The effect of 8-handed tables in Vegas

cash games are much more relaxed than tournaments and appropriately so. some people play for 6-13 hours. people can sit out anytime they want whether they are in their seat or not. people can take a break to get food or the bathroom. No way charge people the blinds in cash games when they aren't active.
if you want to have a time limit before their chips are removed from the table that is one thing (and usually done). other than that, it's just being a courteous neighbor

At some of the rooms I play in there are certain pros who refuse to play if there's not a whale present. They walk around and BS. Every 30 minutes or so they'll come back and play a few hands to keep from getting picked up, then they leave again if there's no whale. To me I would prefer that they were either blinded out or picked up, but that's just me.

Maybe when you first sit down they could give you a dinner break chip that allows you to take a 30 minute or hour break rake free? Some players take a seat and play less than half the time their chips are there, and that's ridiculous.

That was entirely the point of this thread. The other thing about the promo game is there's no chopping of the blinds. The small blind just folds to the big blind. If there's no flop there's no rake. So you've got to be certain the pot will get built in order to play. The rake is $4 on the flop, more than the big blind. The nightmare scenario is that you win the hand but lose money. With small blind folding often, a full orbit 5 handed sometimes takes less than a minute. The bathroom at the Horseshoe is right next to the poker room, and I've sometimes come back from taking a whiz, and I've missed a blind, even though I left on my button hand.

Players are seldom absent in tournaments because they have scheduled breaks.

Fair enough.

I'll admit the idea of charging blinds whether a player is there or not may not be popular with recs either, and thus would be a losing proposition. I'm just saying I would prefer it.

The crux of the problem, IMO, is that blinds are intended to induce action and "charge" a player for occupying a seat, but they're often not enough in live cash games to punish people who just try to outnit everyone. Whether nits are walking around the casino or just folding hand after hand until they pick up the nuts, there's not enough punishing them for occupying a seat and avoiding playing (and typically waiting for easy spots where fish punt their stacks). To me 8 vs 9 handed is not really the issue. The issue is there's not enough incentive to keep the money flowing.

I've also suggested adding a big blind ante like they have in tournaments, so at least there's a little more dead money to fight for. A lot of the high stakes games have gone to squid game, or private games have an implicit agreement that everyone is expected to play somewhat loose.

Time rake is another solution for players not being in their seats, because in that case they're at least being charged something whether they are in their seat playing hands or not.

I'd like to hear other peoples' ideas. In the games I play in a mandatory straddle is often introduced, but that also gets abused with certain players conveniently taking bathroom breaks right before their straddle. Then the casino won't enforce forcing them to pay the missed straddle to reenter the game because it's not an official blind.

You missed a very crucial aspect of his 8 vs 9 handed effect question that I clearly addressed early on, but is ignored for some reason. He's playing in a Horseshoe casino hours freeroll promo where most players' strategy is to fold as much as possible to book hours. What does anyone expect to happen when players want to play as long as possible? It's not rocket science. It's not an 8 vs 9 handed issue. It's an hours promo issue. Go to Aria or Wynn which don't have hours promos and their 8 handed games have more action, therefore their hands per hour are less, and there's not as many blind vs blind chops to book hours for a promo. That's the answer, but the mystery will remain.

After playing 150 friggin' hours, I got a good sense of the "nittiness" of the play in general, and it just wasn't nitty. When 7 or 8 handed, action seldom folded to the blinds. If you look at the "recommended" opening hands usually espoused on youtube by people trying to sell coaching, these guys were very loose in comparison. Remember I'm talking about when it got to 5 handed. That happened not just when someone walked, but when they left the game too. Many times when we were 5 or 6 handed it was because there was no player to fill the seats. All your schemes to punish people for walking won't do any good. If 9 handed there's a bigger buffer between shorthanded and 5 handed.

I still prefer 8-handed games, and I agree with Jose that hours promos are the nut low.

Casinos probably aren't going to go back to 9-handed. Now that the norm has changed they've realized they can run more games and thus collect more rake by going 8 handed.

If the game is 5-6 handed and nobody to fill the seats then 8 handed or 9 handed is irrelevant at that point.

Someone else mentioned time games. Time games are by far the fairest way to collect money. It's crazy El Diesel types who are absolute wastes of a seat and even chase people away pay the casino way less for a seat than people who actually drive action and keep games running.

In Vegas way too many things incentivize super tight play. Be it free rolls for x hours or the structure of both the 1/2 and 5/10 plo games at Aria. And you're already dealing with a way nittier marker in the first place than almost anywhere else in the country.

All I can say, is that when the norm was 9 handed, I don't remember tables getting short as quickly as they did as when I was playing in Apr/May.

Probably true, but at the 1/3 in Horseshoe, in April and May at least, there was little or no nitty play that I saw.

I agree with this. A lot.

It should also be noted that while the 3rd man walking rule would help a bit, it matters less in Vegas where most of the rooms are big enough (and have enough dealers coming and going) to have short (often non-existent) waiting lists. If there is no list they won't pick up the 3rd man walking.

Huh?!?!

I have visited Vegas 3 times during the Horseshoe's godawful hourly promotion. Each time the action has been terrible. Absolutely brutal. I tried actively to table hop and I did find a couple of OKish tables, but that was being over aggressive seeking out looser tables. It is just better to go to Caesars, Wynncore, or Aria where most of the tables will be better than the best table at the Horseshoe.

I am semi-friends with many if the dealers at the Shoe where I will go out with them post shift and they all talk about having downs where they never take max rake. Not once in a half hour does the pot reach $50. That is brutal. I am a dealer and I don't think I have ever had a down in my life in a raked game where I never once reached max rake.

If if was possible to measure average pot size in a live game, I am 100% certain the average pot size drops at the Horseshoe at their $1/$3 during this promotion. Average pot size is far higher in other $1/$3 games on the strip. It isn't even close.

I can't wait foe this stupid promotion to end so I can go back to playing at the Shoe when I visit.

Horseshoe is generally ****ing terrible games. Only way ive been able to profit is robbing everyone blind.

Doesn't help ive had the absolute worst bad beats in my life there. Plus they dont allow chops. Hate that place

is this the case during wsop too? I've never really played cash at the HorseShoe or Rio during wsop but I'm staying at Horseshoe this time & thought I might try

Hey sorry man, I dont check this section very often.

Paris games were good, I absolutely crushed 2-5. I played 1-3 a couple times but generally waiting for 2-5 but it seemed fine.

Horseshoe 1-3 occasionally will have some action, but 80% of the time the average pot is about 20 bucks. Raise and take it, or heads up to most flops.

The 2-5 has better players for sone odd reason than Paris but it was 15%vpip for most.

There is a logic trap in this line of reasoning. If players are playing optimally, the game structure adjusts, they don't, you do, you profit. Yes.

But.

The error is that they are not playing optimally to begin with. In fact, the major mistake by the huge majority of them is they play too many hands. When you drop a seat from the table, the optimal range expands, and it becomes correct to play more hands like they are already doing. So they just got a game structure adjustment that brought them closer to correct play, not farther from it.

Now, this effect may be swamped by the effect of nitty promo chasers, idk. But as far as the poker theory goes, fewer seats means most players are actually playing better and therefore are tougher to beat.

Sounds logical, but in this case, that didn't really happen. People still played a lot of offsuit 2 gappers and trashy aces, even the guys that were crushing. When you average 8-10 hours a day for 2 weeks, you see and play with a lot of the same players. It could be that these crushers were just lucky to hit hands during those weeks, or were good enough to get a lot of folds. Because of the hands showed, most showed poor card choices. It could be that they were playing the players instead of the cards, in which case the game structure is meaningless.

Everyone I know who is not a total nit prefers eight handed games. That said, I don't play in games that ever really break because they become too short. But if I'm playing with people who are such nits that they want to break as soon as the game becomes short, it's usually not a good game.

And unless you're exploiting incorrect adjustments by villains, playing 8-handed (or anything other than HU for that matter) shouldn't impact your strategy. You play essentially the same ranges for each position regardless of how many people have been dealt in.