Austin, TX Area Poker

It's not just in Austin. It's everywhere.

But more specific to Texas, stuff like the bomb pots (which I love) that dramatically increases a good players edge and get fish spewing tons of money isn't usually sustainable over the long term. Players lose too much money too quickly.

And the EuroRegs are a scourge.

I vlog PLO and for me personally while I love bomb pots because players make so many mistakes, I think they're terrible for the poker economy. Three players go broke and now your game breaks.

We're slaughtering the sheep instead of sustainably shearing them.

Back in Tampa we ran flips (they call them racehorses here in TX) where you put in "x" amount and just run it out. You scratch that gambling itch without completely destroying people. I mean, ESPECIALLY in hold em games, get those plo double board bomb pots out of there.

The problem is that the grinders push for this stuff, and the rooms leadership is dumb enough to listen to the wrong customers. Or, the leadership of these rooms are just wealthy players who think that everything has to be about "the best action" and "the biggest pots"

Joe Q Public works his 9-5 all week. He just wants to come in, play 4-6 hours, drink some beers, watch the game on tv, socialize and not get completely wrecked by Klaus from Germany.

Just give people a fair and fun place to play at a reasonable price point and you'll print. Stop spending your marketing and promo dollars attracting and retaining the grinders. That money is for the fun recreational players.

Well to be fair, the fish aren't exactly opposed to these big exciting pots either. And most just convince themselves they're just running bad in crazy hands where anything can happen. So sick to lose with two pair on one board and absolutely nothing on the other! I think management is in a tricky spot when good players and bad players alike welcome that extra action. Joe Q Public doesn't even realize he's getting completely wrecked by Klaus. I've seen rooms put loss caps on PLO bomb pots, I think that's pretty reasonable.

PLO is just another layer of natural selection in a way. Fish who regularly play PLO learn over time/usually 3-10 sessions depending how fast they learn that they can't just jump in the game and buy in the entire $5k in their pocket all at once. Most every fish I play with regularly even some very rich ones driving $150k+ cars will show up with however much and break it down into 4-10 bullets based on their experience with the game and understanding they can go thru quite a few buy ins getting coolered or sucked out on so they shouldn't put everything on the table at once. It's a rare few who just sit down and buy in super deep with nothing left to reload if they bust it. Sometimes a seasoned fish might go thru a couple buy ins and then get super tilted bc of the hand or the specific person that stacked him and then reload the remainder of their money all at once but most fish have developed their own system of BR management after 10 sessions+

I've had a number of people say they'd love to come play PLO here in Austin, but they've got $600 in their pocket, and they see a guy sitting with 8K, and another with 12K, they know they just don't have a chance, so they don't come.

The barrier to entry is too large, so we aren't really growing the game because the entry level 1/2/5 game is playing like a shallow-stacked 40/80 because of selfish and short-sighted grinders and leadership at clubs who really don't understand how to build games that are protected.

As a room operator, I don't want players going broke, I want you sitting in your seats pushing money back and forth paying me hourly fees for as long as possible.

They need to protect the lower stakes entry-level games from playing so large, and keep all the unlimited straddles, match the stack and deeper buyins to the bigger games.

Yeah I'd love to learn PLO at like a 1/1 cash game buying in for $100-200 or whatever.

I think recs and fish enjoy the bomb pots. I don't think the way to avoid the players going broke/breaking games is to get rid of the bomb pots but instead set more conservative caps and stakes. For example, if the game is 1/2, the ante could be $2 and a $200 cap on the bomb pot to protect players. Even at 1/2/5 PLO, you could do ante of $5 and $500 cap. Players would complain about this but it probably would be beneficial overall to the poker ecosystem. This is from someone who is a rec who likes to mainly hang out, not lose too much, gamble, have some drinks, and socialize and bomb pots are a great mix up in that scenario to keep things fun.

I love 1/1 PLO and wish could get it to run. I play it sometimes at home games with people new to PLO. It allows people to see a lot of cheap flops, they won't go broke, even a straddle or 2 doesn't make the game too large, and people really enjoy it even if they are losing as they learn. It is hard for the poker clubs as you never have enough people wanting to just learn at the same time to run a game and the regulars want the larger stakes.

I'd love to ride a motorcycle 140mph but I've seen 2 motorcycle crashes in my life and my dad rides and had to be airlifted to the hospital and it's not worth the risk to me personally. Not everyone is gonna ride a motorcycle in life but more power to those who choose to do it

Before you ride a bicycle as a kid, you rice one with training wheels. What's happening is the game structures are designed so that a 1/2/5 plays like a shallow-stacked 40/80 game. You're throwing people into stakes they have no chance at without the deepest pockets.

And the deepest pockets love it because they can just push everyone around, flip coins 6-ways for stacks every hand until they bust you. If you double up, it doesn't matter, they'll just match your stack until they get you.

The bike with training wheels is 1/2nl. Structuring the PLO game so that the guy with $400 in his pocket can feel comfortable coming to sit down and play PLO vs going and playing NL with the same $400 and feeling like he can last as long as he would last in the NL game just isn't how it goes. If you're seeking out a higher variance game, that's what you will get in both directions

You don't see any motorcycles with training wheels on them do you? No that's bc if you don't know how to even ride a bike you probably shouldn't be on a motorcycle. And if you do know how to ride a bike already and are even pretty good at it, you shouldn't see someone riding a motorcycle at 140mph as a threat to you attempting to ride one down your neighborhood street at 20mph

If someone has $400 in their pocket they have 2 buy ins for either NL or PLO, if they're looking for excuses to not play PLO they will find one. If they really want to try it out some guy sitting with $8k at the table isn't going to stop them. The same way not everyone who rides a bike will end up riding a motorcycle, not everyone who has played poker/NLHE will end up playing PLO...that's the way life and poker both work

CHECKMATE CHUMP! /THREAD

Those aren't training wheels, it's a 3 wheel motorcycle...but you're just making my point even more so. They don't have seatbelts, if you crash you're still coming off it, but it's probably much safer to ride for a newbie/novice to motorcycles but they still have to share the road with cars and motorcycles alike. If someone has $400-600 they can easily still sit at a PLO table with players with $4-8k stacks and the max they can lose is still what they brought with them. If they don't have the balls to do it then they can make any excuse in the book to not do it, other stacks on the table are irrelevant

The problem is unlimited straddles allows those guys with massive stacks to jack it up and force the short-stacks to flip for their whole stack preflop. They can't really play a ton of post-flop poker, they just have to push and pray over and over against the 5/10/25 players who come into the games and make it play huge.

Not every lineup plays that way and if it does, so be it. Then new players can decide if they want to play it or not. There's plenty of guys that will straddle and double straddle and you don't even have to straddle at all in the game so there's tons of value to be had for a new player if he's not just splashing around every hand

We're gonna have to agree to disagree at this point.

Obviously there aren't many that want the lower staked game to go otherwise they'd start an interest list, the list would fill, and the game would go. Knish just wants to keep crying because it's not him skinning the beginners.

I'm also a fan of removing double board bomb pots. While I love them because people make tons of mistakes and it's good for me personally, I think they're terrible for the poker ecosystem.

Mason Malmuth gets it, you need to have a balance of skill and luck in the games so that the recs win about 1/3 of the time and keep coming back.

Deeper buyins, unlimited straddles, match the stack and double board bomb pots are just more edges that let the pros fleece the recs much too quickly.

Then the recs stop coming and there becomes an imbalance with too many sharks and not enough fish for them to feed on.

The Lodge and TCH could be easily doing double the business they do if they knew how to effectively market on a local level (instead of to traveling grinders and the overly-serious poker enthusiast crowd) and knew how to structure their cash games and tournaments in a way that allows the recs to win often enough that they'll continue coming.

I've been on the operator side where braindead GM's and owners ignored my advice and saw their businesses crumble because they thought every game has to have "the biggest action and the largest pots"

Joe Q Public just wants to come play for 4-6 hours, drink some beers, watch the game on tv, socialize and not get wrecked every single session.

The rooms focus their marketing efforts and their promotions too heavily towards the overly serious poker enthusiasts and not enough to the f'ing lifeblood of your poker room, the losing recreationals.

They are deciding to play or not. They are decking not. Which is fine for that game that day, but as Tampa has shared is bad for the games long term.

You are always going to be losing some players from the pool. Some will die, some will move away, some will just get bored with poker, some will move up, and some will go broke. You need to replace these players or the game eventually dries up.

You are giving them a choice to not play or jump in the deep end and try to run their bike around town at 30mph among the deep stacks doing 140mph. Sure it can be done, esp. if you are experienced and willing to play a short stack game but pure beginners need to play hands and need to play post flop to learn and get comfortable.

Well I can agree that Austin is a pretty bad city for pure PLO beginners to get started or try but certainly not the worst. It's not a forced straddle so they can still pay $3 in blinds per round while some other people are paying $13, 33, or 73. I understand you're not going to learn how to play postflop very well in this environment but the reason the PLO games are so good is bc so many of the fish got tired of the nittyness, lack of gambling/action going on at 2 card poker. So by nature you have to expect the very thing the fish left in search of is what you will run into at PLO. So if you don't want action and more variance then just stay away. It's not for everyone.

Some people love to surf but are happy to just go out on days they're gonna get 6-12 foot waves and kinda relax while other guys are out traveling the world in search of 30+ foot waves. Not everything is for everyone

Poker ecosystems ebb and flow and there are slow weeks/months in every city you go to. This isn't just an issue with Austin. I lived in LA for years and the same thing would happen there despite them having probably the best NL games in the country for many years at mid/high stakes....there would still be slow times when fish busted or were busy with holidays/enjoying the summer etc...

In fact if you wanted to learn PLO in LA back in 2012 you had 2 choices...there was a 5/10 game at The Bike and a 20/40 game at Commerce. Nothing lower than that ran anywhere....talk about no entry level for beginners. Yet people who had never played PLO would come and sit in both games....go figure

You don't think the rooms will start a list for a 1/2 plo with a max buy in, no straddle? Surely they will, then the game will make or it won't.

No idea if they would or wouldn't for sure but I would assume they won't. Most rooms aren't going to spread 2 completely overlapping limits like 1/2 capped and 1/2 match stack. It would make way more sense to make the current 1/2/5 into a 2/2/10 or straight 2/5 with unlimited straddles so they have a sort of middling limit game and then cap the 1/2 at $500. Will they do that? If enough players proposed it I assume they might, not sure most of the players would actually want that tho tbh

The current state of the Austin PLO is that when no bigger game runs the 1/2/5 can play anywhere from like a decent sized 2/5 game all the way up to like a 10/20 game depending on the lineup. Not sure if the players just sort of like it the way it is or why it stays like it does but I'm guessing the majority of players are not pushing to separate the limits more clearly, otherwise I have no idea why it wouldn't have been done already if there was a big push for it

I have seen 5/10 and 10/20 mix listed recently at TCH Social. Does anyone play these games? I am curious what games are usually played. Is there a decent amount of HORSE/2-7 games or is it mainly other games? I want to play as much Stud, Stud 8, or Razz as possible and curious if that would happen in these games.

I caught the tail end of the 10/20 the other morning and they were playing three games, O8, Stud8 and 2-7 Triple Draw. When I sat we were only three-handed so we did a $5 button ante.

I saw last night they had a 15/30 that was half O8 and half Stud8.

I've never played in Texas but I know in Vegas people are way better at plo double board bomb pots than a few years ago. Bad players get absolutely wrecked a few times playing one board super deep where they literally can't win the other board and either learn their lesson or quit.

I've long thought these should have caps. People can gamble more and not get wrecked as easily. From what I understand these games are match the stack so pros will just cover the bad players on their right which forces them to have to play a lot tighter or get annihilated.