Lodge Card Club (Austin, TX)

What are the affordable lodging options neeme the lodge polker room, owen to the high cost of lodging these days?

That sounded like one of your videos. Seriously, any affordable lodging in the area?

I am a rec player who has played a lot at the Lodge. I am excited to try the new San Antonio location before too long. I also enjoy trying other clubs in the area as believe competition good for the market as well as play occasional home games. I want to see the Lodge succeeded as poker is one of my favorite hobbies. I am taking a little break but really excited for the new restaurant to hopefully have a one spot to play cards, have drinks, eat dinner, and watch sports if the restaurant is what I think it will be when it opens. A few questions/comments if you feel like diving in as I suspect I am not the only one thinking about these topics:

• What changes do you expect the new San Antonio room to have on the Austin location? I saw the new game structures are a little deeper in many spots in SA. I'd love to see a move to the MUG structure at the Lodge with 1/2 having $500 max buy-in (and $500 bomb pot cap but less of a care). This also would match across the street to give a reason to not choose to play at Poker House.
  
• What are you considering as you consider prepay vs current post pay? I am a big fan of post pay as pre-pay makes me have to think about whether to stay or leave.
  
• Will the new restaurant remove BYOB? Will it have full bar for players? I personally would be happy to sacrifice BYOB if can get good waitresses and full bar options.
  
• Some dealers seem to have left over the last year including some that used to be on stream (who I assume were good dealers in management's mind by this placement). It has coincided with a drop in dealer quality in my opinion. My favorite thing when I first started coming to the Lodge was by my 2nd visit being remembered by dealers and they created a fun, relaxed, and friendly environment at the table closer to a home game than a casino (I know not all players will want this but I enjoy it as a rec). Do you think there are issues impacting dealer retention or just a downside of the rapid Lodge growth, a need for more dealers, and natural turnover? I still think the Lodge has the best dealers in the country so want to make sure the Lodge is staying ahead of any potential issues.
  
• How is it determined which games are available on the list? Should staff add any game requested by a player? Is there a way to get more ROE or mixed games on the list to just see if they will run some? Round of Each goes a lot across the street so I think there is interest. From watching some WSOP, I'd love to get a culture of low stakes stud, 7 game, 2-7 triple or single draw, etc. going occasionally sometimes for variety.
  

They have some discounts on their website:

https://thelodgepokerclub.com/austin/hotels/

Lodge Card Club

Hotel Deals Near The Lodge Card Club Austin

Tons of nearby affordable hotels and we have deals you can find here.

https://thelodgepokerclub.com/austin/hotels

Lodge Card Club

Hotel Deals Near The Lodge Card Club Austin

Thanks for the information and detailed questions, I can tell you are someone that knows the area and the games well.

To start with, our head restaraunteer is John Green. He has many years of experience with bars and restaraunts all over the world. He hosted a season of "On The Rocks", basically a bar rescue show. You can learn more about John here: http://johngreen.biz/about/

I have known John for a decade, he is one of the best in the business and I also have high hopes when our restaurant opens in 2-3 months.

- SA changes impact on Austin

I think it's important for us to approach each location a bit different, we aren't trying to be chipotle where we bang out an exact replica model. That said, most things should be fairly similar, and there will be lots to think over. Our game plan out of the gate is to change nothing in Austin for at least a few months while we learn.

If we were ever to experiment with buyin structure, it wouldn't be at 1/2. It's by far our most popular game and lots of players appreciate getting to play in a reasonable sized game at those stakes.

- Prepay vs Postpay

This is probably the subject I am most torn on. Postpay has one major advantage, you don't have to bother players while they play. This improves customer experience and in theory average play time. The drawbacks are substantial though

- Lodge carries tabs on many players who leave and don't pay. Many people end up paying, some do not. With prepay the business has a surplus instead of debt.

- We have a good number of customers who do not realize they owe money, and when they come back they are upset to find out they have a tab. Prepay solves this.

- If a customer has a tab, they may choose to play elsewhere where they don't owe money.

These drawbacks are all at least fairly substantial. I'm not sure where we will end up landing. The game plan for now is to open both room with restaurants and analyze the data.

- When the restaurant opens we will have full bar and service, resulting in the end of byob.

- We have had a good amount of turnover with dealers, but it's also pretty standard in the industry for that to happen. Past that, I spent a good portion of time in the last year fixing issues and potential issues. I think we landed in a good place. We have incredible staff top to bottom.

- For game types, we happy to run a variety of games. If you have a group you want to bring to play we can setup a reserved table. If you want to play with other members at the room, feel free to put your name on the standard game lists.

Thanks for questions.

Thank you for the response. I appreciate the detailed answers and look forward to continuing to see the Lodge have great success.

Played at the Lodge yesterday in Austin and really enjoyed it, I'm very excited to go back.

For seat fees I'd look at something such as raising standard price $2ish then add a similar discount if people agree to auto charge. When no seat activity for ~1 hour auto charge their credit card. Would add convenience of player not having to checkout and mgmt not having to deal with player balances.

For people that prefer cash allow prepay cash balance to their player account for discount then auto charge from that.

For people that prefer to pay postpay the extra $2ish fee covers dealing with balances/payments/collections/etc

I'm not an attorney so probably need to run by yours, but I'd imagine you can put legal language in agreements so it's fine.

I played at the Mayfair Club in Manhattan once in the '90s and they had a hybrid pre-pay system. If memory serves, players had to pay for 4 hours in advance (I assume there was no refunds if they stayed shorter). If a player played longer than that I think they payed the difference on the way out. But it was over 25 years ago and I only played there once, so I might have some details wrong.

That said, a hybrid pre-pay system ensures everyone pays at least something. If a player forgets to pay on the way out (or is busted) the club risks losing only part of its fees. How many tables does the Lodge have and how in the hell does management keep track of all the players? The Mayfair Club only had a few tables, so it probably wasn't that hard. But the Lodge has many more (if I correctly remember photos I've seen) and I suspect more than 100 players at times. Keeping track of player's times seems like a massive headache.

You might consider discounts on time charges to encourage certain behaviors. One might be something like receive five hours play for four hour pay if a player arrives before a certain time, to help get games started earlier. Or another might involve a discount on cash play if a player plays in a daily tournament, to help encourage cash players to play the tournament, and encourage tournament players to stay and play cash afterwards. Obviously, if you have more players than you can handle, such things are unnecessary.

I only played once, but looks like the Lodge checks you in at front desk and assigns you to table. Each table has little LCD screen dealer uses, and they confirmed your checked in and check your out when you leave. Looked to be a pretty good use of tech.

For payment, can you have a player swipe a players card at the table to track their hours played and then have one of their credit cards on file and then just run the card automatically every 24 hours?

Based on Doug's podcast today, it would be amazing if the Lodge could do a weekend of Alan Keating designed tourneys letting him make all the rules with straddles allowed, no sunglasses, no headphones, and whatever else he wants to do with variety of games. It would be similar to the wacky weekend that was done previously but he has some fun ideas that would be interesting to try and see the popularity.