I've noticed some happenings at a local cardroom recently that made me wonder about something. (No details here, don't want to poison the well.)

I think this would be the best place to float the question: What is the most important aspect to keeping a cardroom filled with customers?

Bleed them more slowly, IOW, get rid of NL. As if that's going to happen.

In my experience, the bottom line is players are and will go where the action is.

I live in the DC metropolitan area. We have two major casinos (Maryland Live and Horseshoe Baltimore) with a third (MGM National Harbor) on the way next year. Both existing rooms offer essentially the same games and both are run reasonably well to very well. The existing rooms are 10-15 minutes away from each other.

The two existing rooms have some really good promotions which have been proven to lure players away from the other place; in other words, our market is sensitive to promotions.

However, Maryland Live is consistently more busy than Horseshoe Baltimore. I believe Maryland Live is busier simply because it has more tables, gets more games, and started up about a year earlier, which allowed it to capture a group of regulars which plays non-NLHE games and higher-limit NL/PL games.

I agree with Howard that an all-limit room/poker economy would be a healthier room/poker economy, but barring legislation to that effect that won't happen anytime soon. (And I don't think it should either.)

As with any business ...

1) Good clean place to come into and feel safe
2) Good staff who appreciates the guests
3) Consistent rulings/practices from staff to staff
4) Good food and drink available
5) Try to keep the regs in check to a certain degree

Card rooms run hot and cold by season. Casinos can run promos or different types of games to keep the interest fresh but 'the house' really can only do so much. Players need to 'win' every once in awhile or the regs need to do a good job of making them feel welcome and having 'fun' in order to keep them coming back. Of course there are those that just can't help themselves and will move around trying to catch the 'hot' room for them.

There are players who really don't want me to sit down as the game will change, but they either deal with it or go home. Most players will find the action tables and the 'killing time' players will seek others as well and the floor can help this out to a certain degree but really shouldn't step in too much.

I once told a table that the room paid me to drive action to get the rake up!! A couple bought into it until the dealer and floor stepped in and squashed the conversation. Of course the floor knows that rake goes up when I am there, but they aren't paying me to do it ... I just play 1/2 like it's 2/5. GL

location

The location of the poker room inside the casino is also very important(one reason why Revel failed; you couldn't even find their poker room plus it was just too far away from the entrances).

And, if there's a popular poker room in town and you open up another one down the street, the new one is bound to have problems even if they have a pretty room with a friendly staff. (Another reason for Revel's demise). I don't mean to pile on Revel but they came into the scene fighting an uphill battle because Borgata just gave(gives) their customer a lot of perks while also providing their poker players with a beautiful room and a large selection of ESTABLISHED games. VERY important.

A large room with lots of tables is key(Foxwoods, Parx, and Borgata come to mind) but there's always one common denominator and that's: They all spread high limit games. Now granted, there might only be a small % of these games compared to the majority of their room, but show me a room without high limit action(or high limit comparatively to its closest competitors) and I'll show you a poker room that is failing and/or it comes nowhere near its competitor just down the street.

A strong local economy so everyone has money to blow.

This is something that hit me over the head in Mohegan Sun. It took me an eon to find it, and I walk through crowds much faster than the average person. It's almost like they want people to get lost looking for it and play some house game instead.

A lot of the comments ITT are more targeted towards building a player base rather than maintaining it.

All the same as above plus encourage game and limit variety. Some tables may not be as profitable as others but create an atmosphere that is desirable like 5/10 Omaha hi-lo.

A big television broadcasting a "featured" table. Change the game on the featured table to expose players to new games. 7 card stud 8 or better?

To me a base means a core group and a core group is a smaller number than what is in a full room. I think the title implies a different question than the one in the body.

In poker, what is a room's base? It is the regs. How do you maintain that base? By making sure there is a steady supply of non-regs in the room.

How do you make sure there is a steady supply of non-regs? First, the room has to be attractive. Second, the workers have to be friendly. Third, the regs have to be friendly. No one wants to visit a dirty place with unfriendly people.

But a lot of things can affect the number of potential non-regs. Not only where the room is located in the casino will impact this, but where the casino is located will impact this.

There are three casinos with poker rooms in my area with two of them lagging behind the third, newer one. I think that is because the last is in the best spot to attract non-regs as it is near a shopping area, a sporting venue, and is right next to a speedway. The other two are off by themselves with no other major attractions as close as those that are near the current top dog.

Regs realized this and they started playing more at the newer one as the "food" was better.

There are 4 rooms in my area, two with NL/limit and two strictly limit. Guess which ones always have games running and which ones are lucky to have a game last more than a day or two. :/

My guess is the limits are the one lucky to have a game last more than a day or two.

At the two casinos where I play tournaments, no limit cash games seem to have stronger followings than limit.

Getting back to the original topic, it might be easier to offer suggestions on how to counter whatever is going on if we knew what was going on.

I know you don't want to poison the well, but if you are not the cause of the problem, I don't see how you would poison the well.

It's barely been mentioned, but I think it's crucial to have good promotions. Most of the rooms up in Blackhawk switched from having a progressive BBJ to High Hand (they give $100 every 30 minutes during prime hours and have a fixed BBJ of like $50k). People LOVE it. It's amazing how many people plunk ~$200 down to play and talk non-stop about how they're chasing that $100 jackpot.

@ the people talking about bringing in more limit games. This is one thing that baffles me. According to the older players 7 card stud and limit holdem were dominant before TV poker. If I go to one casino in the daytime it's 2 or 3 tables of retirees who I'm sure were playing poker before 2000 playing 1/2 NL. The casino has lists for stud and limit holdem games but only occasionally do enough of them sign up to get a game going. It seems like they must prefer NLHE.

Of course they prefer NLHE. You could bust 10 guys for their whole bankroll in one session if you're lucky/skilled. But then tomorrow when you come back you need 10 new players to make up for it.

The question was how to maintain a player base... Shear the sheep don't slaughter it. If a first time player loses her whole stack on her first hand, then loses her rebuy on the next hand and peaces out for a couple months/forever that's not ideal IMO. Some people will say she should just get better at the game but I'd prefer to play against bad players.

Guito answered the question very nicely.

I'd like to add in my usual point w/e this topic comes up:

If you owned Joe's bar in Smalltown, USA, and had 3 tables in the back room bec your brother gets a cut for being chief of police and preventing anyone else from offering poker you would spread limit games if you had any sense.

This question is only a little more specific than the outrageously general question of how you run a successful business.

You figure out your competitive advantage, ldo.

In places where licenses are limited, simply having a license gives you an advantage. Location can be an advantage. Having the best looking cocktail waitresses may be an advantage. Having a reputation as a donkey filled room is definitely an advantage.

If your market is static, low winrate-to-variance games like LHE are preferable to high winrate-to-variance games like NL. But most new players want to play NL, so the LHE/NL dichotomy mostly applies in places with established LHE ladders. Introducing new games is kind of silly, the total player pool is shrinking.

What you definitely don't want to do as cardroom management is listen to everyone who complains. Winning regs just take away money that otherwise sloshes around in the donk pool until it all goes down the hole. Losing regs are your bread and butter. Visitors feed into the system, but outside of Vegas, I imagine the reg to tourist ratio is quite high. Regs bitch the most about everything, but you should be more than happy to see winning regs walk so long as you don't lose critical mass for a game.

Higher stakes are spread because they need to be spread to attract players, if you could choose to spread whatever and force people to play, every game would be 2/4 LHE.

As a general rule, poker players need to realize that their partnership with management is a business necessity, not a friendship. At least some of the things that are good for the cardroom as a business are bad for players, and vice versa.

As an aside, being located in an area where people have money is key from a macoeconomic standpoint. People always bitch about Californian rake but frankly the reason rake can be that high is that there are a bunch of 20-something males with way more money and competitive aggression than skills.

for players- don't be miserable to be around, actually talk, dont take 4 days to act on a hand, don't make fish feel like idiots

design promotions that appeal to new and gamble type players not the regs. The regs may bitch if they lose their $2 an hour, or monthly freeroll or whatever but if you have things like splash pots, high hand and quad bonuses it will bring in the kind of players you want in the games.

n/m

Thank you all. Now that I've had some replies, I'll be more specific about the situation that led me to ask.

This cardroom is in a position, IMO, to make itself the go-to name for poker in the area—partly because of location and licensing, and partly because it has a head start. NL/PL poker were recently legalized, and since then it went from 5 or 6 cash tables of over-raked $2/$4 LHE and LO8 to 10–15 cash tables of over-raked $1/$2 and $2/$4 NLHE, PLO, and a little leftover LHE. The old base of grizzled $2/$4 regs is quickly fading into a spread of younger NLHE players. Enter hoodies, sunglasses, earbuds, etc.

I don't work there, but I occasionally play there and would like to see it become a better place. Trouble is, the first thing that comes to mind is that it's a dump. It's a big, old building that used to be a live racetrack. It's dirty, it could use some better-trained staff, the food is total ****, the layout is meh, the rake is too high, the spread of games is disappointing, there are no real amenities, and a variety of other things that were addressed in this thread. The chest-high grass and debris in the former racetrack fill the floor-to-ceiling windows where there could instead be a beautiful view.

On the upside, the action is currently good. It's right off the highway and next to the border of a state that doesn't have legal cardrooms. The facility is huge and regularly hosts trade conventions, car shows, etc., so there are plenty of people who could be drawn in, and plenty of space that could be used to draw them in. There's even a mall nearby. It's like gobs and gobs of wasted potential.

With improvements, I think it could completely take over the local poker market. There are tons of poker players in the area, including experienced ones who would be beneficial, low-maintenance anchors in any poker game. Unfortunately, all the place has going right now is that it has pretty good action, and it's just barely enough to overcome the bigger picture for some players once in a while. It doesn't seem like they're actively trying to change that, instead choosing to just milk what they've already got, which of course won't last.

I hesitate to mention the name of this place so as to avoid making this thread about a specific room. I asked mostly out of curiosity on the topic and would prefer that it remain a conceptual thread. (Those of you who know where I live can probably guess which cardroom I'm talking about, though.)

Isn't the nearby state which doesn't have casinos about to get a whole bunch of casinos?

The closest casino in the other state will be about 40 minutes away, if and when it opens the doors—which seems like a big issue that could take several years. The city it's slated to be in (next door to my hometown) is a meh location for a casino, IMO. The other two places will be over an hour away. So this place will really only be competing with one casino for poker business, and that casino's opening date is still TBD.

My favorite room is a charitable that changes locations daily. Each location has its own regs that show up + people that go to every room.