I play against ppl who'd be better off playing basic strategy black jack than playing poker.

Basic strategy blackjack isn't so bad

With the proliferation of 6:5, I'm not so sure. Most shoe games are like -1%, maybe -1.5% now? That's well over a unit an hour, and $5 tables are rare.

The average poker player is only losing $10-$20/hr. I think Howard's game is pretty low rake so probably on the bottom end of that.

Im pretty sure $100 at poker lasts much longer than $100 at blackjack or any table game for that matter.

Only because of the bet sizes. $100 at $3 blackjack can last a really long time.

RIP Boardwalk lol

Players at my 8-16 table perform a magic trick every day: They buy-in for $$$$$ and make it disappear. If they'd played $10/hand basic strategy BJ they might actually leave a winner. ESPECIALLY that one player that I've repeatedly claimed has never won. Ever.

ETA: House edge not so bad and, surprisingly to me at least, the auto shuffler is better:

https://wizardofodds.com/games/blackjack/calculator/

Thank you for providing this list.

The Oaks is now spreading $10/$20 LHE. This started about a week ago. I haven't played in it yet, so I'm not sure if the players are coming from the $6/$12 player pool or the old $15/$30 player pool—maybe a mix of both. In any event, it's nice to see a new step added to the ladder.

Hopefully they use $2 chips. $10/20 with $5 chips is pretty lame.

This is not exactly true.

One issue is that card rooms in California are allowed to deduct a "reasonable" fee for administering jackpots and other promotions. I once discussed this with the general manager of the Oaks, and my recollection is that he said they take 20% for administrative costs. That means if they collect $1 million/year in player-funded jackpot monies, they keep $200,000.

Another issue is that at any given time, the card room is holding several hundred thousand dollars in jackpot monies in reserve: not just the current jackpots, but funds for backup jackpots (so that when the current jackpot hits, it doesn't revert to $0) and funds for all those high hand promotions.

The biggest issue is probably that jackpot monies get distributed back to players unequally. Yes, if you're a regular, you will probably get your share of high hand bonuses and maybe even table shares. But you could play once or twice a week for several decades without receiving a five-figure jackpot payout, or you could get two of them in a single year.

And then when you do hit a big score, you may decide to tip very generously—not just the dealer but various floors and chip sellers and cocktail waitresses and cashiers and maybe even other players. There's a huge thread about this in Casino & Cardroom Poker—how much should you tip when you hit a jackpot? Anecdotally, I've heard people talk about tipping 10% or more pretax (which I think is excessive, but it's their money to do with as they please), and it's not uncommon for winners to tip 3% to 5% when all is said and done, especially if you're a regular in the room.

Also, when you get a big score, it's going to be reported to the IRS and the Franchise Tax Board, and you may be required to pay income tax on it.

After all of these deductions, the player pool may end up getting back 50% to 60% of the jackpot drop, but the uneven distribution means that some players get back only 10% or 20% of their share of the jackpot drop, while others get back 100% or 200%.

My feeling is that jackpots and high hand bonuses and other poker room promotions are for losing players—they give them something to hope for. Winning players would be better off without a jackpot drop.

Then again, we don't just play poker to win money. I've certainly enjoyed receiving a variety of promotional payouts in my poker-playing career. And we all like to fantasize about hitting a jackpot or winning the lottery. Just don't think that you're going to get all that money back eventually.

Still don't get why people think this. I played more 10/20 than any other limit (always with $5 chips), and games were generally great. Have you ever actually played it?

...which is why most reasonable players should hate BBJs. However, they do bring in the fish.

FWIW, I've played 10/20 with $5 chips and 8/16 HK with $2 chips and I think the latter is way more fun.

People win 5 racks of chips and feel like champs, people lose 5 racks of chips and tilt their balls off. Both of these are conducive to long lasting games.

Yes, I’ve played 10/20 with $5 chips. I do believe people play tighter when there are only 3 chips preflop in the pot.

That's not always bad. Being able to successfully bluff often in LHE is a huge win.

Sounds good. As long as you don't like playing in actually good games. Captain R and calli are right. More chips are better. Hence 30/60 with $5 chips is genius. Only bad part is that the SB is $5 too small.

A good game is one where people make mistakes, not necessarily where pots are huge. As often pointed out here, folding the best hand for one bet in a decent pot for one bet is a very big mistake. Put me in a game where I can steal the blinds often and I'm printing money.

I believe there's a high degree of correlation between these two at the low- and mid-stakes.

And I will affirm with the others that games in which there are lots of chips tend to have more action, which again correlates to people making mistakes. 4/8 with $1 chips and 8/16 with $2 chips can both lead to craziness.

4 limpers, someone raises, and you see a flop 6-handed for two small bets each. It's only a 6 BB pot, but there's a huge mountain of chips in the middle of the table. There's definitely a psychological impact.

The Oaks 10-20 is played with nickels; I checked. + If the rake is still $5 + tip, if any, this may be enough to beat the rake for good* players.


*whatever what that means.

strong players' winrates are much higher in juiceball, action-y, multi-way games than they are in tight, nitty, blinds-foldy games

You realize I got my undertitle because I wrote a big long post on bluffing, right?

I mean, yes, you could contrive some table where people only play top 5% of hands, so you could steal 8 blinds per orbit, but I think in practice loose tables make more money than tight tables. I mean, that’s just, like, obvious.

In your defense, even if a blindfoldy game had a lower winrate, it could have a higher certainty equivalent. As a 10/20 pro, that might be good for you.

It's definitely less fun, though.

Ultimately, though, the variance is beneficial to yhe longevity of the game. Nobody wants to play a game where every session everyone loses exactly $10 and you win exactly $50. Losers have to win sometimes to get the reinforcement they need to keep playing.

You can calculate the SD/LR for a typical loser, and compare it to other gaming, e.g., craps. If that ratio is small enough that they never win or rarely win, that will limit their longevity and ultimately the game's. I think blackjack and craps run around 20-25 on a /100 basis.

Downstream, note that the Bellagio 10/20 has lived and died multiple cycles over the past decade while the high rake 4-chip 8-chip with a kill Bay 8/16 has gone regularly the whole time.

With the understanding that I like you and want you to succeed, for the love of God don't end up like certain prominent authors who were at the top of the curve 20 years ago and slid into risk averse, running out the life clock, nittery.

Sounds like its time for them to invest in some pink chips.

Re: the 10-20:
It's only spread if there's sufficient interest. So now, limit hold'em at the Oaks goes 3-6, 6-12, the 10-20 when it's played, and 40-80. No more 15-30 or 30-60 as far as I can see.

I've never seen pink checks at the Oaks. Pink = $?

In some parts of the country pink chips are $2.50; I've never seen them in California though.