do you think given both woodbine and pickering sites are being touted as "world class" casinos and are relatively large, that may skew the odds in favour of a decent sized poker room? it's hard to picture a world class casino with a small or non-existent poker room. GCG does run casinos out west with live dealer poker rooms and some decent structured games (2/5-1500 and 5/10-5000) from what i gather, so that's promising.

also with regards to Woodbine, Phase 1 of construction is set to conclude 2022, with Phase 2 seeing further construction to 2025. All casino expansion activities are included in Phase 1 of the project, so as long as it doesn't run massively late, the poker room (if there is one) should be fully up and running by 2022 at the latest, which is just over 3 years from now. It is unclear at what point in Phase 1 poker tables would be rolled out. It's also not guaranteed there will be a live poker room to the best of my knowledge, but as stated above, it would behoove them to include one. Or maybe that's just wishful thinking.

Buggle, did your contact confirm that a poker room is in the expansion plans, and did he confirm it would be with live dealers, not electronic?

I think the "World Class" bit is just marketing BS, nothing else. I'm pessimistic for a numbers of reasons. Overall, I think the fix is in. I think the bureaucrats at OLG have been wined and dined, and I think GCG is in line to get the Niagara region contract when it comes up in two years. The operators of Niagara currently are howling, and I think this is indicative of them knowing their time is up. If they were happy the last thing they'd be doing is bashing the hand that feeds them. Niagara Region has taken the OLG to court over their new terms. My understanding is Caesars had a financially superior bid for the GTA gaming bundle, but lost to GCG, with OLG hiding behind the "locally owned and operated" bull**** line.

Given this, there's little incentive for GCG to be responsive to any sort of normal competitive pressures. I think they've now got a monopoly and are going to be acting accordingly. One of their first actions after taking over Port Perry was to increase the rake, including full rake preflop on any 3 bet pot, with a straddle counting as an initial raise. So straddle to $10, raise to $50, you're now taking a $7+$1 rake. I've never seen preflop rake anywhere outside of some of the tiny cardrooms in California. It's an ominous precedent. It makes anything below 5/10 not doable, will kill most of the fish.

Repeated conversations with mid-level folks at GCG have generated nothing in terms of the concrete future of poker at their properties. They've repeatedly stated they're not against poker, and yet they've consistently failed to offer a timeline on anything. Whenever they're asked about poker they move the conversation to electronic poker, stating something like "the currently available equipment does not meet our regulatory requirements, we're searching for a new vendor, and we have plans to reintroduce epoker if/when we find that equipment".

When we go back at them and say "yeah but what about live poker??" we get a bunch of marketing mumbo jumbo. The only concrete thing we've gotten thus far is the confirmation from Spencer that live poker did not make the cut for the upstairs summer expansion.

Regarding their other properties, the ones that have poker rooms have tiny poker rooms. Their flagship property (and what I'd classify as their only proper urban casino) the River Rock in Vancouver, has ~10 tables, and it was downsized severely a year or two back.

This company does not care about poker. The Toronto market is so large, affluent, and under-served, that all they care about for the foreseeable future is how to work the politicians so they can maximize their footprint of craps, roulette, and BJ tables. Frankly if I was them I'd do the same.

This is why I think Pickering is our best hope. It doesn't have all the bull**** attached by the city gov't that Woodbine has, land there is cheap, it's twice the size of WB. It will have much smaller revenue per square foot, so if poker's going to be anywhere quick it's there.

makes sense. i mean, poker is low on the list for most casinos because it doesn't make nearly the $/sq foot as slot machines or table games, that's just the reality. it's slow, you have to pay live dealers (which is why i guess some places like e-poker) and you can only rake so much before regulars stop playing and games don't start up. poker is a waste of space for casino operators fundamentally.

full preflop rake would be a problem, preflop rake in double raised pots is not as bad but still ****ty. what did they raise the rake at Port Perry from and to?

All went up $1. Current rakes are:

1/2 6+1
2/5 7+1
5/5 8+1
5/10 9+1

drop structure or rake?

It's rake. Not sure what you mean by drop structure. You mean session fee?

no like in LA they have a drop rather than a rake, so it's a flat amount, not a percentage

It's rake

cool. so those are the caps i assume, what percentage out of curiosity?

yeh i'd also be interested in the rake % at blue heron. it's not listed on their website.

Also do they really rake 3 bet pots?

In April 2017, the GCG was notified by OLG that it was pre-qualified to submit a RFP (Request For Proposal) for the Niagara Gaming Bundle. GCG chose not to submit a RFP for this final bundle 8, so hopefully Caesars or other more poker-friendly bidder will be announced as the winner this year.

The rake is 10%, e.g., in a $60 pot, they take $6 + $1 BBJ in 1/2.
I have not noticed any preflop rake. When Rio did it during the WSOP, I never played a cash game in that room again.

that is not low

This. That's basically $7 rake cause the bad beat rake is probably not coming back to you in your lifetime.

Lol what a ****show for poker in the GTA. Literally won't be YEARS till "maybe" a half decent live poker room is built? Sick joke.

1/2 and 1/3 nlhe are officially dead around toronto, these rakes and time charges are impossible to beat

5+2 or 6+1 is norm in my area. 1/3 is most definitely beatable for 10bb/hour.

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yup but late 2019 isn't too far away. we'll see how it pans out. in the end, there's lots of money in North America's 4th largest city. where there is money, poker will follow (inside or outside a casino).

this is true in a lot of places in the world, even those much more poker-inclined. the truth is 1/2 and 1/3 are stepping stones. they're almost never bankroll building or long-term income making games. and frankly who would want to play them long term? maybe that's just me.

1/2 and 1/3 are great to cut your teeth, maybe build a little bit of roll if you run good, get live hours in, and then move up. 2/5 is IMO the minimum viable stakes where poker is actually a reasonable long-term income-generating proposition. the rakes quoted in this thread are very beatable at 2/5, particularly with caps in the $1000+ range.

What's happening next year? And it's just a maybe, right? Not sure what options there are for GTA players that only wanna patronize legit establishments.

Durham Live casino in Pickering is set to be complete end of 2019. And ya no one knows for sure what the poker situation will be.

one other option than playing underground is to start your own legal home game.

My plan is to embarrass the f*uck out of GCG should they fail in this endeavour. Politicians and media will love letters about how we had hopes of a licensed, legal place to play poker, cause my mom never felt comfortable playing in those shady dark rooms full of sketchy ppl. Attach a bunch of stories over the past years about ppl getting mugged/killed, then send them off to media & MPP's, saying how we thought part of the reason for a granting of a full casino license was to rid the GTA of the criminal element that brings with it drugs, prostitution, human trafficking etc, etc, but we now see that's not happening.

I'm going to slaughter them if they don't do this right. Only issue is we need to give them the time to f*ck up first.

^^ lol

Gcgaming web site has a bunch of job postings for table dealers that they posted this week. So looks like WB will have table games / maybe poker soon!

https://www.brainhunter.com/frontoff...arch&external=

I asked a mod to rename the thread for SEO purposes as the casino got renamed last fall with the ownership change.

...and here it is. The first smoking guns (plural) that GCG is knee deep in corruption and political intrigue.

https://globalnews.ca/news/4250949/c...ackroom-deals/

An article in The Globe and Mail suggests that the Ontario government and ultimately all Ontarians got taken to the cleaners by Great Canadian Gaming.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opin...n-casino-deal/