poker-room might have some old-schoolish type thinking.
Or they might be factoring in that it's in a rural area so aren't going to draw too many outsider-tourist types to continually fund the games.

[SplawnDarts]

[ QUOTE ]

Could it be that limit players don't bust out as fast so they pay more rake over a longer time? Anyone heard anything like this before?

[/ QUOTE ]

That's the key. If I sit down at a casino table with 10 inferior limit players and we play till the money is gone, I get 20% of it and the house gets 80% (ignoring for now the fact that even in favorable freezout circumstances I won't always be the winner). Now if we do that same experiment @ NL, I get 80% of the money and the house gets 20% because it will take a much smaller number of hands to bust them all.

Additionally, in a non-tourist economy, where there aren't big influxes of cash into the room, people who go bust at NL aren't going to be easily replaced. The seat will just sit empty until they grow some more wool or a new sucker moves into town.

[Cooling Heels]

Does the cardroom also offer high profit casino games such as blackjack?

A small casino with mostly regulars and few tourists must be carefull not to bust out their high profit blackjack,slot,keno, etc. players. They don't want a guy who normally comes in once a week to play $25 a hand blackjack to lose his bankroll playing NL poker. The cardroom profit is small relative to blackjack.

[steamboatin]

Capping the buyins help a lot towards slowing the kill rate of the fish. As soon as the casinos begin to remove the caps, NL will die out again. (Mason had an article, 2+2 mag I think but maybe a post, talking about how some of the Vegas casinos are removing the caps from their larger NL games and what was about to happen.)

I have a personal observation from Caesar's IN. The $2-5 NL was uncapped and was a huge game for a while but slowly began to die and was dead for all practical purposes. They added a $1,000 cap and the game quickly recovered and now goes on a regular basis.

[SplawnDarts]

[ QUOTE ]
Capping the buyins help a lot towards slowing the kill rate of the fish. As soon as the casinos begin to remove the caps, NL will die out again. (Mason had an article, 2+2 mag I think but maybe a post, talking about how some of the Vegas casinos are removing the caps from their larger NL games and what was about to happen.)

I have a personal observation from Caesar's IN. The $2-5 NL was uncapped and was a huge game for a while but slowly began to die and was dead for all practical purposes. They added a $1,000 cap and the game quickly recovered and now goes on a regular basis.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah, that sounds about right. There aren't many people who can have their wallets lightened by 3-4K per week and keep playing.

Don't get me wrong, my best games are NL and I wish it was possible to build a robust player pool around it. But the facts don't point to that being possible without a lot of tourists.

[DakotaKid]

[ QUOTE ]
Mason has written a lot about this in various essays.
NL had no chance and kills poker-rooms.
It was dead for a reason.

This was before television made NL so popular. Now NL is actually thriving because everybody wants to play that game where "you get to go all-in."
Nobody knows how long it will last.

Your poker-room might have some old-schoolish type thinking.
Or they might be factoring in that it's in a rural area so aren't going to draw too many outsider-tourist types to continually fund the games.

[/ QUOTE ]

Mason's latest...

This is from the December magazine. Not sure how long the link is good, though, since they don't keep archives of those up forever.

He basically said that in the past NL games didn't last for those reasons already stated, but the influx of interest after TV poker revitalized NL games. He says the biggest difference today, in terms of vitality of the games, is the 100 BB capped buy-in. He also warns that as rooms lift (or remove) these limits it will likely lead to them drying up quickly all over agian.

[MikeRice]

When one of the bigger rooms opened here it was all limit 20+rooms 2-4 to 30-60 kill. 3+ tables of 30-60 on weekends I was told a few years ago. Then they gradually fazed in NL starting with one or two tables of 3/6 with a capped $500 BI.

People said we want more NL. Management says no they like the steady tables they have now and the steady rake stream limit provides. Fast forward 6 months or a year and they introduce 1-2 NL starting with only 3 or 4 of the 20+ tables. Lines get to be 100 deep on busy nights. Fast forward another year and a half. Only limit games that run are 2-4 and 4-8 usually one or 2 tables of each comprising of senior citizens. every second table in the casino is 1-2 NL. Management notices their rake revenue is down from the limit glory days and bumps the NL rake to $5 max +BBJ even for 1-2.

All of a sudden all the other venues in town look alot more attractive.

[atomicsoda]

No, it saved them. It is the most exciting game and what people want to play. young people do not want to play limit or even undrstand why people play it. NL is real poker as it is meant to be played, not an artificial game like limit with no room for creative thinking or individuality.