Rockford Charitable Games: Trip Report

[frisco3]

I attended my first Rockford Charitable Games event yesterday in Waukegan, IL and did ok. I walked away with a $256 profit after being stuck about $275 early. I played the whole day at a 1/2 NL cash table from 2:30-11:45.

Interesting organization. Pretty well run. The tables have no rails and feel a little cramped, but not too bad.

The language takes some getting used to. The F bomb almost seems to be encouraged and players definitely follow the Mike Matasow school of behavior much more so than at a casino. Tons of college-aged players which contributes to this atmosphere.

I think they had at least 3 tables of 1/2 NL going, plus a couple of 2/5 NL, a few limit tables, and several tournaments going on as well. The event took up Ramada's conference rooms and one of the dealers told me this was about half the size of the Chicago-area events.

The dealers weren't very professional. They are "volunteer" dealers which seems to mean they work exclusively for toke. If it weren't for the "volunteer" name badge they wore, you wouldn't be able to tell they were dealers. Also, many of the dealers dealt a few hours, then sat down and played for the rest of the night, or vice versa.

Finally, one dealer actually commented on how badly a player's hands were shaking as he made a bet...DURING THE HAND. As it turns out, he knew this player quite well and he was actually another dealer as I found out later. Still, I found this to be an unbelievable broach of professionalism.

The play was pretty loose. There were often 4+ players seeing the flop after a pre flop raise.

They seem to have created a method to work around the $250 max rule (which I'm not even sure still exists). I had the largest stack at the table, so when someone wanted more chips, they would buy them from me. I would put the $100 in my pocket, they would get the chips, and the dealer would give me a special marker chip to represent the $100 in my pocket. That way, the money never left the table, and if/when I lost that $100 marker chip to another player, I was obligated to take the $100 out of my pocket and give it to that player. However, if I didn't lose it, I just kept that money in my pocket, gave the marker chip back to the dealer when I left the table, and it never figured into the money when I cashed out.

I'm not sure if that totally made sense, but the moral is that the $100 didn't figure into how much I won for cashout purposes.