Kansas City: Lowest NL is 2-5, casino adding 1-2, what happens?

[TheStation]

Some background, currently we have 4 poker rooms in Kansas City but the lowest NL HE games at all of them is 2-5 NL with a $100-300 buyin and some rooms allow you to buyin for up to 75% of the big stack in an established game

Harrah's is going to add a $1-2 NL HE game with a $100 buyin in early March. The floor said this was in response to 3-6 fish requests to play NL with smaller blinds. Seems -EV for the casino as 3-6 LHE will rake more than any NL HE game. The only thing I can think of with 1-2 NLHE is taht it will take people longer to go broke and therefore pay more rake than if they played the 2-5 game.

Currently on a Friday (and some Saturday) nights there will be 5 3-6 LHE games and 7 2-5 NL HE games (they have 12 tables so its full). I am wondering what will happen to the games once the new 1-2 NLHE is implemented.

At the same time they add the 1-2 NL HE game they are also going to allow you to buyin for up to 75% of the big stack in the 2-5 game but maintain the $100-300 buyin. (I personally wish it would go to $200-500 w. 75% rule)

I am guesing that the 7 NL games might change to 3-4 tables of 1-2 and 3-4 tables of 2-5 but was wondering if anyone has had experience with this happening at their local card room and how the games went.

Also, there will now be unique poker dealers in the poker room and not share with regular floor table games. This was exciting to me as it should hopefully get all of the top dealers permanently in the poker room for their shifts.

[AKQJ10]

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Seems -EV for the casino as 3-6 LHE will rake more than any NL HE game.

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How do you figure? Have you played in a live $1-2 game? It doesn't usually involve a lot of blind steals.

Also giving the fish what they want is unlikely to be -EV compared to sending them to whatever room spreads the games they wish to play.

[TheStation]

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Seems -EV for the casino as 3-6 LHE will rake more than any NL HE game.

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How do you figure? Have you played in a live $1-2 game? It doesn't usually involve a lot of blind steals.

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I am merely stating that a 3-6 game will get out more hands per hour than a 1-2 NLHE game. Also the 3-6 game will hit max rake of $4 (10%) a much higher % of the time as well, thus those two factors cause it to rake more

This is a little off topic of the post though - moreso wondering what will be the prbably distribution of NL games and if it will all drop down to 1-2 or if a good mix will exist

[AKQJ10]

That's my point, that $1-2 pots generally hit $40 pretty regularly. The ones that don't don't take that long to play. You can't have it both ways. If everyone's folding preflop (which would be a rare $1-2 game indeed), then more hands should be dealt per hour. There may be a little more time taken for resolution of all-in hands versus people fumbling around trying to get 6 and 12 chips out, but I think that's minor. Maybe someone more knowledgeable will correct me.

As for your OP -- based on rooms with a $1-2 game, I would guess that will attract the passersby who "just want to play NL" and maybe some of the less-talented 2-5 regulars who know they're fish. I certainly would expect the $2-5 to get noticeably tougher.

[bav]

Adding NL1/2 will half-ruin the NL2/5 and could even kill it. People tend to aim for the lowest NL in the room, whatever that may be. If NL1/2 is available, they go there. If NL2/5 is all that's offered, they'll do that. So you're going to have many fewer fish in the NL2/5 game since they will instead be in the 1/2 game.

Rio was NL2/5 as the smallest for a while and it had some nice games. Then they started doing NL1/2 and suddenly the ONLY people ever playing NL2/5 were the locals--every visit to Rio I'd look at the NL2/5 table and recognize like 8 of the 9 players there (if they even had 2/5 going). But there'd be 5 tables of NL1/2 going. Same happened at Mirage...used to be NL2/5 was the bottom of their NL and the games were great, then they added 1/2 and the fish are far less common in 2/5. Rio, at least, had a change of heart and stopped offering 1/2; they're back to 2/5 as the smallest NL game and the games are better.

[coltrainSTL]

There are multiple 1/2 NL (200 max buy) AND 2/5 NL (500 max, no 75% rule) tables going pretty much every night at the Harrahs here in St.Louis.

[cardcounter0]

What will happen? There will be close to 12 tables of 1/2 NL. Prepare for all-in pushfest donkaments. They might keep 1 table of 3/6 which will be super rock nit city and 1 table of 2/5 NL which will be the same 8 guys all the time.
All the rest of the tables will have the game changed from NL Texas Hold 'Em to 1/2 NL Texas All-In 'Em.

[TheStation]

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There are multiple 1/2 NL (200 max buy) AND 2/5 NL (500 max, no 75% rule) tables going pretty much every night at the Harrahs here in St.Louis.

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The same poker room manager from Harrah's St. Louis is also handling the Harrah's Kansas City room. St. Louis is a bigger (not huge differance though) market than KC. The STL room also has 18-20 tables if I remember right and does have a good variety of limits. It should be interesting to see what happens here.

I think in an ideal world they would open 3 1-2 NL HE games then open 4 2-5 NL HE games on a Friday night and just let the 1-2 list build up really deep and keep the 2-5 list shorter and force some people to move up but that is just me being selfish. It probably wont be the worst thing in the world if the 2-5 gets tougher just so I can be forced to play a little better.

I mainly just dont want the 2-5 to die and I dont want it to get where there is one or two 2-5 games and the list is super deep becuase they cant open another table because of so many 1-2 games running

[ChicagoVince]

Almost the exact same thing happened at MS2 in Chicago. It used to be that the only NL game was 2/5 with a $50 min/$200 max buy. A few months ago they upped the buy on the 2/5 NL to $100/$300 and they started spreading a 1/2 NL with a $40/$100 buy-in.

The 2/5 NL game still goes strong, but the competition did get tougher. The weakest players moved down to 1/2. However, most of the 1/2 traffic seems like former 3/6 and 6/12 LHE players and new players that wouldn't have even walked in the door if there wasn't the 1/2 NL option. Hopefully the same thing will happen in your room.

The overall effect has been more people in seats on the weekends, which is when I play. That's good for the poker room and good for the poker community. The game that might have suffered is the 6/12 LHE. It seems like its tough for the room to get that game going on the weekend, but I'm not sure because I don't play in that game.

BTW, the room has 21 tables. On a weekend night there are usually 4 or 5 2/5 NL games going 3 or 4 1/2 NL games going occasionally 1 5/10 NL game going and the rest of the tables are filled with different limit games ranging from 3/6 to (occasionally) 10/20 and usually 1 or 2 tables of 3/6 Omaha H/L.

[AKQJ10]

How exactly is this scenario worse than having a $2-5 stagnate because the fish don't want to keep losing so much money, but can't go down to $1-2 so they just quit? As always, the fish get to decide what games get spread and the sharks comply if they want to keep playing in good games, not vice versa.