The three landmarks will be
a - what the reply to the "OPINION" is / if any on july 25 by abbott
b - the weeks after the WSOP - that takes the "All the players are at the WSOP" argument for the decline of games
c - the end of summer and after kids going back to school - peg this about mid august

In addition you have the Card players tour and the WPT event - both events have a way higher than normal vig for the players -
80 on 400 Card player event
100 daily seat fee for WPT event

We shall see if this is a factor. In addition should another room of the size of Prime open - the players will "follow the money" - as many have told me - they don't have "brand loyalty" - they play where the action is.

just a quick update =- almost midnite and the number of tables listed in the previous post for tables are still the same

3 am
post oak 2 tables
prime 8 tables

No Prime has surpassed them in number of games/tables going and better action.

Heuer/Management at Post Oak really dropped the ball. The money was rolling in and they just didn't seem to care about their customers.

Examples:

1. Blocking off all the parking spaces with cones and requiring valet. 8 time card purchase required or it was $8. Many people don't want a valet person in their car irrespective of if they were going to buy the time cards anyway. Many players said they weren't going to play there due to this (see their yelp/facebook comments etc) and yet they did nothing until it a month or so back when they dropped the time card requirement but still cone off all the spaces.

2. Many of the PLO players want to run it twice (pretty standard) and yet they wouldn't allow it for 6 months, then went to $2000 min in the pot, then $1,000 in the pot. Now I think they do it for any pot where the players want to but their reluctance to let players do what they wanted to do with their own money at risk pushed a lot of the players over to Prime and those players haven't come back now that they finally relaxed the policy.

3. Offering free food/buffet to tourney players but nothing to the cash game players where they have been making their money. They always are offering incentives to the tourney players but nothing to cash players and now they have lost many of those. They rolled out their new "card" program but it is too late. Many of the players have moved to Prime and I doubt they will come back.

4. Hiring a poker room manager that doesn't get to know the players at all. For her first 3 months players barely even saw her on the floor. All the Prime floor staff gets to know the players, greets them and is very welcoming. The owners do as well. As per one of Clive's earlier posts, Lion at Lion's does the same thing.

5. As Clive also mentioned in his post above the vig on their upcoming tourney series with Card Player is a joke.

PO in my opinion is all about taking your $ and doesn't care about anything else. Daniel K even was touting how much they were raking in monthly in one of his promotional interviews. The others want our $ too but at least appear to show some appreciation to their players/regulars.

sorry..but if someone wanted to valet my car for $8...i would think they were offering to buy it

Neither the courts nor prosecutors took action to close a single room down up there. The owners made the decision to fold in the face of a scare letter from a law enforcement agency that has been shown on more than one occasion to have clear misunderstandings of the law...

There exists the possibility of a room operator who is rolled to withstand any ACTUAL legal challenge in the Collin County courts. I don't really envision poker being high on the priority list for Dallas County if the room was on that side of the County Line in Plano...

Cannot speak to the PLO issues since that has never really been my game. However, the move to mandatory valet parking was what drove me away from playing there. I generally don't even let a valet touch the 'crappy' 15-year old X-Type since so few know how to drive a stick...I damned sure am not letting them in the F-Type...

Cannot say it has been an unwise decision since I have generally done well on my poker travels elsewhere...

At this juncture, it has probably been six months since I was last at POPC...although I still try to keep up with the various rooms just in case the schedule ever sees enough of a break to go play some night.

Interesting ... guess I'm going to Prime tonight. Do they do the same match the big stack buy in?

On the 5/5 PLO table they say $2,000 max but I've seen people add on more. I'm not sure what the 1/3 NL stated buy ins are but I've seen big stacks most nights so I'm pretty sure people are buying in deep(up to big stack). I've sat in it a few times while waiting for a PLO seat and have typically bought in $1,000 so I know you can buy in for at least that amount.

I have not had a chance to go back but when I played 1/3 NLHE - I brought 2k to the table and no issues

when did online poker become legal in Houston? every game runner in Houston trying to get the best of both worlds. One day some law enforcement agency will hit the jackpot when and if they ever try to crack down on these so called online rooms

You referencing the app game that is driven by the “clubs/unions” concept that every player seems to be playing at the tables these days?

3.7 million people play on just one app in the US - this is hardly a houston thing

before black friday - online poker was a 1.7 billion dollar/yr industry
now it is just over 300 million..it is just a ghost of what it was

Update...the Texas AG has declined to offer an opinion on poker clubs because of a pending lawsuit. Apparently Texas Card House has sued SA Card House claiming unfair competition from SA Card House's illegal business model.

https://www.stopillegalgamblinghoust...on-Poker-Clubs

Yeah I didn’t suggest it was. I’m in dallas. PPPoker is everywhere and I’m weary of the seemingly absolute trust players seem to be putting in the software by playing as high as 10/25PLO on the app.

i agree - it is very host dependent which is why the app is successful - you should not send to any host you don't personally know or have heard of - do your due diligence before you send more than what you can afford to burn on your kitchen stove

Now that is hilarious - at first blush - they probably are either one and the same or friends and as stated in the answering the opinion will NOT take place if there is ongoing litigation that may unduly affect said ruling.

In short the conversation goes as follows

Partner A to Partner B
Sue me for $1 in compensation and we will just keep asking the court's indulgence for delay and continue to operate both enterprises until such time that the court dismisses both sides
Partner B - OK

Playing shenanigans will satisfy all sides
The models are neither ruled upon
The lawmakers are not required to stick their necks out
The tax payers are not burdened with the costs of the state taking money and time out of its budget to fight said case.
The DA can concentrate on more important issues
and I can keep posting

EVERYONE WINS - frankly the whole thing will be over in a few years regardless much like the whole poker boom as more and more players realize they aren't gonna win against the house and the sharks.

You must have been SOOOO disappointed to get the first update from your site in almost two months only to have it be so utterly useless...although, admittedly, not unlike the website itself.

I guess your buddies are now working on trying to file some manner of amicus in Travis County.

As long as we continue to see some upward spikes in WSOP numbers, I don't see local poker going anywhere.

What WILL occur is a culling of the number of locations since, instead of being smart and having locations all across the region, too many decided to cannibalize the player pool in a very small area. They is simply a stupid business model when they are all individual operators...after all, it isn't like Starbucks where the stupidity is limited to one company opening locations all over the place, including on opposite corners of the same building.

Not my buddies, but I'm sure they're quite busy. Everyone was waiting on the opinion. Now that hurdle has been removed.

My last 2 trips to Post Oak, action was solid. But noticeable down from prior weeks.

Now I know why: I recognized a dozen faces at Prime from prior months at Post Oak, and it was insane, in the same way Post Oak was a few months ago. 5+ people to every flop, no matter what the preflop raise, gamblegamble, go go go.

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Also ran into someone who dealt to me 10+ years ago ... and recognized me. The older you get, the nicer that is.

And, I proposed a universal law that I think merits consideration: If you're going to arbitrarily say "**** you" to people, some of them are going to get upset. This followed a near fisticuffs at the table (I was not directly involved) ...

Sign of strength

PRIME - $500 buy in freeze out - started at noon - over 50 players
POST OAK - $150 - Bounty builder ($50 bounties) - started at 2pm - 16 players - just started so may increase

PRIME - $40 vig on $500 - 25k starting stack / 20 min blinds - I would have expected a few more chips
POST OAK - $20 vig on $150 - 30k starting stack (was advertised as a 50k starting stock on FB but 30k on poker atlas) / 30 min blinds - a bit too long for such a small buy in

I will say this is a vast improvement on the vig that used to be charged (up to 40%) - this of course does not include membership fee and/or daily fee - $10 at prime and $15 at post oak as far as I know.

Good to see competition heating up

28 players total at post oak...a definite improvement

This is pretty crazy. Texas Card House based in Austin is suing SA Card House based in San Antonio. The article doesn't delve into why, but it's pretty clear the reason why is because of SA Card House's structure for raking their tournaments. SACH charges a $5 membership fee + takes a portion of each buyin as a "seat rental fee" and charges no hourly fee. ACH charges the daily membership fee ($10 I believe), takes none of your buyin, but charges you $10/hour to play. This $10/hour charge is much worse for the players (makes the daily tournaments <$150 almost unbeatable) but obviously significantly better for the card room owners. Players know this is a really ****ty deal, and I have no doubt, despite being in different cities, this has had a negative effect on the turnout for ACH's tournaments. I also know the owners of SA Card House and ACH's owner have had some back and forth threats about staying out of each other's cities and they are both by far the biggest poker rooms in each of their cities. The ACH owner actually even played in the May $50k monthly @ SACH so it seemed to be more of a rivalry than any real animosity, but no doubt that has now changed.

Another thing, the SA Card House owners have very, very deep pockets. No lawsuit is going to drive them out of business, so that's not the objective of this lawsuit. This is clearly to stave off questions from the ACH playerbase asking why they have to charge exorbitant seat charge fees during tournaments, and getting a legal opinion that it is required will hurt SA Card House and force them to start charging an hourly fee for tournaments, while allowing the ACH owner the ability to say "Look, we took this to court and we HAVE to charge the hourly seat charge for tournaments. REALLY sorry ". ACH definitely doesn't want to have to give up charging hourly for the tournaments but the competition has forced them into a corner. For the player's sake, let's hope SACH wins this.