FLORIDA ALLOWING POKER GAME STAKES TO BE RAISED IN JULY!

[ricdaman]

JULY 1, 2007 - THE POKER ROOM - JACKSONVILLE, FLORIDA - It was packed. There were double the normal number of players with waits up to 1 hour long for the NL tables. It was crazy at first as they tried to figure everything out, but things began to flow a little smoother within a few hours.

I knew they were going to run out of $5 chips, and they did. They begged people at the NL and $5 tables to color up to the $25 chips, and this seemed to fix the problem.

The games were loose as expected, and I saw people win and lose over $1,000. (Maybe I shouldn't have said that... some anti-gambling group is going to find that statement and use it against us). I played NL Hold'Em the whole time. The Poker Room decided to spread $1/$2, $2/$2, $2/$4, and $5/$5 limit games as well as a $2/$2 NL game. The NL game has a minimum rake of $2 and a maximum rake of $5. As expected, the rake is almost always $5, but averages about 5%. I took down the largest pot I saw ($700), but heard rumors of larger pots.

It took about 6 hours for the skilled players to overcome swings and win money, and the bad players to overcome good swings and lose all their money (in the NL game). At the end of the night, the only two good players I saw at my table (me and the guy to my left) ended up with all the chips (excluding those who left before closing time). I would predict that the games will stay loose and very profitable for only a short time. It seems like the poor players will be loosing their money very fast. I would estimate maybe 2-3 weeks of this really good action before things get a little tough. Looks like I'll be sick for a little while and have to miss some work (anybody know of a doctor I can get a doctor's note from?).

Even though Josh (the director of operations) and others at The Poker Room are working on hiring new dealers, chip runners, and security, they are way behind. The dealers were constantly running out of chips and sometimes people would have to sit out and walk to the cage to get more chips because the dealers didn't have any. They stocked the dealer trays with the same $1 denominations they had used for the $1/$2 limit games. Not too smart at a $5/$5 table. Also, the cage seemed to have a little trouble counting out cash for cash-outs. All those different colors get a little confusing unless they are nicely stacked in even numbers. 3 green, 47 red, and 18 white equal much dollars???

One final note. I heard that the tourneys, including sit'n'gos are going as high as $250 buy-ins and they are thinking about doing $500 buy-ins. Still the most common were the $65 and $100 buy-in tourneys.

I hope you enjoyed this article. Feel free to respond with your thoughts.

[Russ M.]

There's a thread in the B&M forum with people posting their experiences on Day 1 of the new limits. You should post this there.

[__seth]

woooow 10/25 nl at hollywood, i really hope these new limits aren't short-lived

will definitely be making a trip up soon, and probably eventually to tampa as well.