Started a Twitter account for unofficial and irregular updates (i.e. whenever I am playing) for the 30-60 game. Will mainly be updating for late night/early morningshort-handed games, or if a 2nd must-move game starts. Will be very limited updates during the WSOP. @oaks3060

Mods, please delete if not allowed, but I am not an employee of or compensated by the club in anyway for this.

1. I strongly suggest you avoid posting proper names, board or real, without explicit permission.

2. How often does a must move go?

re 1: +1

1. Yeah, I definitely planned to avoid doing this. This won't be a gossip account or anything. It's just to give unobtrusive (and sporadic) game status updates for people who don't want to be on the text list or call the board at odd hours for inaccurate information.

2. I've seen it go only a handful of times this year, though it went this past Monday.

How many people do you think make up the NL 1/2 player pool here?

Big enough that I rarely see the same people. Maybe 300?

Curious how many NL games run during the weekdays. Traveling from out of town just curious how many 1-2 and 2-5 games run during peak hours 5-11pm during weekdays. Also do people straddle in 1-2 game. I would probably throw in a couple button straddles. Thanks

I can't speak to the 2-3-5, but usually there's at least one table of each. On weekdays during 5-11 that's sort of peak hours so you'll usually have at least 2 tables of 1/1/2, sometimes 3.

Yes, people straddle. Oaks has a Mississippi straddle, so you can do it from any position. Just announce it well and before the first card is dealt, I've noticed a few dealers miss it here and there.

What is a MS straddle?

Straddle from any position, preflop action starts to the straddler's left.

Thanks.

Is tipping expected at the Oaks? If so, how much in the 6-12? 15-30?

It's a casino in the US, so yes, it is expected.

I would start at $1 hand as a base line and maybe adjust after noting how most others tip, if you want to "fit in".

Dealer should stop the deal until he takes out his money. Once the money is visible, proceed with the deal.

If he can't produce money at the table, he's dealt out.

Anyone played the Mon/Wed/Sat/Sun NL tournaments that can speak to average field size, structure, and prize pools?

The fields and prize pools for the previous week are posted up on the wall. Don't know about the structures.

Didn't notice that. Thanks.

Just for public benefit I looked at the numbers and made a rough note of the player pools. Sun, Mon, and Sat were 60-70 players, Wed was ~90.

6/12 O8 5+1 NF2D

I play in this game 1 or 2 days/week. Omaha is my preferred game, and the Oaks is my favorite Bay Area card room (I live in SF).

The blinds do chop occasionally, especially if the game is short-handed. It's posted on the wall that the drop is $2 when there's no flop, but not every dealer knows this. Some of them drop $2, some of them assume it's the same as $6/$12 Hold'em and drop only $1, and when the game is really short (like 4-handed with 2 props at 4 in the morning), some of them take nothing if the blinds agree to chop.

I was in town and played a short session Friday night; about 20 minutes of the 6/12 O8 and then 90 minutes of 15/30 Holdem. I was really surprised at the high drop on the O8 game, and they did take $2 the one time there was a chop.

Was also surprised that there was only one 15/30 game going, which wasn't even full most of the time, and no 30/60 game. Seems like Friday night would have been a busier time for the casino. Is 15/30 always this slow recently? Does it still go every day? Do they still put props in the game?

I asked the general manager of the Oaks about this about a year ago. He told me that he and the GMs of other Bay Area card rooms have communicated about this, and they've collectively agreed to stay off Bravo. From management's perspective, they don't want customers not coming in because their preferred game isn't going; they want customers to come in and then play in the games that are going once they're here.

He didn't say this part, but I presume that if one Bay Area card room got on Bravo, that would force the others to follow suit. Whereas if none of them are on it, it's not as big a deal. (Yes, Graton Casino is in the Bay Area, but it's farther from San Francisco than the Oaks, GC, AJ's, LC, Bay, Matrix, and a few others. So its player pool doesn't overlap as much as theirs do.)

What I want to know is (1) When is the Oaks going to retire its ancient white board and get a digitally displayed sign-up board? (2) When is the Oaks going to get some kind of player loyalty card, with comped food and drinks based on accrued hours of play? And (3) When is the Oaks going to install phone-charging plugs at each seat?

Embrace technology, guys. You've been around since the horse-and-buggy era, but the world has changed.

I believe 15/30 is still propped but no longer 30/60.

Contrary to what one may expect, nighttime 30/60 is not good on the signup days (Tue/Fri). In part I think this was that the people who sign up are dayshifters; they blocked up the game from 12-5 or 12-6 then kind of left en masse. Frequently, if a night game ran, it had REstarted in the evening.

August is traditionally a very slow month for MSLHE. A few years ago basically 30/60 stopped running for a few weeks and I picked up SL/NL thinking it would never come back. But it did.

15/30 regs are (or were, when I last paid attention) unintentionally but predictably killing the game. The regs are super prissy and refuse to play unless the lineup is just right, and I can't even tell you the number of times I saw the game stalled 5-handed with 10 sets of chips at the table. And while this last complaint is not unique to the Oaks 15/30 (Bay 20/40 is far worse), there's a whole class of mediocre regs who think they can make up their mediocrity by angleshooting the 0.2 BB/hr they need to be not-mediocre.

All three of these cost significant money.

Not saying it's never gonna happen but I would bet against it. There used to be a phone charger under Table 15, I heard the power draw made the autoshuffler malfunction. So it may be one of those cases where the electrical is so outdated that they need to upgrade the whole building just to get phone chargers.

Thanks for your reporting ITT caly it's appreciated

A handful of us are trying to unofficially get a 30/60 game with an automatic (i.e. mandatory) live straddle going on Thursdays. If you aren't familiar, the straddle in the Oaks Limit game is NOT the Mississippi straddle described above, it's essentially an extra blind (has to be UTG), so $20/$30/$60 in SB/BB/UTG and it would be $90 to open for a raise, with the 4-bet cap ($120 max preflop) still in place.

Typically the 30 game is weak on Thursdays w/o the host or official sign-up, so we're trying something different to generate action. It went for ~24 hours starting early Thursday morning this week and there were two other sessions in the past couple weeks where it went for 14-15 hours straight.

If you don't play regularly (or even if you do), definitely try and ask the floormen/board directly about it when signing up and maybe we can make it official with enough interest. Feel free to ask them about a potential $60/120 game too (we've also been badgering them to spread it on Thursdays once a week).

They wouldn't start a 60/120 back when 30/60 was off the heezy, I have a hard time believing they'd consider it now.