Welcome to the human-dealt table v. e-table debate CONTAINMENT thread. Its creation was necessary because a number of other threads have become bogged down with off-topic or tangientally-related posts regarding the merits of human-dealt tables, e-tables, or both.

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Therefore, going forward, all discussion of human-dealt tables v. e-tables will take place in this thread. Please PM the mods if you have questions. Thank you!

I dont think anyone is surprised the poker pro tables failed [at Excalibur]. No one wants to play on the things outside of places where live gaming is severely limited or prohibited by law

The PokerPro tables rock. I highly recommend that every poker player give them a try. I recently played on them with several of my poker buddies and we all were highly impressed. The advantages are obvious - speed, accuracy, no tipping, and smaller stakes. They are great for all games, but are especially advantageous for split-pot games and pot-limit games. I personally believe they are the long-term wave of the future.

Matthew Hilger

in general, i am not a fan of going to a casino to play w/out real chips and a real dealer. however, these things would be the nuts in STTs like wsop sats or sngs. anything where it's only going to be 1 table w/blinds increasing quickly would be way better on an electronic table imo.

What 90% of the people don't understand is that these tables were not created to replace to take over the human-dealt tables but as a different product.

I think the product is kinda ahead of its time because rakes are still not as high as they will be in the future. When rakes get to $7 or $8 then we'll have no choice but slowly move to e-tables.

And you don't think that the rake on e-tables won't be set higher if live dealt games go to $8?

A $5 rake isn't because of a live dealer. Considering that "dealer costs" on a live game is surely less than $0.50 a hand, the house gets most of the rake. The rake keeps going up, not because the cost of dealers is skyrocketing, it is because the house wants more money.

E-tables won't change that.

How many hands per hour can an e-table do?

the only down fall i have with etables is that there is no way to safeguard against cheating. there is no dealer to tell people to stfu. ive had many people talk about hands and boards and stuf they shouldnt discuss. even if warned by a floor in the area, its hard to monitor people at the tables.

i also enjoy physically toughing chips and cards. but i do like the speed and lack of dealer/player error involved with the etables.

I do agree that rake on etables will go up but not as high as human dealt games

However rake doesn't go up because casinos "want more money" but because min wages go up, electricity goes up, etc.

It very much depends on the experience and focus of the players. You gain on some things (e.g. shuffling speed, dealing speed) but lose on others (e.g. inexperience with interface, no dealer to speed up inattentive players, players forget to sign out when taking a restroom break).

Rough average maybe 30/hour - 45/hour at hold'em.

I think there are 2 kinds of players in Vegas: recreational players and grinders

Recreational players typically are on vacation. They stay at places like the Excalibur. They just want to have fun drinking some beers and playin' some poker, win or lose. They don't care about rake. And they definitely haven't come all the way to Vegas to play poker on a goddamn machine.

Grinders like to play against recreational players.

PokerPro machines definitely have their place. For instance, they are great on cruiseships - due to the physical limitations on space both in the casino itself, and for crew accommodations onboard etc, if they can save 2 dealers and therefore 2 crew members by having two electronic PokerPro machines, they can thereby justify being able to offer the game onboard. Otherwise there might be no game at all in favour of slots/higher house edge table games, or a horrendous rake. For instance, on NCL they have a couple of dealer run tables, but the rake is so high that it's impossible to play for any period of time and beat the rake (in fact I calculated that if you had 7 players, all of equal calibre, you would lose more money playing hold' em than by playing BlackJack at perfect strategy with 1.5% house edge, but we digress)

In VEGAS though, I never understood the move by Excalibur to install PokerPro e-tables. As others have said, visitors to Vegas want to have some fun, and play some real cards, not recreate an online type experience. Locals want to play where the tourists are (for the most part). With so many other rooms and poker playing options in Vegas, people can choose, and the choice for the most part has been to avoid Excalibur. Shame.

You really think the only thing driving the rake up are "expenses"?

Wages? If a dealer puts out 30 hands/hr and the minimum wage goes up $3/hr, that adds $0.10 per hand. Not $1.

Guess you've never looked over the PokerTek marketing stuff. They absolutely were trying to market this as a replacement for human-dealt tables. They tout the increased revenue to the casino from getting out more hands per hour while reducing payroll costs.

http://pokertek.com/videospokerproplayers.html would be an entertaining example where we have Esfandiari and Laak telling us how much these tables absolutely "crush" and how much better they are than dealer-dealt tables, while the announcer and Lou tell us how the casino will see big revenue increases.

Lou has mentioned that they now see this as a significant error on their part.

Atleast you still get that "squeezing" sensation

I've looked at PTEK's marketing stuff a LOT.

Of course they'll try to market it as a replacement to human-dealt tables, you'd have to hate money not to do so. You don't need to market it directly to places where human-dealt poker is illegal because they have no choice but to go with PokerPro if they want poker in their casino.

Gawd I hope not- as long as online is available why would you play them when you can multi table online in your underwear?

BUT----loved "The Poker Mindset". Thanks for the read it was great!!!!

You need to add in the floor, cleaning crew, maintenance, electricity,this tax, that tax and the other taxes to things that increase cost. Most of which are paid for both manual and E- games.
But you never increase the e-tables' tip.

If the stakes are raised along with the rake then it should be a wash. unlikely to happen that way though.

You bully. ;-)

I think the tables will have their place - I wish I woulda played Excal my most recent trip to try them out, although I know I like the cards/chips too much to say I'll be a strict convert.

I think in future the success of e-tables will be determined by venues going that route due to cost consideration in certain environments as opposed to player demand. Sorta like e-blackjack machines are nowhere near as popular as live BJ tables.

But, I can see e-tables attracting certain types of players, and giving them an option ain't a bad idea.

Actually, I'm sure it's some of both.

I thought these types of things would be the advantage/benefit of eTables:

- The ability to spread less-popular games

- The ability to spread games (micro limit, SnGs, etc) that are too cost-prohibitive for "real" poker tables.


I'm not a fan of playing on machines, so I may not be one who does it regularly if it ever hits my area.... but there could be solid reasons to promote eTables.

A lot of people say how they would rather use real chips and cards... IMO this is one of the main reasons Pk Pro is great!

Live Example: I felt a drunk at a 1-2 table who 3 hands earlier knocked his Guinness beer over into his chips. He had $400 that are now my Guinness chips. So the dealer passes me the 4 stacks and a clean white towel and i start to dry the first stack... half way through the first stack i call for a floor to bring a rack and $400 in different chips to swap out, completely disgusted by what I'm seeing as the white towel is turning BLACK from 50 bux in chips already!

No chips to handle = good thing... those things are nastier then you might even imagine!

I just played on a PokerTek table for the first time last night. It was $0.50/1.00 at the Ameristar Casino in Council Bluffs, IA.

The casino left alot to be desired, but I don't think that tainted my opinion of the tables in any way.

When I got there one of the tables was full and the other was empty, so I was the first to sit down at the new table. The "floor" (pit boss) was helpful in getting me a game card and transferring money to it. Inserting the card, signing in, and bringing funds to the table was a simple and straightforward task. Anyone who can use an ATM should be able to complete this process with little difficulty.

After a few minutes of sitting there playing around with the different options and screens available another played showed up and signed in. He was an older gentleman that I've seen at the other casino in town (the one with dealers ) After some hemming and hawing over not wanting to play HU4ROLLZ he signed in and off we went. First hand AKo, ok how do I raise? Very straightforward, just touch the chips until you get the amount you want, then click confirm.

After a few hands it was pretty natural. Another player showed up after 5 minutes or so and in 15 minute we were 6 handed, which is how it stayed until the end.

One interesting hand - I am in BB, folded to small blind, he opens for $3 with 40 behind. I have 99 and shove ofc, he snaps with 66. The table showed our percentages of winning. I was an 81% favorite before the flop, but I assured him that it was 50/50.

Overall I was very impressed. I am not prepared to give up playing with a dealer but I'm not opposed to the tables either. I don't think dealers have anything to worry about yet, but I think these tables would be excellent for games such as PLO or any high/low games.

Unfortunately the rake on these particular tables was capped at $4.50 which is inexcusably high. The staff found the time to chastise me for talking on the phone while not in the hand (getting on the call in list at the horseshoe lol) but allowed other players to smoke while standing right behind their chairs and still playing in the game. Cashing out was a PITA as I had to go down two flights of stairs and stand in line for 15 minutes at the cage. The stakes are only .5/1 which is slightly lower than $2/5 which I normally play. All of these things obviously have nothing to do with the tables and are out of pokertek's control which is unfortunate because I kind of liked the tables. The only way I will go back to this casino is if they get a PLO game up on the Pokertek machines which isn't likely around here unfortunately.

Things that would make the tables better imo:

A flashing yellow arrow pointing at the player the action is on - lots of time wasted while a player is oblivious that it is on him
A visual chipstack would be a nice touch
The option to turn off having to confirm your action everytime you do something - I'll risk a misclick for that ability
Ability to multitable
A holographic representation of players' chipstacks would be friggin sweet but probably isn't possible

Overall I liked the tables more than I expected I would, but unfortunately won't be back due to the surrounding environment.

+$137 in 1 hour
[x] Game crushed
[ ] Sustainable winrate

+1
Most of the people that usually "bad mouth" the PokerPro tables are the ones that have never tried them. Almost everybody that I have talked to that have tried them like them better than they thought they would. I can understand why a recreational player might not like the e-tables due to not having cards and chips, etc. I can also see how the higher stakes players that pay an hourly rake might not like them. There are a lot of positives to the e-tables, for the low limit, winning players. I know in my limited experience playing PokerPro, I have a higher win rate/hr/secession due to playing more hands/hr, less rake, and no dealer tips.
I have only played 1/2 and 2/5 on the PokerPro tables but would think that they would even be more efficient spreading a PL Omaha or a split hi/low game.
I hope someday these tables will be offered to be purchased by individuals. I would love to have one of these for my "home" game. Maybe Lou will let me "demo" the first PokerPro table for the "home" market.