All aboard for the fourth installment of the Great American Poker Trip. For those of you just joining us on this leg of the trip, my name is Jack Laskey and I’m a co-host of the Just Hands Poker Podcast. My co-host (and fellow Cardplayer Lifestyle contributor) Zach Resnick and I have seized upon a great lack of other opportunity to take a road trip across America playing poker and seeing the country. Here, I am documenting highlights from the trip and exploring the microcosms of poker culture I’ve experienced throughout my journey. Last week we were in South Florida, and now we are in  the state capital of Tallahassee.

Creek Entertainment Gretna

The aforementioned lack of opportunity was put on hold for this part of the trip. Zach had to fly back to NYC for a conference and I was tasked with getting the car to New Orleans where we’d meet a few days later. Not wanting to do too much driving or too little poker playing on any given day, I devised a four-day itinerary. I’d spend a night each in Tampa and Tallahassee and two nights in Biloxi, MS, a road-tripper’s stone’s throw from New Orleans.

After a forgettable night playing in a terrible $5/$10 game in Tampa, I set out for Tallahassee. I arrived at my hotel on the late side and almost decided not to play that night. The thought of this very article, however, motivated me to get back out of my hotel room and head west 25 miles to the Creek Entertainment Gretna (CEG). The CEG is not on Bravo Poker Live, the essential poker app that tells players what games are currently happening, how many tables are running, and the length of the wait lists at live poker rooms around the world. Driving through the pitch-black Florida panhandle without the assurance of the Bravo app, I was sincerely concerned that I would arrive to find there would be no game, or worse, a single $4/$8 limit table.

My fears were alleviated not when I took the exit or headed up the long driveway, but when I actually arrived in a somewhat full parking lot. The CEG almost has the look of a renovated plantation home, the truth of which which is far from out of the question. Increasingly self-conscious about my New York plates, I took a back-row spot and made my way inside.

Creek Entertainment Gretna

Image credit: https://www.creekentertainment.com/

The Creek Entertainment Gretna is a seriously bare-bones establishment. Like the Palm Beach Kennel Club, the room offers poker, poker-related table games, and has a separate room for betting on horses and dogs. I made my way past the Ultimate Texas Hold’em tables and up to the front desk to figure out what to play. Notably absent from the establishment were slot machines, and other typical casino game fare like roulette, blackjack, etc. In other words, people come to CEG to play cards and place bets on animals, not for free spins and the like.

There was a list for $1/$2 NLH and open seating for $1/$2 PLO with a $5 bring-in. I asked if they ever ran $2/$5 and was promptly told that there hadn’t been a $2/$5 game in over three years. While my doubts at the truth of this statement were heightened by the aggressive head-shake by the floorman standing a few feet behind the woman at the front desk, I nevertheless accepted the seat in the PLO game, which at least had a $500 cap.

Cultural Snapshot

While I had been South of the Mason-Dixon line for a couple of weeks at this point, it wasn’t until sitting at this PLO table at the CEG that I truly felt like I was in the South. I got seated next to an older gentleman who looked strikingly familiar. He had sort of a beardless Jack Sparrow look that, when coupled with his intense familiarity, made me consider the possibility that he was some sort of character actor, although there were certainly factors competing against that hypothesis. A few minutes into our session, I quietly mentioned to him that I suspected we had played together before. The accent that emerged in his response totally shook my foundation. I was almost transported to a recent trip to Scotland, another place where you know English is being spoken but it takes intense focus to pay attention to what is being communicated rather than just enjoy the sound of the accent.

He told me that he was living out in Vegas for a while before moving back to Florida and, if we had played together before, that was probably the venue. I told him a bit about my trip and he made what I found to be a somewhat disturbing comparison between the two of us. He, too, was spending most of his time traveling around playing cards, unburdened by things like a wife or a family. While the shared drifter-gambler quality was currently fitting and promoted a sense of kinship, it certainly brought on the twinge of a dark omen, a look at one seemingly gloomy future among all of the possible outcomes of my life.

This sobering augury aside, the game was fantastic. There were four tables running in the room. Two PLO tables, one NLH table, and a Pai Gow table. A core of players were actually participating in PLO and Pai Gow concurrently. Overall, the same types of players existed in this small cardroom west of Tallahassee that exist in most poker games across the country. You had clear-cut all-American fish, savvier gamblers who just have too little discipline to win, young aspiring professionals who are still refining their live poker fundamentals, and your mid-thirties grinder types who act like pros but don’t always play like it. The differences were mostly aesthetic. With slightly different wardrobe choices and Midwestern accents, this could easily be a PLO game in Cleveland.

Creek Entertainment Gretna

Eventually the NLH table broke and my must-move PLO game got short-handed. After an hour or so of 4- or 5- handed play, all but one other player left. It was about 2:30 AM at this point and the place closed at 4:30 AM. I wanted to stay to play in what looked like a fantastic main game, but I noticed that no one had left the game for a couple of hours at this point. I asked the other remaining player if he thought a seat would open before the room closed. Absolutely not, he told me, before heading over the the Pai Gow table.

The Metrics

Game Selection: 5/10

From looking around the room, it seemed like the only game worth playing was $1/$2/$5 PLO. That being said, the structure of the game was perfect and there were two tables running most of the night.

Game Quality: 8/10

Live PLO games tend to range from good to fantastic. The true gamblers tend to have a hard time going back from PLO to NLH, which does wonders for the overall game quality. The main reason for this is the illusion of possibility that comes with a PLO hand. Almost any experienced NLH player realizes that J7o is a bad hand. On the other hand, KcQd4s5s, a very bad PLO hand, is just a lot sexier. The ability to regularly build a $200+ pot pre-flop against people playing terrible holdings makes for a very profitable – if not highly swingy – game. The action at the CEG was no exception. There were just enough fish at all times to keep pots large, free of redraws, and full of second-best hands.

Table Atmosphere: 8/10

Admittedly my sample was extremely small, but my table was generally friendly and kept a conversation going outside of the shorthanded periods. PLO tends to have more constant action than NLH, so the table tends to pay a lot more attention to what is happening in pots, particularly since people probably see twice as many flops on average. For that reason, table talk tends to be more limited in a PLO game and often revolves around the action. This made the presence of friendly non-poker chat unique.

Service/Amenities: 7/10

The service at Creek Entertainment Gretna definitely left a better taste in your mouth than the water. Like the Palm Beach Kennel Club, there was no rewards program. Soft drinks and such were still free, which was more than can be said about the poker room I visited in Tampa.

Location/Facility: 5/10

The CEG is truly in the middle of nowhere. It’s very much a locals card room. There are (to the best of my researching abilities) no hotels within 15 miles of the place.

My experience with the interior was skewed by a recent carpet cleaning that left the whole room damp and musty. I learned of the carpet cleaning by mentioning the mustiness, which triggered a hilarious mixture of vehement agreement and fierce prideful denial. Regardless of the lasting ability of the odor, the room could use some work.

Overall: 6.5/10

If you find yourself cruising down I-10 in West Florida with a hankering for Omaha, head just north at exit 174 for the Creek Entertainment Gretna. While the CEG is certainly not a place you are likely to stumble upon or make the destination of a poker trip, it is a shining example of the game of poker thriving on a local level in the USA.

This article is brought to you with the help of Upswing Poker. We at Cardplayer Lifestyle would like to thank them so much for their support, and we encourage you to check out their site.

If there is one industry that continues to boom in the UK, it is the gambling sector.

UK gambling market

In the year ending 2016, Britain’s gambling sector generated turnover of £13.6 billion, underlining the fact that the UK operates one of the most progressive and lucrative markets in the world.  While online casino growth dominates this market, it is also fair to surmise that some aspects of land-based gambling are also continuing to thrive, as the market continues to benefit from increased regulation and pronounced diversification.

In this article, we will chart the course of the UK’s gambling industry in numbers between 1999–2017, while striving to identify key trends for the future.

A Brief Background

The history of gambling in the UK is an interesting one, although it was in the early 1900s that two Royal Commissions were established to determine the practice could be regulated to reduce crime and drive government tax revenues. This was a progressive outlook at the time, while their recommendations ultimately to the legalisation of betting in licensed betting shops and casinos under government supervision in the 1960s.

The mid-nineties triggered a significant shift in the marketplace, however, after the establishment of the National Lottery in 1994 and the emergence of online gambling in 1996. This created tremendous growth within the industry, while also gradually propelling gambling into the consumer mainstream. Since the late 1990s, the industry has continued to enjoy considerable growth, while there is no sign that this is likely to abate any time soon.

1999–2007: The Diversification of the UK’s Gambling Market

Back in 1999, the evolution within the UK’s gambling market was just about to begin in earnest. At this time, the National Lottery was at the peak of its popularity, with an estimated 65% of the adult population participating in this on a regular basis. Despite this, just 46% of the UK’s eligible population engaged in gambling activities at the turn of the century, with the burgeoning online market yet to become immersed in the consumer mainstream.

Similarly, creative gambling products such as scratch cards had yet to be embraced, contributing to a popular and yet restricted market that lacked diversity.

The next eight years changed this, however, as while the level of participation in the National Lottery declined to 57%, scratch cards, online slots and virtual casino gameplay increasingly popular. 20% of the adult population regularly purchased scratch cards by 2007, for example, while 17% indulged their passion for slots and video poker. Overall, this caused the number of adults who gambled in the UK to rise to 48%, as the market continued to evolve, become more accessible an cater to a wider array of needs.

Britain's gambling market infographic

While the level of growth in the market was steady rather than spectacular between 1999 and 2007, it was tangible and reflected increased diversification in the sector. This was aided in part by the Progressive Gambling Act of 2005, which enabled land-based and online gambling brands to advertise so long as they included measures to address the issue of problem gaming. This was key, as it allowed brands to invest heavily in the promotion and laid the foundations for more pronounced growth in the future.

2007–2010: The Start of Sustained and Exponential Growth

It was in September of 2007 that the Gambling Act of 2005 came into law, and this remains a seminal point in the history of the market as a whole. At the time, the industry was worth an estimated £91 million, while it was benefiting from the type of consistent growth that had seemed unlikely at the turn of the century. The new legislation would major brands embark on huge promotional campaigns, however, as they looked to target new customers with increasingly tailored and unique gaming experiences.

This took hold over the next three years, and by 2010 the rate of growth was already reaching epic proportions. 73% of all UK adults participated in one form of gambling or another at this time, for example, while 71% of female customers also engaged with the pastime.

The interesting point to note here was that offline gambling remained the dominant channel at the end of 2010. Just 2% of the population gambled solely online at this time, while a staggering 81% would only gamble in bricks-and-mortar establishments. This was also the last year that the number of active online casino dropped, falling from 16.57 million in 2009 to just 14.92 million. There were gradual signs that this trend was about to reverse, however, with 17% of gamblers embracing online platforms with a view to making a transition and a rising number of casino games (32%) being played in the virtual realm.

2010–2017: How UK Gambling Became a Thriving (and Increasingly Remote) Marketplace

This trend has certainly continued at pace, reaching a head in 2016 when online gambling was established as the primary driver of growth in the overall market. Despite this, it is incredible to note that most forms of bricks-and-mortar based gambling have also recorded increased growth during the same period, highlighting the fact that virtual gaming has popularised a number of games while creating a unique opportunity for cross-platform interaction.

In terms of numbers, however, it is the growth of online gambling that has been most impressive since 2017. The number of online gambling accounts have increased incrementally since the aforementioned dip in 2010, for example, reaching 18.14 million by the end of 2014. The increase in the rate of new player registration has been even more pronounced nearly doubling in just four years between 2010 and 2014, while there were a total of 21.57 million active gambling accounts online at the end of 2015.

In the virtual realm, the biggest areas of growth remain sports betting and casino games. The former has seen astonishing growth online since 2010, when brands generated £12.99 million from sports wagers. This had more than doubled by 2013, while the following year saw this niche generated cumulative revenue of £31.54 million. The following year, punters wagered a record £9.518 billion on sporting events, with football the single most popular pastime and estimated to have generated £449.44 million in bets.

online gambling UK stats

Interestingly, online  wagers have increased by a staggering 244% since 2010, while tennis (179%), cricket (132%) and financials (102%) have also enjoyed treble digit growth. In fact, only horse racing has seen a noticeable decline in terms of the value of online bets, having fallen by 7% over the course of the last seven years (which has much to do with the popularity of high street bookmakers and live betting) among fans of the sport.

Online casino and bingo gameplay have seen similar growth since 2010, with virtual slots embodying this better than any other pastime. Not only do slots now account for an estimated 80% of all online casino revenues, for example, but this niche has seen an activity increase of 328% during the last seven years. So even though table and card games have enjoyed increases of 52% and 26% respectively, it remains clear that the diversification of slots has made them a key driver of success in the modern age.

Not only this, but the emergence of independent comparison sites has also helped to build trust between brands and customers, creating the potential for longer consumer life-cycles and superior margins.

Then we come to online bingo, which generated revenue of £26.24 million back in 2010. This had nearly trebled to a staggering £76.67 million in 2014, as players abandoned their local halls and began to operate virtually on the back of a mass television advertising campaign by various brands. 2016’s figures suggest that online bingo generated an estimated £153 million, highlighting the incredible growth that has gripped the sector for the best part of a decade.

The growth of the virtual bingo market offers a natural segue-way into the world of land-based gambling. After all, we have already touched on the fact that many aspects of this market continues to enjoy robust growth, although admittedly at a far slower rate than their online counterparts. The one exception to this rule is the bricks-and-mortar bingo industry, however, which saw annual revenues decline from £1.4 billion in 2010 to just £1.1 billion four years later.

UK land-based gambling

This rate of decline has continued, making it likely that online bingo will generate more income than land-based sites within the decade.

The decline of offline bingo is an exception to the general rule, however, with the number of bricks-and-mortar casino visitors actually increasing between 2010 and 2014. Land-based establishments boasted 16.6 million returning customers seven years ago, but this rose to an impressive 21.01 million in just four years. Clearly this rate of growth is steady than the one that drives the online marketplace, but there is still demand for increasingly diverse casino establishments that strive to integrate technology into their outlets.

READ: 5 Places Every Poker Player Must Visit While in London

The same trend can be seen in offline sports betting, which continues to see its revenues grow despite intense competition from virtual competitors. Greyhound racing wagers saw an estimated revenue increase of $347 million between 2010 and 2015, for example, while land-based football betting grew at a similar rate (from £954 million in 2010 to £1.3 billion five years later). These continue to be impressive numbers, which highlight the level of demand that remains for traditional gambling channels in the digital age.

The Last Word: The Future Trends in the UK Gambling Industry

As these figures show, there are several trends that define the real-time gambling industry in 2017. Some of these will come of no surprise, of course, such as the growth of online gaming and its growing influence as a revenue generator in the sector (it accounted for 33% of all turnover at the end of 2016).

The robust performance of most land-based gambling activities will surprise many, however, as it is logical presume that the rise of online gaming would sound the death knell for the traditional market. While this may have been true in some industries, the gambling industry has actually seen innovation popularise a host of casino and betting activities by propelling them into the mainstream, creating heightened demand for both off and online experiences.

So what does this tell us about the future?

In short, we should expect the rise of online gaming to continue at pace, as it continues to evolve and diversify to meet an ever changing demand. Over the course of the next decade, we may also see the online gambling share approach 50% of the market, while mobile gaming playing an increasingly seminal role in this.

During the same period, the level of offline activity is also likely to grow incrementally. The rate of growth in this sector will become gradually slower, however, as generational and technological shifts force more players online and trigger a decline in demand for traditional gaming. We may then see land-based casinos and sports betting hubs experience a similar decline to land bingo halls, as online gambling finally leverage their full potential and come to dominate the industry.

So, high street bookmakers have arguably begun to prepare for this, by reinforcing their online presence and closing some of their physical stores. This will certainly be something to watch with interest in the future, as this most fascinating of markets continues to evolve at a truly incredible pace.

The talk about poker being dead or dying has been raging on forums and some of the poker media outlets for a while now. Many people seem to be of the opinion that online poker as we have learned to love simply didn’t exist anymore. Looking at some of the available information, it isn’t hard to see where they’re coming from. But, instead of just complaining about it, wouldn’t it be better to actually try and do something to give it a new life?

When the idea of Online Poker League first appeared, it was clear right from the get-go this was a concept that could make poker fun to play again. Of course, it wasn’t a major revolution that would change the face of poker forever, but it was a significant step in the right direction. Since its first season until today (the sixth season), Online Poker League has proven to be exactly what the doctor ordered, as more and more players have flocked to the tables to compete for their share of nice prizes and the glory.

Online Poker League

What’s Online Poker League All About?

The underlying idea of OPL isn’t that complicated: a bunch of tournaments played across a number of different online poker rooms, using a league scoring system. Players with the most points at the end of each season walk away with prizes for their efforts.

However, what was a bit trickier is setting up all these tournaments across different rooms. That’s the part for which the organizers, PokerTube, PokerVIP, and their sister sites certainly deserve acknowledgement and respect.

Setting up a full schedule of tournaments across a dozen or so rooms is not a small undertaking on its own. Keeping track of all the players and their results across all these tournaments also takes that challenge to a whole new level. If you’ve ever worked in the poker industry, you probably know that pulling all this information from a variety of sources is no walk in the park.

It’s tough to say anything bad about the concept: it brings new players to the game, it’s loads of fun, and, there is plenty of added money to be won, so it doesn’t matter if you just play for fun or if you are a more serious poker player.

Where to Play

Online Poker League tournaments are organized across a number of online poker rooms, including Unibet Poker, William Hill, TonyBet, Sky Poker, Guts, Natural 8, All In Asia, and partypoker.

To be able to register for OPL events, players need to either have an old account created via PokerTube or PokerVIP on these rooms, or create a new one (if they don’t have one already, of course), using the link from these two or other partner sites like WeakTight, Pokerhand.org, High Stakes Database, or Poker.org.

OPL Buy-ins & Prizes

Another great thing about Online Poker League is that it’s accessible to everyone. The first season featured mostly $5 tournaments, with a few freerolls thrown in the mix. Not much has changed since, and those looking to play can still get their seat for as low as $5 per tournament. With that said, OPL has also branched out to introduce some “high roller” events with buy-ins of around $/€30 and double points earning opportunities.

One important thing to know about these tournaments is that nearly all of them feature a lot of added cash. Every event comes with at least $300-$400 added on top of the regular prizes generated by the buy-ins, and “high rollers” usually feature $/€1,000 added. Across dozens of events played every season, that’s thousands in added value, which is simply too good to pass up, even looking from a strictly professional perspective.

On top of all this, those finishing high in the league leaderboard, by accumulating the most points during the season, win additional prizes. For the currently running season, for example, the winner will receive a €2,000 Unibet Open package and a lot of tournament tickets and free cash across the OPL rooms. The total value of the first place prize is $3,250. The runner-up will receive $1,850 worth of cash and tournament tickets, etc.

Online Poker League

All in all, there’s $25,000 in prizes being given out across Online Poker League, which is quite a lot of cash considering the buy-ins.

Why Is Online Poker League Good for Poker?

The reason why poker became such a huge hit after the big 2003 WSOP win by Chris Moneymaker was that everybody thought they could beat the game, rake in a lot of cash, and become poker-made millionaires. However, since then, the climate has changed a lot. Some have succeeded in poker, no doubt, but for others, the game has become stale and boring. With so many silent grinders just looking to earn their hourlies, there is little incentive for average Joe to sit down and play.

Check out our interview with Chris Moneymaker

Online Poker League has brought back the competitive elements and created an atmosphere of fun and familiarity at the tables for low-stakes players in particular. After playing many tournaments together, players start chatting with each other, having fun, and bantering back and forth. Players even have a dedicated forum, which enhances the “community appeal”.

You can totally imagine a casual player running into an OPL event and saying, “Hey, this is so much fun, I want in.” This will hardly happen with any random big (or even small) tournament online. So, OPL focuses on the fun side of poker, and in my opinion that’s the only side that can incentivize casual players looking to blow off some steam after a long day at the office.

Online Poker League

If you’re just curious to rail some of the action going on, note that all tournaments are being streamed on spraggy’s Twitch channel. This naturally creates even more visibility for the league and will likely bring even more players to the tables.

I’m certain there are those who can find bad things to say about OPL as well; of course it isn’t perfect. But, the bottom line is, that the idea behind Online Poker League works as intended, as it creates buzz among the players and helps bring them to the tables.

Plus, with $25,000 in prizes up for grabs, it’s a concept that practically sells itself.

This is the third installment of The Great American Poker Trip series. As those of you who’ve read previous installments now know, my Just Hands Poker Podcast co-host (and fellow Cardplayer Lifestyle contributor) Zach Resnick and I are traveling around the U.S. and visiting a number of poker rooms along the way. I’ve been documenting the highlights here as well as my thoughts about poker culture in different regions of the country. In our previous installment, we visited bestbet Jacksonville. This time around, it’s time to take a look at the poker scene in South Florida.

The Palm Beach Kennel Club

When I first played in Florida about a year ago, I expected to be spending most of my time at the Seminole Hard Rock in Hollywood, FL. Then, I discovered the Palm Beach Kennel Club. Now, I’m a man who appreciates a bit of luxury. Elegant decorations, plush chairs, high-end waters; I’m not immune to the allures of the “good life”. So take it as evidence of an excellent poker room that I’ve opted on many occasions to spend time at a dog track rather than a casino-resort (which is also great in it’s own right).

Palm Beach Kennel Club

Just outside the poker room at the Palm Beach Kennel Club

What the PBKC lacks in grandeur it makes up for in excess with the action. This room is packed from open to close (I’ve experienced both ends) with an excellent selection of games. While the player pool is extremely diverse in all non-gender categories, they are unified in an extremely relaxed attitude towards poker and life. This disposition is magnified when someone at the table is tilted. Very often, one player can ruin the vibe of the whole table, but at the PBKC, the contrast of one player being unhappy just accentuates what a great time everyone else is having. Very often the tilted one is an older retired gentleman for whom sympathy is hard to come by.

Cultural Snapshot

South Florida can sometimes feel like a different country. Hanging around Miami, you’ll hear a different language at every corner. The mixed cultural heritage of the region along with the tourist factor promotes a truly metropolitan feel. All that being said, there are many unifying factors among the otherwise diverse PBCK clientele. Most of these, predictably, are South Florida stereotypes. For one, everyone seems to be in some stage of retirement, regardless of age. This is often true playing a game that attracts all sorts of hustler-types, those who love money but also have a lot of free time. In most rooms, the major exception to this tends to be the pros who often project a strong “I’m at work” vibe.

At the PBKC, the pros are hard to spot based both on their play and demeanor. The players who are clearly pros still fit the mold of the room and are embraced by the rest of the player pool to an unusually high degree. Another unifying quality is the “chill factor”. Both dress and approach to poker are very casual. The atmosphere at the $5/$10 game which got off only once in four sessions was an excellent encapsulation of this mood.

Palm Beach Kennel Club

Zach and I sat down with seven other guys who were clearly happy to be back together again. We quickly agreed to do “time-flop”, a credit card roulette-type system where one player is stuck paying the whole table’s rake for the half-hour. Typically the desire to gamble on the rake correlates with a good game. This was no exception. The table talk was constant, especially among the players involved in the hand, the majority of which was needling about both play and appearance. One such comment was handed to a muscular gentleman whose physique and poker-aggression were both praised by the assertion that “your steroids are clearly working”.

The out-of-towners were not left out of the fun either. A concerned player inquired about when my mom would be picking me up before ordering me an ice-cream sandwich. Not wanting to leave anyone out, he ended up ordering all of the remaining ice-cream sandwiches for the table, most of which he consumed himself. Unsurprisingly, no one uttered a word about work the next day.

The Metrics

Game Selection: 9/10

For the low- and mid-stakes player, the PBKC has you covered. The constants are $1/$2 NLH, $2/$5 NLH, an interesting $5/$10 $300-cap NLH, and $2/$5 PLO. Sprinkled in are $5/$10 NLH and PLO8 games of various sizes including a daily PLO8 game that plays quite large. The $500 cap at $2/$5 is a mixed bag, but there are usually at least a few games playing on the deep side when $5/$10 isn’t running. The $5/$10 $300-cap game provides great action since the player pool doesn’t play a whole lot differently $300 deep or $2,000 deep.

Game Quality: 10/10

At the PBKC, you are either in a good game or a great game. The room is very rec-player heavy and due to the shortage of higher-stakes games, the pros are not elite. Couple that with the atmosphere of the room and you have the recipe for a good time.

Table Atmosphere: 10/10

People at the PBKC are there to have fun. Unfortunately, that just isn’t the case for many people in a lot of poker rooms  around the country, thus making the PBKC a uniquely enjoyable place to play poker.

Service/Amenities: 7/10

If you play poker for the comps, the PBKC is not the room for you. While this is a no-frills poker room, the service is generally good and the games are well-run.

Location/Facility: 6/10

While the PBKC definitely feels very safe, it has an aura of degeneracy to be expected at a dog track. It’s not a place for those who can’t tolerate a bit of animal cruelty. That being said, the dog races are sort of amazing to watch and can be seen from the poker room. I’ve never seen any part of the facility other than the poker room that you can enter directly. The actual room has a cozy feel. Everything is clean and in good shape.

Overall: 8.5/10

For any casual to semi-serious poker player heading to South Florida, the PBKC is a must. The action is great, the people will make you smile, and if the poker doesn’t go well, you can always bink a dog race.

Palm Beach Kennel Club

They should put animals on more chips.

Isle Casino Racing Pompano Park

Poker action goes around the clock in South Florida, but all hours were not created equally among the various venues. For the day-shifters, the Isle Casino has the best poker game in town. Just be ready for an old-school experience. Walking up to the place already feels a little like stepping into a 70s hustler movie.

Isle Casino Pompano Park

Image credit: soflat.com

Corroborating the easily disprovable fact that the Isle has not been updated since the 70s are the chips. Those boys are seriously scuffed, and the picture below lacks the most extreme case. The black $100 chips seriously look the same as the white $1 chips. I asked a few of the regs about it and they pointed out that the black chips had to be bleached at some point, as if this was a very natural reason for having grey white and black chips (for what it’s worth, they were unable to provide as sanitary a reason for the extreme greyness of the white chips).

Isle Casino Pompano poker chips

Jokes aside, the Isle is the home of some serious action. I never made it before 1 PM, but they must be giving away breakfast, as the place is full by 10 AM. If you’ve made any assumptions about the demographics, you might expect half the tables at that time to be $4/$8 limit. Not so fast! Almost all of the action is no-limit other than a $100/$200 mixed-game, which looks pretty epic.

Isle Casino Pompano Park

Cultural Snapshot

The diversity among the Isle Casino poker players lies mostly in their tri-state area neighborhood of origin. Other details are slightly more predictable. It really is an odd experience sitting down in a $2/$5 game as the only player within 40 years of 21. Unlike many of my other experiences with this age group, I was not asked about my career plans or for help with an iPhone. In fact, there seemed to be a sincere attempt to ignore me and what I represent, a greedy interruption to a friendly game. I understand the sentiment and am happy to tolerate a little coldness for a seat in such a soft game. Truthfully, my presence really is a disturbance. Throwing a player like myself into a limp-happy small pot oriented game makes playing almost every hand, a favorite strategy amongst much of this player pool, much more expensive.

The Metrics

Game Selection: 8/10

For NLH players at the $5/$10 stake and below, the Isle will have your game spread during most hours of the day. PLO action was limited, but there were a few daily tournaments that were always well attended. The $2/$5 game has a $500 cap and plays fairly small. The number of tables and the ability to table select is a big plus for the $2/$5 games.

Game Quality: 8/10

There are some good pros in the $5/$10 game, but they opt to play $100/$200 mixed when it runs. As long as that game is going, the rest of the room is easy pickings. Most players are fit-or-fold types and are unlikely to run a bluff of any significance. It’s not a super gambly game, which caps the upside a little, but you really can’t beat the action here until around 5 PM.

Table Atmosphere: 6/10

This very mild-mannered room would start to really bore me if I were grinding $2/$5 for too long. The $5/$10 game boasts a much friendlier and smaller player pool that is more accustomed to having young poker-pro types. Still, as a millennial, this is the last place I’d go in Florida if I had aims to meet someone to hang out with outside of poker.

Service/Amenities: 8/10

The service was excellent and the table-side food was affordable and delicious. Of course, the coffee was next to undrinkable, but that’s just the nature of a poker room, unfortunately.

Location/Facility: 8/10

The outdoor parking is a drag late at night or on a particularly hot Florida day, but everything else about the facility is solid. The one exceptional thing about the poker room specifically is a huge wall with two clusters of four large TV screens airing exclusively sports. Unlike most poker rooms, which are full of TVs at terrible angles or distances for viewing, the Isle actually facilitates watching the game, at least for one side of the table.

Isle Casino Pompano Park

Overall: 7.5/10

If you want to get in on the South Florida action and the Miami nightlife in the same day, checking out the early shift at the Isle Casino Pompano Park might be your move. In addition to some excellent poker, you’ll probably get some tax advice and hear a war story or two. Fine way to spend an afternoon, if you ask me.

This article is brought to you with the help of Upswing Poker. We at Cardplayer Lifestyle would like to thank them so much for their support, and we encourage you to check out their site.

To be a successful multi-table tournament player, you need to master many things. As in all formats, you have to learn to balance your ranges, make correct adjustments vs. different players, and know how to exploit them. Moreover, in tournaments, you need to understand the Independent Chip Model (ICM), bubble play, and final table strategy.

Thus, to repeat, there are many areas where you should be trying to improve. However, none of those improvements will help you much if you lack knowledge of proper pre-flop strategy. Tournaments are different from cash games, where you play with 100 BB most of the time. In fact, much of your tournament life will be spent with a shallow stack, so if you end up making some mistakes, it will cost you a lot.

Thus, the first topic you need to take into consideration when trying to improve your game should be pre-flop strategy, as if you end up making mistakes here you will always have bad ranges post-flop and will not be able to do much later on in the hand. For now, we will concentrate on the most important parts and leave other topics for the future.

To be playing effectively, you need to take a few things into consideration:

This one is quite straightforward, so not much explanation is required. Nevertheless, you need to be aware that at the beginning of a tournament, your opening range from early position should be quite tight and opening just 12% of hands looks perfectly fine.

hand ranges

Obviously, you need to start opening more hands from later position. Still, I am mentioning this range because many players overestimate the value of weaker hands and tend to open too much from early position; you do not want to do that.

Also, it’s important to try and start stealing more once antes come into play. This is a very profitable way to build your stack, so you could add a few more hands to your opening range. Even so, you should not get too out of line from early position, but rather concentrate on stealing a lot from later position.

While pre-flop trapping is not something you should be doing a lot at the beginning of the tournament, it comes into play later. When you are short stacked, it makes a lot of sense not to 3-bet your strongest hands like AA and KK, especially if you have other short stacks behind you. They are very likely to try to steal the pot by 3-bet shoving and, when this happens, you’ll just end up adding a reasonable amount of chips to your stack.

However, if you opt to 3-bet your strongest hands, it will discourage such shoves, with the original raiser very likely to fold as well. Obviously, if you employ this trapping strategy, you will need to take into consideration your whole range and not put yourself in spots where you 3-bet only weak hands and flat call all strong ones. There are many ways to do that, so if you’re interested in discovering those advanced strategies, check out my MTT pre-flop strategy course.

As mentioned, your opening hand range should be quite different in later stages vs. beginning stages of a tournament. First of all, blockers come into play; I would much rather steal with A2o compared to T8o even knowing that the latter has a bit more so-called “playability” post-flop.

The biggest benefit of those blockers is that it reduces the possibility of your opponent holding a premium hand. If you have an Ace in your hand he is less likely to hold any strong hand that includes an Ace as well, so AA, AK, AQ, AJ or even AT is a less likely holding… that’s great news for you.

Remember, the most important factor you need to take into account is effective stack, not just how many chips you have. If you have 50 BB and your opponent only has 20 BB – that represents the effective stacks because you can win or lose only this amount. So, all your ranges and adjustments should be made based on it.

This is something crucial that many players miss. While you should always be looking to identify the type of competition you are up against, this is even more crucial in MTTs. You will be making many decisions based completely on your opponents so it pays to always be aware of what kind of players you are up against.

Some of your opponents will be calling a lot pre-flop while others will be playing very tight and folding everything but premium hands. Guess when you should be stealing more?

Furthermore, some will be 3-betting aggressively while others will only 3-bet premium hands. Care to guess against which of these opponents you should be 4-betting as a bluff or floating more hands against pre-flop?

It is impossible to list all possible situations within the scope of this article, but just be aware that your opponent will often be the one to dictate the action.

Everyone thinks that this is a very easy part of building towards a MTT victory. However, properly mastering correct shoving strategies will often determine whether you end up being a winner in the long run. Naturally, you can follow NASH chart and be doing quite OK, but maybe you can be min raising and folding your weakest part of the range instead of shoving all-in? You can, but again it will depend on the table you are playing and your competition. To get this information you should be ready to analyze your opponents’ poker statistics.

The same goes for 3-bet shoving. It is hard to give one precise answer for all the spots because it is very opponent-dependent as well. Indeed, spending same time calculating your equity and analyzing ranges of your opponents will take you a long way.

Mastering all of these components one by one will drastically improve your game. Now you’ve got the blueprint. Work hard and study hard to improve your poker game. To that end here’s how I suggest that you learn poker strategy in the right way.

I was so excited when Cardplayer Lifestyle poker blog founder Robbie Strazynski messaged me asking if I’d be interested in doing a book review. I got even more excited when he said that the book in question was Unfolding Poker, the newest offering from semi-professional poker player and coach James “Splitsuit” Sweeney! I am a longtime fan of James’ many poker video tutorials, which can be found on various poker sites including splitsuit.com and the redchippoker.com poker forum, which he co-founded. Coincidentally, James’ first book, Dynamic Full Ring Poker, is next up on my list of poker books I want to read.Unfolding Poker

I was so excited to do the book review that I had to tell someone the news, so I told Brian Dahl, owner of Capital Wood Products where I work. He dabbles in betting on horses and we often chat about poker and horse betting strategy. Indeed, there is a whole world of equestrian games and sports betting out there, but that is a blog post for another day. Brian is a smart guy and very analytical, so he laughed and asked if I could be objective and impartial doing a book review written by someone I was a big fan of. I honestly told him I couldn’t be unbiased! Fortunately for me, it didn’t matter because I knew before I even turned the first virtual page of the Unfolding Poker eBook that it was going to be amazing!

Comprehensive; Packs a Punch

Mr. Sweeney did not disappoint, not only did he nail the execution of compiling some of the most compelling poker questions we all have, but he also thoroughly addressed them via easy-to-understand concepts (I was confident he would). In his introduction he explains that he has worked with over 500 students, released hundreds of training videos, and posted more than 10,000 times in various poker forums. Who is more qualified to take on this sort of an instructional challenge than someone with that kind of exposure? I can’t even imagine the exhaustive laundry list of questions he had to draw from. Where do you begin?! It’s no wonder he mentions that a follow-up book may be required.

Not only is Unfolding Poker a jam-packed Q&A for its compact size, but the eBook version also contains an exhaustive list of pertinent links that will provide months and months of valuable study material. James points out in chapter 9 that reading a poker book from cover to cover is not going to provide the level of engagement necessary to digest the content. With that said, Unfolding Poker is a quick read and it is loaded with substance that will boost your win rate and bankroll once you dig into it with some depth.

The material covered is not just filler either; James is an old school “for the love of the game” kind of guy. He has a genuine desire to move the game forward by providing poker players with learning materials that have the potential to turn a recreational fish into a regular shark! It’s a win win for poker and its players. The contents of Unfolding Poker are aimed at beginner-to-intermediate-level players. Even so, the book would still constitute a great review for advanced players who are already crushing it at the tables.

Unfolding Poker answers questions ranging from how to make money in tight games to whether you should loosen up or not (hint: you should!). Ever wonder about running it twice? Ever wonder about variations on standard bet sizing or the rationale of playing just one level above the villain (not 20) and avoiding fancy play syndrome (FPS)? It’s all in there! The links throughout the book take you even deeper into a particular subject such as how to count combos and factor in blockers, bankroll management and taking shots. There’s even a link to a free webinar on turning frequencies into hand ranges and another link to a podcast where you can learn about poker masterminds and see if you could benefit from joining one.

Overall Impressions

I could seriously go on and on about this book, the value of Unfolding Poker far exceeds the cost to own it. I am so blessed to have it in my library, but it is going to be a while before it goes on the shelf. There are literally months of not only study materials, but also links to videos, podcasts, webinars, blogs, vlogs, you name it! So, yeah, I give James “Splitsuit” Sweeney’s Unfolding Poker two very big thumbs up!

Shannon Mack reading Unfolding Poker

My wife took this picture of me enjoying Unfolding Poker eBook. I loved it!

Flop play is easily one of the most important aspects of No Limit Texas Hold’em. This is where you’ll make most of your decisions for future streets, and it is on the flop that you usually decide whether or not your hand is worth continuing with, and – if so – how you plan your next moves.

For that reason, those more mathematically inclined among us have come up with many tools that can assist with analysis of different flop textures and how they match up with different starting hand ranges. Flop Falcon is the latest such a tool, developed by Doug Hull of Red Chip Poker. If you’re always trying to learn new poker tips and strategies and feel ready to really take your game analysis to the next level, Flop Falcon might be just the tool for you. Before you decide whether or not to take our recommendation, however, it’s important that you understand what you’d be getting into by trying out Flop Falcon.

Flop Falcon Basics

Once you download and install the software, you’ll be welcomed by the fairly simple-looking user interface. Make no mistake, however: the Flop Falcon software is anything but simple, as it is loaded with analysis options. That said, you might not realize this upon first encountering the user interface. The software runs on Java, which makes it a bit slower, but it doesn’t influence the usability once you get used to the dynamics.

Flop Falcon features two main boxes. The one on the left is where you input your hand range, and the one on the right is where you input your opponent’s perceived range.

Flop Falcon

On the sides of the main boxes, you can pick “hits”. These are the situations when you’ll want to continue with your particular range, and when you expect your opponent to continue on the flop. Flop Falcon gives you plenty of options here, as you can really test different options, which is the main point of this software.

Once you are done nailing down your optimal range and your opponent’s likely range, you can start the analysis by clicking “1,000 more flops” (marked by a red square). All calculations are done in chunks of 1,000 flops; for the most accurate results, I recommend that you do at least a few thousand. If you want to see how these ranges compare on particular types of boards, you can select one of predetermined options, or you can even create custom flops for some very specific data number crunching (marked in green).

Flop Falcon

What Can Flop Falcon Help You With?

In Texas Hold’em, you’re often put in the same spots time after time, as you usually play a certain range of hands. With Flop Falcon, you can simulate these familiar situations and see how you’re likely to be standing against your opponents on various boards. The numbers displayed in the bottom left section will let you know your equity in different situations (when only you hit, when you both hit, etc.)

Flop Falcon

Using this knowledge, you can remove a lot of guesswork from your play. Of course, it goes without saying that this software will not actually do the work for you. Flop Falcon is a learning tool, and it will only be as good as the aptitude with which you utilize its potential. The more time you spend analyzing different board textures and hand ranges, the better your game will become.

To be completely truthful – after all, it happened to me, too – you might at first feel that Flop Falcon is a bit confusing to use when you first start playing around with it. Don’t let that discourage you!

The fact is that after you’ve worked with Flop Falcon for a little while, you’ll get the hang of things and it will be much easier to set up different flop situations that you will want to look into and analyze.

Who Is Flop Falcon For?

Flop Falcon is unquestionably a great No Limit Hold’em analysis tool. With that said, I would definitely NOT recommend it to beginners who are unfamiliar with the mathematical aspects of Hold’em. Plainly put, unless you are already very familiar with concepts of equity, implied odds, and have a really good understanding of poker math, this software won’t do much for you. The reason is quite simply because if you fall into that category of poker player, you’ll probably end up just toying around with it and ending up with a bunch of numbers you don’t really understand.

This is a fantastic product for intermediate-level and advanced poker players who are really looking to boost their game. If that accurately describes you, you can rest assured that Flop Falcon will be a valuable addition to your software library. Indeed, you’ll need to be willing to invest the time and effort to make the most out of the tool, but if you are, then Flop Falcon will provide you with some great learning opportunities.

What if you could have an edge in visualizing how two ranges hit any flop? Would you take it? Take it! https://t.co/OcHQnM9MzK pic.twitter.com/Gw0LeYFxaj

— Red Chip Poker (@RedChipPoker) May 6, 2017

Welcome to the second installment of The Great American Poker Trip. Together with my Just Hands Poker Podcast co-host (and fellow Cardplayer Lifestyle contributor) Zach Resnick, I’m currently traveling around the United States and enjoying the poker life. Along the way, I’m putting together blog posts like these to document the trip as well as my thoughts about poker culture throughout the country. Last week, we were in Washington, DC, and now we are headed to Jacksonville.

bestbet Jacksonville

For a poker player, the drive from Washington, DC to Jacksonville, FL is particularly long; 700 miles, five states (plus whatever DC is), and no poker. Good barbeque, but no poker. Alas, it’s an investment that ought to pay off mightily. Spending 10 hours in the car is a small price to pay to make it to Florida, the poker Mecca of the American Southeast. South Florida enjoys a particularly poker-friendly reputation (stay tuned!), but who can wait till Miami to hit the felt? Jacksonville it was, the second stop on the Great American Poker Trip.

You can get a fairly good idea of what to expect from a poker room just by looking at the location on Google Maps. Let’s just say that I knew bestbet wasn’t going to be quite on par with a Caesars property in terms of overall scope.

bestbet Jacksonville

Image credit: Jacksonville.com

No worries, though. A good poker game mirrors other parts of life. Size doesn’t matter; no, it’s all about the money.

Cultural Snapshot

The bestbet Jacksonville poker room fosters a truly friendly atmosphere all-around, but my main cultural takeaways came from one very specific table. After a $5/$10 game failed to materialize for more than a few rounds, I noticed that a couple of the pros from that game had switched tables to a particularly deep and boisterous $2/$5 game. Stuck in a game full of short-stackers, I decided to get on the list for this game to see what the fuss was about. I had taken a look, but it wasn’t immediately clear what was going on other than the whole table being well above the 100bb cap.

After I sat down, things became exceedingly clear. This was a feeding frenzy. An older woman with an elegant Southernness about her was dumping chum in the water and the sharks were feeding. The dynamic at this table was unforgettable. Like many sources of great poker action, the woman served as the center of this microcosm from both a social and a poker perspective. For example, she found herself in quite a few pots with one of the $5/$10 pros to whom she lovingly referred to as “the Indian”. She excused this potentially offensive nickname, although it was tolerated if not enjoyed (oh what money can buy…), with mention that she herself was indeed part Cherokee. Seated next to “the Indian” was a man from the subcontinent of India. More than once, the woman went heads up with this subcontinental Indian, asked the dealer “is it just me and the Indian”, to which the answer was hilariously both yes and no.

As is often the case at the biggest game in the room, people know each other. What I had stumbled on was a sort of perversely enjoyable home game atmosphere. The pros referred to the generous woman as Ms. (Her Name) as they accepted her donations in turns. She kept a full rack of reds on her drink table in case her husband came in. That way, she always had concrete evidence that she wasn’t losing. Ironically, it became clear that she was the family breadwinner as a serial entrepreneur and the host of a private poker game that had recently ended as her health skipped a beat. This goes to show, I suppose, that hiding poker losses from one’s spouse is a non-gendered activity. I had a lot of fun, stayed a lot longer than I meant to, and got an early 2PM start to South Florida the next day.

bestbet Jacksonville

Image credit: Mapquest.com

The Metrics

Game Selection: 7/10

bestbet Jacksonville has solid game offerings, but the game structure is sub-optimal. NLH got up to $5/$10, if only very briefly. There was a great $5/$5 PLO game that Zach played in for a few hours until the game broke. Most of the room was dedicated to $1/$2 and $2/$5 NLH, and the games were flourishing. There were at least seven $2/$5 tables running, all of which looked like excellent action. The three or four I played in before and after the $5/$10 game corroborated the appearances.

The main drawback in an otherwise excellent room was the buy-in structure. Both $1/$2 and $2/$5 had a 100bb cap, which isn’t ideal, but it can make for a great game. The min of 20bb, on the other hand, doesn’t improve the game in my opinion. While it is true that seven $2/$5 tables could become four $2/$5 tables if the min buy-in is bumped up to $200, I think that would be for the benefit of all of the games. Deep-stacked poker is more fun, let alone more profitable.

There isn’t a lot of room for multi-street decision making with a 20bb stack. Really, these short stacks just put a damper on the game since the players who are deep have to constantly be factoring the possibility of short-stacks shoving pre-flop or getting it in on the flop. That’s another reason why I transferred to a pro-heavy table. I’d rather play $2/$5 with a bunch of pros for 200bb than with amateurs for 20bb. If I’m giving up anything in win rate, I’m getting it back in enjoyment EV.

bestbet Jacksonville

Image credit: Jacksonville.com

Game Quality: 8/10

From my experience, the $5/$10 game is very revealing about the overall difficulty of the room. The mere existence of a $5/$10 game is normally a hugely positive sign in terms of the overall poker ecosystem. There is rarely less than double the amount of tables when the limit goes down outside of space constraints. One $5/$10 game generally signifies at least 3-4 $2/$5 games and 6-8 $1/$2 games.

After the $5/$10 broke a few orbits in, I had a quick bite with a student I was meeting in person for the first time. He asked me what I thought about the two pros from the game. He went on to tell me that those were the two most feared players in the room. Given the fairly tight-passive play I’d observed so far, this was an excellent sign.

Poker Notes Live

And so it continued in my time at bestbet Jacksonville. The amateurs were quite bad and the pros were extremely predictable. One of the pros in the big $2/$5 game went three hours playing two hands. That’s either a really bad run, or a really bad strategy. Keep in mind that this is a game where I was trying to isolate the whale with some extremely marginal hands. I’ll never know how some people can just sit there and wait for premiums. Respect!

The obvious drawback here was the structure of the game.

Table Atmosphere: 9/10

Like the MGM National Harbor, the crowd is fairly serious about their poker. This is generally the case at venues that are less of a tourist destination. That being said, their is constant table talk at bestbet in a very enjoyable way. Even at the brief short-handed pro-heavy $5/$10 game, conversation was at least attempted. In the $2/$5 games, I was quickly inducted into the group after being questioned about my origin and the nature of my travel. It didn’t take me long to get a feel for the social dynamics of the table, understand the inside jokes, and have an excellent time.

Service/Amenities: 6/10

The poker staff was very helpful, but nothing is free.

Nothing.

I ordered a coffee as soon as I sat down, and was asked if I wanted regular coffee or Starbucks coffee. I understood this as basically a question of whether I wanted the free coffee or the good coffee. I took the free coffee and was surprised to be charged $1.35. This is an extremely awkward price at a poker table, where chips are generally the currency of choice. Not wanting to give a 65 cent tip, I ponied up $3 for a predictably harsh cup of coffee.

Luckily, my student treated me to a couple bottles of water later in the night and I avoided the “free water” about which I was quickly warned by the table.

Location/Facility: 7/10

Having intentionally stayed quite close to bestbet, I found the location extremely convenient. The actual building was stark, but very clean with excellent parking, lots of bathrooms, and a good vibe overall. I personally enjoy playing at a poker venue that is not a casino, even if drunk people drifting over after a big craps score can be excellent for the game.

Overall: 7.5/10

bestbet Jacksonville is an excellent card room in terms of the quality of the games and the atmosphere. The short stackers are a drag, but the easy money and good conversation are enough for me. Just be careful about the water (or at least that’s what I’ve heard).

This article is brought to you with the help of Upswing Poker. We at Cardplayer Lifestyle would like to thank them so much for their support, and we encourage you to check out their site.

Some of you reading this may know me as a co-host of the Just Hands Poker Podcast. My co-host (and fellow Cardplayer Lifestyle contributor) Zach Resnick and I are at a point in our lives where our we have very little in terms of responsibilities attached to a single location. Not having a job would be another way to put it. Like others before us, we decided to take a road trip. Unlike many of those before us, our road trip will feature poker at just about every stop.

Our itinerary will take us across the country and both coasts. Naturally, we will be experiencing a large cross-section of American culture and poker culture. These regional differences in American culture are something about which I’m well aware, even if I haven’t experienced them in large doses firsthand. Regional differences in poker culture, however, are something I have heard very little about and have thought about even less.

Jack Laskey Zach Resnick

I met Robbie, the founder and editor of Cardplayer Lifestyle, when we interviewed him on Episode 17 of our podcast about an unbelievably fun home game variant called SHOP. In our later conversations, we decided Cardplayer Lifestyle would be a perfect host for a series of articles documenting differences in poker culture and poker quality across the country.

Over the next couple of months, I’ll be comparing the poker scene at casinos and card rooms in Washington DC, Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Arizona, Nevada, and California. I’ll also throw in some tidbits about the Midwest and Northeast poker scenes to compare and contrast. For the statistically inclined, I’ll be rating these casinos and card rooms on five specific measures and then give one overall score. So with that, we’ll begin, like the trip, in our nation’s capital.

MGM National Harbor

The drive from Reagan airport to the MGM National Harbor is a short one. This was rather fortunate given several thwarted attempts to revisit the casino since its opening month. This MGM, one of the few casinos on our upcoming trip at which I’ve already played, has been extremely kind to me. The first time around, long wait times and managerial disorganization were overshadowed by the high quality poker action. Spirits were high at the tables as new players and out-of-town pros enjoyed each other’s company for the first time. Three months later, I was curious how the room, games, and overall atmosphere may have changed.

MGM National Harbor poker room

Image credit: MGM National Harbor poker room

Returning to a poker room after months or even years is a surreal experience. Familiar faces abound stirring up the memories and emotions of past hands. There goes the fish who two-outed me on the river bluff raising KK into my set of jacks on an A-high board on the turn. Here comes the old reg against whom my “float to bluff” turned “rivered gutshot” turned “perceived suckout” still brings back feelings of animosity. Luckily, I went relatively unnoticed outside of a few friends.

Cultural Snapshot

I find the MGM National Harbor games to be on the serious side. Players often appear to be relatively affluent and well-educated compared to what I’ve experience at other casinos. There isn’t a lot of drinking and most players are trying their hardest to win, albeit poorly. Table talk tends to be sparse and rather cordial. Tables erupts into laughter far less often than optimally.

Much of this behavior can be traced to the high ratio of pros in the room. There is a lot of money flowing into these games, enough to support a sizable core of reasonably competent pros. A game can still be excellent with three or four pros at a table of 10, especially the tight-aggressive-type pros common at MGM, but they are much harder to ignore if you are an amateur player.  When you have enough people quietly paying attention, taking time with decisions, and playing aggressively, the table tends to mirror those behaviors.

While it’s nice to be able to put on headphones periodically during a long session without missing much or changing the vibe, the trade-off is not worth it. When the booze is flowing and the table is talking and laughing, the game tends to be much more enjoyable and profitable. If the local pros made more of an effort to engage with amateur players and didn’t do things like instantly muck to a clearly value-heavy bet from a fish, the games would change for the better.

chip stack

The $2/$5 game has treated me well in my small sample at MGM

The Metrics

Game Selection: 9/10

MGM’s greatest strength is their game offerings and the structure. Hold’em regularly goes up to $10/$25 and all of the games have a relatively high cap. While this tends to benefit pros more than amateurs, it does make the game a lot more interesting and exciting. At $2/$5 and below, there are always several tables running in case you get stuck with an undesirable bunch.

In addition to the NLH action, Omaha games and limit games are abundant in scope and size. I played a few hours at an excellent $1-$2-$5 5-card PLO game that had two tables going. Regardless of what you like to play and how big you like to play, MGM probably has your game.

Game Quality: 7/10

The excellent game structure has a lot to do with game quality. At $2/$5 NLH, for example, the average stack size is often over 200BB. That being said, the constant presence of decent to very good players is a damper on the whole thing. At least on a weekday night, I’d say the action is consistently very good, but rarely great.

Table Atmosphere: 6/10

As addressed above, the table talk is lacking. It’s not as bad as some rooms where everyone is just miserable, but it’s very far from a home game atmosphere.

Service & Amenities: 6/10

I’m sorry to say that the staff is very limited in both size and willingness to help. If you want a table change, you will have to constantly hawk the floor-people. Luckily there’s a self-serve coffee station, since wait times can be very long for beverages. They have a really nice table-side food service from the food court, which features a shake-shack among healthier alternatives.

The first buy-in is at the table and you can transfer with more than the buy-in cap, two big pluses in my book. On the weekends, expect a long wait, but on a weekday I was able to get right into $2/$5 and only waited 25 minutes to get into 5-card PLO.

Location & Facility: 9/10

The only drawback here is the lack of public transportation. Located just outside of DC proper, the MGM is easily accessible and benefits greatly from the wealth of the area’s population. The grounds are beautiful and the casino is new and extremely clean. Parking is plentiful and convenient. If they had a bathroom closer to the poker room, it would be perfect.

Overall: 7.5/10

The diversity and quality of the games as well as the ease of access make the MGM National Harbor the place to play in DC. You won’t find the juiciest game of your life in this room, but you also won’t get stuck playing $1/$2 with a bunch of short-stackers.

This article is brought to you with the help of Upswing Poker. We at Cardplayer Lifestyle would like to thank them so much for their support, and we encourage you to check out their site.

Last week, the United States Department of Justice announced that the remission process for former Absolute Poker and UB players is underway. It’s been six years since Black Friday, but some players will finally be able to recoup at least some of their former bankrolls on those sites.

If you had money stuck on UB or Absolute Poker, here’s how to get your money back https://t.co/ST3fZrJlbQ pic.twitter.com/4Y4kZE9uNT

— US Poker (@uspoker) April 13, 2017

If we learned anything from the Black Friday saga, it is how dangerous it can be to play on an unregulated online poker site. At least that’s the popular talking point we like to claim.

Most American poker players will claim that they want regulated online poker, but there are some who have voted with their dollars by choosing to play on unregulated sites like ACR or Ignition.

Some of you are going to choose to play on these sites regardless of other people’s warnings or any past or future shutdowns or scandals. All we can do is offer some advice on how to stay safe while playing unregulated online poker and hope you keep your wits about you.

Pay Close Attention to Player Sentiment and Problems

Whenever you deal with an unregulated online poker site, you are taking the risk that the site will not pay out. At some point, they could suddenly shut down and abscond with your funds (Lock Poker, anyone?).

There are almost always warning signs when this happens and you need to pay close attention to them. Players will start complaining about difficulties making deposits, withdrawals, and in some cases will even report suspicious activities on the site or amongst those running the company.

This information leaks out and soon you will be able to read all about it on Twitter, Facebook, 2+2, or any popular poker forum. As such, you need to pay attention to the general climate of the site and if things start to go south, get out.

Use Bitcoin for Online Transactions

Players are increasingly switching over to bitcoin for online poker transfers for both speed and security. For those who somehow haven’t heard about bitcoin yet, it is an electronic currency that has been growing in popularity over the last couple of years or so.

Skype inventor Jaan Tallinn wants to use Bitcoin technology to save the world https://t.co/4wQDcKNdbm pic.twitter.com/rfnbYLIwIL

— Bitcoin (@Bitcoin) June 24, 2016

Many major retailers are jumping onto the bitcoin bandwagon and online casinos have begun doing the same. For instance, BitStarz claims to be the first online casino to accept bitcoin and some online poker rooms have also started using it as a payment processing method.

Ignition and ACR both accept bitcoin and both heavily promote the use of the cryptocurrency. What are the advantages? Deposits are immediate and you don’t have to worry about getting a prepaid credit card or about “verification processes.”

Also, when you try to withdraw funds, you’ll get your funds within minutes or hours instead of waiting for days or weeks.

Refrain From Playing on Unregulated Sites

Of course, if you want to guarantee that your online bankroll will remain safe, then you should refrain from playing on unregulated online poker sites in the first place. This is an option most of you don’t like to hear, but there’s simply no other true guarantee that your funds will remain safe.

Even if U.S.-facing sites meet their obligations to players, there’s still no guarantee that the DOJ will not decide at some point to hold “Black Friday – Part II.” There are no legitimate indicators out there that the DOJ won’t decide to indict people running online poker and casino operators offering unregulated iGaming in the U.S.

So, just as a reminder, every time you log in to play online poker at unregulated online poker sites, you are gambling with your bankroll. If they do eventually end up getting shut down, there might eventually be a remission process where you can recoup your bankroll. But will that process happen in two weeks, as was the case with PokerStars in 2011, or will the process drag on for 6 years like with AP and UB? Only time will tell.

There are a number of ways that you can use online poker statistics to your advantage, including analyzing your game, finding mistakes that your toughest opponents are making, and learning the ways to exploit others using your HUD (heads-up display). I highly recommend implementing all of the above. Let’s start from the latter of the three ways and discover the extent to which doing so can help you can improve your results.

Exploit opponents using your HUD

Most poker players are aware of advantages a great HUD can give you. That said, I see notice that many players nonetheless don’t extract full value from their HUD. Here’s my approach:

You need to make your HUD color-coded

You ought to divide your heads-up display into three separate sections for all the stats. For example, I have a system where I give a specific range to all of the stats, which I assume to be normal. If the stat falls in that particular range, I mark it as orange. If it is too high, I opt it to display it in red and if too low – in green. This is how it looks in practice.

color coded HUD

My color-coded system instantly lets me spot any mistakes that my opponents make so that I can immediately know how to adjust my strategy. For instance, it alerts me when to 3-bet light because my opponent is folding too much. I also know when to c-bet more than normal or to barrel an opponent on multiple streets.

Simply put, I know how to maximize my winnings against all kinds of players. The color-coded HUD system just allows me to not have to waste time that can instead use for other purposes, such as attacking my opponents’ weaknesses.

User vs. Hero statistics

If you are using Holdem Manager 2, utilizing this feature is a MUST. To be honest, this is the most important reason I am sticking with HM2 as my HUD rather than other tracking software.

These stats will show how your opponent plays specifically against you. The majority of good players adjust their strategies vs. different opponents, so if you have built up a database of many hands against a particular opponent or, alternatively, have discovered a few particular players that are difficult to defeat, this is a must-have feature. It will enable you to figure out how to counter their strategies in the most efficient ways and adjust your game to specific opponents.

Just so you don’t think I’m exaggerating its importance, this feature alone has saved me thousands of dollars over time and has helped me not only adjust my game vs. good opponents, but also better understand my own game and how I should be playing in many troubling spots.

Do not get overwhelmed with too many stats

You do not want to have an enormous HUD just to see everything at once. Instead, put the majority of detailed stats into pop-ups. To be honest, my main HUD is quite big, but I only put most relevant stats, which I am using all the time when making decisions, directly to it. Everything else goes to pop-up, and I highly recommend you following the same path. It keeps your table neat, and you can concentrate your attention on what is crucial – making right decisions.

Analyze your own game

Whether you play using U.S. poker apps or from elsewhere around the world on a laptop, analyzing your online poker hand database is one of the most efficient ways to improve your game. A word to the wise; however, this is not as easy as you might think.

Basically, you have two options – to pay for a professional review or to do it yourself. There’s also the third option of asking a friend to help you out, but you ought to be sure that the friend you ask is a better player than you. If so, it’s worth exercising that option.

Most of the time, however, you’ll have to pick one of the two main options. A professional analysis will of course help you, but it also could be costly. If you’re looking to save some money, you can try to conduct your own statistical analysis.

This method will, of course, take a quite bit of time but it has the potential to deliver great long-term results. Thus, I would say it is probably the most important part of your game; so take it seriously. I suggest dividing all you statistics into two parts and analyzing pre-flop and post-flop data separately.

Every poker player should know how to examine their database and find mistakes. There are many ways to do that and many statistics you need to take in consideration. If you need a helping hand, I suggest reading my more detailed article on the most important poker stats to analyze.

Analyze your opponents and exploit their weaknesses

Much like you can gain valuable insight from analyzing your own game, it goes without saying that you can learn a ton from analyzing your opponents’ mistakes. Obviously, you will not be able to go over data about every single player you play against, but there is no need to do that.

The fact is that relatively few players engage in proper opponent analysis, so you’ll already be ahead of many of them if you do so.

I suggest filtering out hands and analyzing the hands from just your toughest opponents and finding mistakes in their games. As mentioned earlier, you will be able to spot quite a few of their leaks while playing if you are using reasonably good HUD. However, a full-on data analysis will reveal LOTS more.

For instance, you will be able to check how they play in troublesome spots, whether or not they commit big mistakes pre-flop or can be taken better advantage of post-flop. Perhaps they bluff too often on the river (or not enough)? You can even filter out hands where your toughest opponents make it to showdown and analyze how they play their draws, when they slowplay, etc.

Conclusion

All of the above information will help you tremendously in building a winning strategy for countering specific opponents. So, be sure to take notes on best players in your games when analyzing them and be ready to do some damage when you encounter them in your next session.

This is just one of many ways you can improve your game; I’ve got plenty more poker tips on my site. You’re also welcome to check out the MyPokerCoaching YouTube channel for more information. Keep on learning and improving your game and we will talk soon!

Poker enthusiast Ryan Sackett’s journey to realizing his dreams

One big regret that many people have later on in life is that they were too afraid of dreaming big and taking risks to achieve their aspirations. After risking it all in the pursuit of his dream to become a WSOP Dealer, Ryan Sackett can now reflect on his own journey from dream to reality.

Ryan Sackett poker dealer

Ryan was always a very likable guy, so it comes as no surprise that after “playing several hours of poker at the Northern Lights Casino in Walker, Minnesota” he became friends with the dealers.

“After getting to know several of the poker dealers, I eventually started asking about dealing myself. It seemed like a good way to make money and stay around the game that I loved,” Ryan said.

For most people, that would have been the end of the story. A dream is born, a passion, a calling; a drive only to be thrown into park and remain a reverie because we dread the possibility of failure. There are so few of us who resist the urge to slam the brakes on the dream machine and throw it into park. Those few brave individuals who ignore their apprehension and instead press the throttle to the floor and hit top gear are inspirations to us all! Ryan Sackett is one such man.

READ: Top 10 Reasons for Tipping Poker Dealers

The Bright Lights of Vegas Come Calling

Ryan explains his early card dealing role as follows: “It was very hard to get into the Northern Lights poker room, although they did let me deal tournaments when larger ones came in town (MSPT then Minnesota State Poker Tour, HPT, etc.). I also traveled to other casinos in Minnesota, for the same larger tournaments for extra help.”

I imagine being a dealer in the Midwest isn’t really living the dream, that’s just a job. No, this trip can’t stop until Vegas!

Ryan Sackett dealing

Ryan dealing cash games at the 2013 WSOP

“I was on vacation… I was about 24. I had always dreamed of hitting up and frequenting Vegas, ever since the poker boom. My first time was a bit of a sensory overload,” Ryan says of his first time in Vegas. “I had already wanted to go there on a long term basis, that trip cemented me wanting to move out here.”

This is where the rubber meets the road, Vegas or bust. Most folks would have run out of gas at this point letting their dream sputter. Ryan is not most folks. He withdrew his savings and headed out to Vegas with a one-way ticket!

“I moved out here with a suitcase of clothes, a backpack, and a little over $6k in cash. Life was a huge struggle, when I pissed away my Vegas fund in September of 2010. That’s when I first moved here. After I blew through my moving-out-to-Vegas money, in about three months, a newly acquainted friend got me a job where he was working at the time, in a call center,” Ryan laments. I had a pretty tough year-and-a-half or so before I was dealing the WSOP. I had some crap jobs just to survive.”

Auditioning for a Dream Role

In the summer of 2012, after working at the call center for a couple years, Ryan took several weeks off to deal at the WSOP, but first he had to get through the grueling audition process.

“I heard I could apply for the dealing job at the WSOP on the Caesars website. I applied, and about a month later I got a call asking me if I was still interested in dealing the 2012 WSOP. I of course said yes, and he gave me an audition date which, if I remember correctly, was April 9th of 2012. The audition process is nerve racking, because there are 9 other dealers at the table as well as the person observing you. The observer names a game, and you deal it,” Ryan says.

Ryan Sackett dealing

Ryan dealing day 5 of the 2013 World Series of Poker Main Event

“I have to admit, I wasn’t familiar with all the games that were dealt. So I did as much research as I could on the games I didn’t know, but you still have to know proper mechanics of different games. I was about the fifth or sixth dealer of the audition. So, I got to watch others. If I wasn’t sure about the game, I’d watch to see what looked proper, and repeat what they did. The guy giving the audition asked me to deal PLO, and that’s where I freaked out a bit. That game is all about math, playing, and dealing. I dealt three or four different games. I think it was one hand of NLH, one hand of stud 8, one hand of PLO, and one hand of deuce to seven triple draw. He told us we would know if we got the job after everyone auditioned. He’d have a one-on-one with everyone and tell us if we passed, or not. Turns out he passed everyone I auditioned with and told us as a group.”

A Short-Lived Dream?

Alright, we make it through the finish line, we win, dream come true! Well… hold on there. A race isn’t won simply by making it through the qualifying round!

Ryan goes on to describe how some of the dealers, after successfully making it through the auditions, buckle after the cameras and lights come on; after the big name poker pros have a seat and things get real! He said there were a few people who got up and left the table crying from the pressure. Ryan also had to overcome his first day jitters as well.

“The experience was surreal. I was so nervous pitching my first few hands. I was sweating after each down,” Ryan said. “I have dealt 5 WSOPs. I don’t get nervous dealing to big pros any longer. I get a bit nervous when I’m dealing in the spotlight, when I know many people are or could potentially be watching.”

Ryan Sackett Phil Hellmuth

He wasn’t out of the woods just yet. The WSOP only goes on for 7 weeks. After that first WSOP, Ryan went back to his “crap job”.

Forced to Pursue His Love of Dealing

“I didn’t start dealing full time until I got fired from my crap job, in the spring/summer of 2013, which was a blessing in disguise,” Ryan said. “I had nothing else to fall back on.  I started getting more connections in the poker scene, found out some gigs around, and found out who was hiring for these gigs. My breakout WSOP was in 2013. I actually got a good amount of ESPN time, that year.”

That’s it. He crosses the line, takes the checkered flag and starts his victory lap! You never work a day in your life if you love what you do. Ryan now travels all over the country as an independent contractor doing what he loves mingling with the biggest names in poker.

Ryan’s story should be an inspiration to us all. If you don’t think you can do something, you’re right. Still, if you think that you can, you’re also right. I encourage you to go after it, chase your dreams and don’t stop until they are realized.