2+2er owned and operated poker room

[anduril]

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can you realistically expect to draw customers away from Foxwoods? Particularly customers who play anything higher than 1/2 NL? (maybe you don't care if you only spread smaller stakes at your place).

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I play at FW all the time and a) everyone that plays there regularly hates the place; the building, the drive, the dealers, the floors, the cashiers, the waitresses, everything. b) tons are from the boston or worcester area. a boston room would cut the drive anywhere from 40-100 minutes each way. he will have absolutely no problem stealing business - even more so at the higher levels because those players are all the more fed up with FW.

to OP, I question your ability to get a license. I expect this even when it's legal to be pretty difficult to get, it's not like opening a subway.

Can the people familiar with CA fill me in on how hard it is to open a room there? Can I just buy a place and start it up? I just can't imagine it's that easy.

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We're working on finding that answer right now. It may even be too early for someone to give us a good answer, since they don't know what they want themselves.

[Rearden]

PM Tworooks

He already has a home casino where his mom comps people happy meals.



Or on a serious note I think the equation of risk (both legal and in issues of security), competition (with perhaps established underground games or with casinos), and time requirements (setting up games, gaining a base, problem solving in general) make it such that you would likely make more money in that time period (and be safer) just grinding.

[Tigermoth]

Slots will pay the overhead and then some. Poker doesn't make casinos that much money, at least comparably.

Unless you have a lot of money to start off with, I'd avoid table games at first. Wait until you have more money socked away. I'm sure others will have different views of this.

If it's legal, it'd be silly not to have slots.

I agree with the poster who said that if you just want poker, provide a floating game. If you want to make money, put slot machines in. You can get one for about $10,000, and it will pay for itself within two weeks (longer, ofc, if you don't have regular slot players).

You need a ton of money to start this up.

This is coming from someone with first-hand experience.

Good luck!

[El Diablo]

anduril,

I went through this process when there was talk of allowing licenses in San Francisco. I had a group of investors in place who were interested in opening a high-end (think Bellagio/Wynn) atmosphere poker room in the city. A couple of key members in the group were people who were very closely tied to the SF political scene, lobbyists, etc. We had very strong inroads towards getting a license. Unfortunately, things stalled in the political process and poker rooms did not become legalized within the city limits.

To the other poster, getting a license for a cardroom is incredibly hard in California. There are two types of licenses, Indian-affiliated ones and other. The other category in any decent location requires big, big money and political influence to obtain. The Indian category generally involves getting close to a tribe and operating an establishment with them and paying them a big chunk of the profits. That also requires a lot of influence and money to get involved with - the Indian gaming business and related lobbying groups are very serious business interests and very hard to break into.

For something like this, I would focus pretty much all my energies on finding out what the process is to get a license, who you'll need to have on your side, who the right lobbyists are to get involved with, which politicians you'll want on your side, and so forth. That is likely to be by far the hardest part of this process. The real estate, operations, hiring, and cardroom management things are all things that have been done many times before and in the relative scheme of things in the business world, not all that complicated.

[El Diablo]

Rearden,

"you would likely make more money in that time period (and be safer) just grinding."

I disagree strongly with that. Even a handful of tables running say 12 hours a day is a ton of cashflow.

[Rearden]

El Diablo,

Assuming the OP has the backing and doesnt run into any problems I would agree that as an established product with multiple tables, etc. it would out do simple grinding. I think the point of my post should have been that getting there might not be easy and quite frankly the OP may never get to that solid and succesful point.

I imagine risk::reward would vary greatly based on finances, region, demand, law enforcement, etc etc. That being said I can see it working or the OP having been better off spending him time playing as opposed to fronting the games.

[anduril]

El D,

how did you first contact or get in touch with the right lobbyists/politicians to get investors and licensing in order? Did you know them beforehand or were you just small time as we are?

[El Diablo]

anduril,

Friends of mine from the business world who I have been close with professionally and personally for many years who are heavily involved in SF politics. I have no idea how you would quickly develop those types of relationships other than tons of networking. I doubt I would have even explored the idea if I didn't have friends who were heavily involved in fundraising and campaigning for candidates involved in the process.

In the bar and restaurant world there are "expediters" who work in gray areas to help get permits, licenses, etc. taken care of for big fees. I imagine there are individuals like that floating around in all such areas.

[anduril]

I just read an article from the state treasurer regarding the most likely scenario to be privately owned casinos and a competitive bidding process for licenses. Do you have any idea of a ballpark figure for what a license in SF would've cost?

[El Diablo]

and,

Wouldn't have worked like that in SF and I don't think it works like that in other municipalities here. The process would have been a bunch of people submit applications, and some limited number get approved. Those approved pay minimal application/licensing fees.

If it were put up to competitive bidding and were highly limited, I could imagine them going in the hundreds of thousands at least.