which room is this? in detroit they make u buyin at the cage first and even worse, most of their rooms here dont allow rebuys at the table except for 1. people complain like hell about it, at least in reno and vegas almost everywhere let u buyin at the front desk when they seated u or the table. much more customer friendly

as far as buying in for $500 in all $20s theyre not doing this intentionally, what it means is the atm they just used to get the 500 paid them in 20s instead of 100s

did u show the bluff? i have a bad habit of showing way too many bluffs, especially when i often limp in preflop in early position with hands like 56 suited, then make a huge limp reraise once a guy raises a small amount in later position i know doesnt have anything and is only trying to build a pot. i get away with this easily because they all know i will limp reraise aa and kk too

No way. I used to think it’s a bad thing to have a nit image, like I should be embarrassed about it or something, but then I realized this guy is just an ******* and most people don’t care if I “only” play 15-20% of hands as long as I’m pleasant to be around and talk to people.

A nit image is one of the best images to have if people will respect you in large pots, IMO.

Live psychology. Most people aren't following strict preflop rules. Whether they play a hand or not depends on a few factors, one of which is how long it's been since they've played a hand. Nobody wants to go to the casino and play one hand an hour, even if doing so would be "correct" given the cards/situation.

I doubt it's enough of a difference to measure typically -- my basis for believing in this effect comes from playing a little while on e-tables, which dealt 50-60 hands/hour vs 25-30 -- and I don't think it was a coincidence that the average player was about twice as tight, which made the average player's preflop frequencies closer to correct (~15% vs ~30% vpip full-ring), which made it damn hard to beat the rake.

DK, I doubt anyone is changing their preflop range due to only getting a "horrible" 27 hands per hour instead of an "awesome" 30.

GimoG

Not consciously. But most players have a range of "maybe" hands. This range is probably wider for recs than for pros but virtually everyone has it. You're the only poster I thought of who probably doesn't.

Fewer hands/hour -> more likely to go long without playing a hand -> more likely to dip into the maybe range -> higher vpip

I'm not going to so far to say that fewer hands is better, only that it's not a 1:1 reduction to your hourly.

The effect of 27 vs 30 would be minimal but I've seen games with 60 hands an hour and 10 hands an hour. People definitely play more hands the slower the action, because it is boring as hell to play 1 hand an hour or in your case VPIPing 4% you'd play more like 1 hand every 3 hours. Imagine if you're card dead. Boredom tilt is real. Unless you're a total robot ranges are fluid and depend on a variety of variables, one of which is hands per hour. This effect is small compared to certain other variables e.g. table average VPIP, but it should not be ignored, and the correlation between hands/hour and winrate is certainly not linear.

In fact those 15 hand an hour games are sometimes better than the 60.

I'll agree that if your table can fluctuate from 60 hands per hour (really?) to 10 (??) then, yeah, that'll cause people to VPIP more. I've never seen a table at either of those immense extremes. So I stand by comment that no one is changing their VPIP at a table that was doing a normalish ~30 and is now doing a slightly less than normal ~27 thanks to extra dealer responsibilities, and thus the ~10% reduction in hands will almost directly co-relate to a ~10% reduction in winrate.

I'll also agree that the fewer hands you are seeing dealt an hour is likely an indication of a good table (more people seeing flops/turns/rivers and paying off). But it still doesn't change my opinion that, all things being equal, having the dealer have extra responsibilities (money-to-chip transactions) that reduces the number of hands per hour is not a good thing.

GcluelesshandsperhournoobG

Telling a player that busted to go to the cage and wait on line to buy more chips is vastly worse for the game than the few fewer hands dealt an hour if the dealer is selling chips. I've seen plenty of guys stand up and walk right out of the room past the cage instead of sitting and punting another BI. Hell *I'VE* left a game because of that bull**** and went across the street to play.

This is doubly true if the player is tiliting.

Our game used to have chip runners (and sometimes still does when staff is available); the dealer simply yells "chips" while he keeps his head down and goes about his business, and meanwhile the chip runner comes over and does the money-to-chip transaction (keeping the player easily in the game).

Gitain'trocketscienceG

Chip runners obv is best. At one Casio (Philly, IIRC) they actually had a chip cart rolling around selling chips like some sort of ice cream pushcart at the park.

I think the key words here are "used to" and "sometimes". I agree that first buys "should" be at the cage to keep the game running and full re-buys are more valuable at the table just to keep the tilting players available. Maybe I should start buying extra black chips to help the cause as dealers do not sell chips in my normal rooms. We've lost many a tilting player that said they were coming back and had cash in hand. After locking up the seat for 15 minutes hoping they would return we often get a new fresh player. Or worse yet the fish returns and their seat is gone.

One old room didn't have chip runners and the nearest cage was about a three minute walk to the pit. Most regular players kept several buyins in 100s/500s in their pockets for themselves and to sell to others. It was the only way to keep the game going.

Weird thing is the dealers had floats of 3k but weren't allowed to sell chips. Just so they could be the big stack at the table I guess

Parx has chip runners with carts.

I love the idea of a pushy chip vendor making everyone top up

"Hey pal you're looking a little short there, let's get you a couple stacks of red"

+1

Although I am loving the idea of the ice cream salesman chip runner idea.

100% true, i hate going to the cage to buy chips especially when im broke, or if i lost about 80% of my chips and just want to have a little bit larger stack again. until i came to detroit, i never seen this. nowhere in reno or vegas or atlantic city or phoenix or shreveport can u not rebuy at the table. for some reason theres no chip runners here. i have seen chip runners in some rooms on the east coast.

most rooms where i used to play years ago there was no cage, the desk would sell u chips when they seated u or have u buy from the dealer.

i would bet some of the same people bitching about people buying chips from the dealer are some of the same ones who tank during hands and ask for a setup when theyre pissed theyre losing, which slows the game just as much

The casinos in Detroit have some of the poorest run, completely idiotic poker rooms I've ever seen. No chip runners. Slow as **** dealers. Small Smokey rooms. Trash food. Pay for Booze. Moronic game labeling ... what the hell is a "Fifty-Two" game?

Thankfully that's mostly negated by how great the charity rooms are and how horrible the players are across the board.

at least they set out free food though. and drinks where u can grab coffee and water without going thru the waitress. but yeah walking to the cage when u bust out sucks. and so does going home to toledo forgetting about the black chips in your back pocket so u dont have to walk to the cage. shouldve waited til march 31 to leave turtle creek, much better games there.

id never trust a charity room though. i assume the dealers who work there cant get jobs in the casinos where the pay is better because they mightve got fired in the past for being experienced card mechanics. i wouldnt trust games in places without cameras.

You're making a lot of horrible assumptions there. The MI charity rooms have plenty of cameras, some have armed security (never advertised), and there are very few problems with them. Many of the dealers could get casino jobs, but don't want to as the hours are a lot more flexible in a charity room. You're just assuming that they're crooks with no evidence.

The charity rooms are some of the best games I've ever sat in. There's a lot of guys that are just 5 mins from their houses stopping in on the way home from work to blow off steam and have a few drinks. Often times they're regulars with the waitresses and get *trashed* because they can still get home reasonably easily. There's a lot of money tossed around with no regard to it.

My WR is almost twice as high in the charity rooms as it is the casinos around Detroit. Over 1000+ hour samples for each type.

Almost 1/4 of the way through the year, here are my 2019 stats:

417 hours played, up $21,300.

I keep meaning to log how many hours I play at each stake but I get lazy. My best guess would be:

30% 1/3
60% 2/5
10% 5/10

My volume kind of sucks, I’ve found it a bit tougher to play longer sessions in bigger games. In 1/3 I could zone out and print just value betting. I feel like in bigger games I have to be so focused.

I always carry a lot of chips and used to sell people chips but my casino doesn't allow this anymore. In fact they will ban you for doing so. The only way to buy chips is at the cage or asking the dealer to call for chips which typically takes 5+ minutes. It's horrific. The rec population has declined and I know it's not the only factor but I'm convinced it is one.

A rec busts, throws money on the table, gets told it doesn't play, looks pissed, waits, gets lammers eventually, but he missed his blinds and has to post, now really pissed, sometimes he just picks up and leaves and who knows if he ever comes back?

This also reduces the effects of tilt in some cases as these players basically get a forced "time-out" where maybe they decide after their blood has cooled "hmm...maybe I should just go home instead of punting a couple more BI trying to get even." And even if they stay they've had several minutes to clear their head instead of just getting back into it.

The Hard Rock is awful about chips. They seriously ban people for that though? Funny story, I also carry chips on me and another player threatened to call the police because I made another player change.

Wow, I wish I could play that often. Makes me feel good, though, because I've only played 75 hours but am up $5,880. 23.5 hours are PLO (1/2/5 and 5/5) and the rest are 1/2 or 1/3 NLHE. I can't believe we are 1/4 through the year!

What? Was he serious? Lol...

Had a floor at the hard rock tell me I couldnt make change for another player (just giving some greens for some black chips). She was wrong. Dealers ask players to do that all the time. I understand her confusion though because they will actually ban you for a variety of seemingly innocuous things such as

A) Selling a player chips
B) Buying chips from a player
C) Making change for chips with chips not on table

The last is particularly weird. If I'm sitting there with 40 green, and someone sits down with two 500 chips, I am allowed to give that person 20 green in exchange for the purple chip. However, if I offered to change the other player's purple chip with 5 black chips from my pocket, that is apparently banworthy. BUT...I can take those 5 black chips from my pocket, swap them out with 20 green, then exchange my 5 black chips on the table for other player's purple chip, then take 20 green from my pocket and swap them with the purple chip.

Net exchange is exactly the same. It makes no sense.

All these rules are bad for the game and don't really benefit the casino either so I don't get it.