bay 101 new spread limit game?

[B840]

I heard a dealer at Bay say they were starting a new spread limit game yesterday? Can anyone confirm? Has anyone tried it out? How is it?

[SumZero]

I can confirm and provide some details as I played yesterday:

Starting yesterday 5/29 they were starting the signup for their spread limit game that was supposed to start at 9am. I was there for the 9:45 am tournament and signed up and played before and after the tournament (my poker claim to fame could be that I won the very first cash spread limit pot at Bay 101 [at least in this iteration of cash game spread limit, I don't know if bay 101 used to have spread limit in the distant past], I was big blind with 92 of hearts and everyone folded to me for a profit of $3. lol). They have two limits, with yesterday 1 table of each:

2-2-4 spread limit 4-100, 100 max buy, 40 min buy (blinds are button, sb, bb). There is no minimum to enter the pot (you can limp, and yesterday there was a lot of limping). At any point you can bet any amount between $4 and $100 (except you have to raise at least the previous bet unless you are a raise all in for an amount less). The collection is supposed to be $4 pot if there are 7 or more players and either there is a flop or an opening bet. That is even if the action goes folds, bet, all fold and no flop is dealt there is still supposed to be a full $4 collection. Yesterday the dealers were pretty bad about collecting the full $4 in that situation and often only collected $1 but the floor was very clear and aggressively correcting the dealers that the full $4 drop goes in that situation. If there are 6 players the drop is $3 instead of $4. If there are 5 or less players the drop is $1. All fold to the big blind is $1 collection. All fold to the small blind who agrees with the big blind to a chop is $1 (who got the extra $1 in this chop situation changed based on dealer, sometimes it was sb closer to the button sometimes it was bb). No 3-way chopping. People are allowed a one-time short buy if they bust. People (including dealers and some of the floor) weren't sure what you'd have to post if you moved through the blinds or missed your blinds, and typically just waited for the blinds to arrive to keep things simple. New players posted $4. You can't buy the button when you come in new (and presumably if you come in after missing blinds). Live straddling of $8 was allowed and tried a couple of times. For the $100 buying you usually got $80 in yellow $5 chips and $20 in blue $1 chips. The dealers were definitely getting a work out as I don't think they had much training on the new game and remembering to always give change to the blinds (who often blinded a $5 chip then limped (get back $1) or folded (get back $1 on bb, $3 on sb and button)) while taking the correct drop and enforcing the max buy-in cap was challenging.

2-3-5 spread limit 5-200, 200 max buy, 50 min buy (blinds are button, sb, bb). Same as above, I think, but I was playing the $100 game.

During the spread limit tournament generally there was a full table with a few people on the board. Once the tournament was over we usually had no board and 7 or 8 people at the table. Sign up is with the low limit board (the 2-4 through 8-16 hold em sign up place). Judging by the table talk a lot of the people in the $100 game were 6-12 and 8-16 limit players. Although with it being a holiday Monday I don't know what that will be like usually.

While the tournament was going on the play was bad loose agressive. After the tournament and for most of the day yesterday the play was bad loose passive. Lots of people would not bet enough to price out draws and would call large bets with dubious holdings. Like, not even TPTK stacking off to sets and two pair but inside straight draw with 1 card to come or middle pair bad kicker stacking off to top pair. I'm mainly a recreational low limit online SNG player and occasional live tournament player; cash games and cash game NL is not my forte (I was only really playing because my hard drive crashed and I'm without personal non-work computer for a week), but I left the $100 max buy in with over $1000 after ~6 hours yesterday and felt both my luck and personal quality of play was normal (although I did drop $100 pre-tournament and lost my $120 buyin to the tournament so the net was only ~+$750 for the day). Although there was the odd decent player, I'd say at all times yesterday at least 1/2 the table was super fishy (and most of the fishy players would rebuy a number of times after busting, so it wasn't a 1 and done situation). From a couple of glances over the play at the $200 max buy in table was a little less "family pot" oriented but didn't seem super tough either. Again, although, the caveat is that it was a holiday so the typical non-holiday play may be different. Also there were a few table confrontations and floor confrontations (and one player might have been given a temporary ban or something) going on at the $200 table. I think they were fighting over angle shooting and new player mistakes with people bringing a large stack of chips in their hand over the line, dropping some-but-not-all of the chips into the pot for a raise, or else putting in a $100 chip facing a smaller bet and saying/not saying raise or saying raise but waiting for a while to say how much and others folding and acting on the action as if it was a raise to $100. The mood at the $100 table shifted between a pretty friendly and sociable table and a pretty quiet table and was never uncomfortable or hostile while I was there.

[IHateKeithSmart]

Nice writeup sum. I'll be in the bay area this week and will probably try it out.

[bemydemon]

This is great news. San Jose needed some sort of no limit action. Let the feasting of the limit donks commence!

[kjander]

Don't quote me on this but I thought that in the preface of Antonio Esfandiari's(sp?) book Phil Laak wrote about the super soft spread games at the 101 around 2000.

Again I could be wrong, didn't read the book, just teh preface and vaughly remember something abotu spread limit.

[phu_dawg]

City ordinance unfortunately says that the max that can be bet at any one time is 200. Hence Bay 101 used to have a 20-200 Spread Limit game up until about 3 years ago. Not enough action, so they shut it down. Of course, Bay 101 now has more action than it can handle.

I think the new Spread Limit game is a response to Garden City's Spread Limit game which has a similiar structure and has been running since January.

Gaaaaawwwd. I wish Bay 101 had NL. I'd stop playing online.

[B840]

I made it down there last night to give it a try. When I arrived, neither game was running. I talked to the floorman and he said they both broke up because they sucked. I jumped on 8/16 for a while to see if they got one started. I kept pressuring the floor person to sell the game a little bit. The sign up list for it is on the left hand side of the low limit side. I don't think anybody even really knew that they had the new games. I didn't really want to play the smaller game because I already knew how retarded it was. I only wanted to play the 2/3/5, but they only set up 2/2/4 game. I'm not sure what the minimum to come in with in the bigger game? If it's a minimum of $10 to see the flop then the game should get pretty good. I played for for about 3 rounds only playing one hand, KQoff from the big blind. I ended up winning $40, but it was soooooooo slow. I love going to play the 2/3/5 at lucky chances, but it's about an hour drive for me. On a good day you could win $2000 +. Bay needs to set up a $10-$200 with a $500 max buy in. That would be perfect.