Houston, TX Area Poker

anyone know anything about clubs that aren't listed on pokeratlas? i drove by a place called "lucky aces" but they don't seem to be listed on poker atlas, what rooms like that are around and how many of them run cheap/free tournaments? are these places less likely to be quasi-legit?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sn8G_Z9c...

poker stream at champions poker live, is there any other threads for this place?

Champions Club Texas
6440 W Sam Houston Pkwy S
Houston, TX 77072
(281) 688-5756

There used to be a Lucky Aces in the Houston area but I thought it closed. I know they were running other casino games like BJ and Pai Gow as well as poker.

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I'm in Austin so haven't been to the Houston market to play yet.

What's the deal with Prime Social? Was looking at pics of the room and it looks stunning, but doesn't seem to get much traction?

Prime is in a location of Houston that is heavily saturated with other established rooms, notably two. From Prime, it's a 4 min drive to TCH Houston (not to be confused with TCH Spring on the northside) and 6 min drive to Legends. Legends has been well established for a few years now as the prime action spot for PLO in the downtown area. There were some pretty damning videos and accusations made some months ago, but Legends appears to not have suffered much at all. I haven't played at Legends in many months but would love for a reg there to comment on this (looking at you, Bull - I know you look at this once a week or so, damn it!)

TCH Houston opened up last year, and it did take several months, but they now have consistent 24 hour cash games, a daily $2/$2 PLO game as well as $1/$3/$6 popping off. I chalk up their increased traffic to their established brand as well as tournament hosting over the past year or so.

Aside from these rooms, there are three more I can think of off the top of my head that you can get to from Prime in under 8 minutes.

EDIT: Not sure how I left Champions Club out. Although 15 minutes away from Prime, Champions is also in the southwest Houston metro area and is very popular.

Was checking Poker Atlas last night and Prime had zero games running. And yeah, sounds like they have some stiff competition close by.

Champions I've heard great things about, but they don't seem to get more than 2-3 games running from what I've seen (outside of their series)

Houston poker is skirting the legal issues. I heard several rooms, including Capri, have started taking rake and eliminated the time charge. I saw a video of a raked pot there.

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Not new news, really. Bulltexas clarifies earlier ITT that the majority of rooms are now raking. Only rooms we're aware of that still take time payment:

TCH Spring
TCH Houston
Prime Social (at least as of 5 months ago)
Spades - Webster location

TCH Houston is the spot right now. Legends still gets decent PLO action, but more and more faces from there are popping up at TCH.

Prime's demise is one of the great mysteries: game and cardroom running is an art and, despite a fantastic physical space, they've just collapsed.

How frowned on is it to try to actually freeroll the "freerolls" (as in not going for staff bonus, etc)? would it result in being banned if one were to make it a habit?

When I was moving around the private games right when many of the rooms opened, I kind of knew Prime wouldn't do well. The clientele who actually appreciate a high end room and amazing bar, generally speaking didn't socially blend well with the action players that are needed to keep multiple tables of worthwhile games going.

There was a time where going to Prime over Lions (RIP) was just silly. It was player, and management behavior that hurt Prime. The Houston gambling scene, will never fare well with a "country club" atmosphere, especially if it only concentrates nitty players. You need the drunks/ganja smokers/pill heads/sports degens all in the building, and to be frank they were never going to spend much time at Prime with other options that fit them better.

Does anyone know how PLO pots are played at TCH Houston? Are they bomb pots or regular Omaha hands? Are they played every dealer change?

In the 1/3 game, there is a PLO Bomb Pot (voluntary) at each dealer change. There is also a disk that triggers a PLO hand ("normal" PLO, not bomb pot) when it is held by the same player that has the dealer button. After that hand, when the dealer button goes to the left, the PLO button goes to the right. This effectively makes it 1 normal PLO hand every round or so.

So your sense is that Prime was just not degen enough to survive? 😀

fyp, but yes essentially, there were a large % of the main daytime OMC players that were retired and wanted to play 10am NLHE that had come from a particular underground game. That private game was cultivated to cater to them for rake purposes (they were rocks), blend in a few donkeys, and a whale once a month or so, if I remember correctly it probably used to start closer to 2pm-4pm and ran a regular tourney then cash would start. Once Prime opened all of them naturally migrated to a "somewhat legal" poker room and had their coffee and read their paper from 10am-until Primes daily tourney would start.

The action was abysmal compared to blocks away where people were going all in blind or UTG lol.

Sorry haven’t been on 2+2 much recently since the site has really deteriorated from what it used to be.

Champions is the only other one not listed above that uses time and doesn’t rake. Tch also charges a door fee. Prime used to but dropped it although they get no games anymore at all.

This is not true particularly PLO. Legends is still the spot in town if PLO is your game.

Prime had a lot of issues. Some confirmed cheaters chased away the bigger PLO action. After Justin hammer left larger tourneys went away so they lost that action too. Had a lot of other issues which are too much to go into here. Once Josh Adkins left remaining business went kaput.

Except at 1/2 plo games.
Bombs only happening at the 1/3 games.

I live in Austin, but family lives in Houston. I have not really ventured to any Houston rooms. So, nearly all locations are taking rake now? That sounds pretty awful. Some also have extra charges like a door fee? Not sure which I would pick if I was playing in Houston.