Unless the games are crazy good in Midland which I suppose is possible right now I can’t imagine traveling to Texas to play poker in Midland. Also yes Midland is a smaller city than the big three in Texas I don’t know if I’d consider it that much safer. Always feel these oil towns bring in a lot of unsavory type activity especially if where talking Odessa and not Midland.

Robbery rate per 1000

National Avg: .73

Midland .38
Odessa .93
Austin 1.14
San Antonio 1.51
Dallas 2.53
Houston 3.81

If you think Midland is a dangerous place, you're out of your ****ing mind.

Guess things have improved from when I use to go. Have you spent a lot of time in Midland or know a lot of people from the area?

https://www.medlinfirm.com/blog/what...ties-in-texas/

“In 2015, cities in west Texas emerged as the most dangerous places in the state with Odessa taking the top spot.

A report in Texas Monthly said Odessa’s violent crime rate of 806 incidents per 100,000 was by far the highest in Texas. “

It's funny that you cited an article that doesn't even mention Midland. Apparently you are completely oblivious to the fact that Midland was built around white collar workers, whereas Odessa was primarily built around a blue collar workforce. It's comparing apples and oranges. The two are 18 miles apart.

In the past month I've seen more crime right outside my million dollar Dallas home than I saw in over a decade living in an average Midland neighborhood.

anyone have info on the shooting that occured at the katy club

Some guys pulled up in a vehicle, fired a few shots at the door, and drove off. I was told they looked Asian. About 8:30pm. No one hurt.

Any update on the appeal in Dallas? Thought it was suppose to be in “early Feb”

It's scheduled for 2/22.

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Going to DFW in a month for March Madness. Better to stay in Dallas or Fort Worth?

With the basketball games taking place in Ft Worth, I would think you would want to stay there. Ft Worth has night life and things to do. Poker rooms are lacking there unless you are happy with going to a room running one or two 1/2 games.

I definitely wouldn't stay in the heart of Dallas since TCH Dallas is on the outskirts of the city limit. I'd say stay in Ft Worth or if you are going to play a lot of poker maybe stay in-between in a place like Grapevine.

A player got kicked out of Watauga Social Lounge (ft worth area) and he posted a couple videos on social media about it. I'm assuming they were justified in kicking him out, because he seemed pretty pissed off. However, one of the reasons he was pissed off is because they took rake out of a tournament add-on without ever disclosing that they were doing so. I'm not a tournament player, but that seems shady as ****. That's one of the risks you take playing at some of these establishments that aren't necessarily that well run.

They probably all do it, but I was pretty surprised at one of the UG rooms I used to frequent taking a cut of the nightly High Hand promo. Pretty shady.

Anybody here anything about the TCH hearing on 2/22 with the city of Dallas?

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Yes, I heard the hearing has been moved to 3/22.

Planning to go to Texas just to play Plo 1/2 or 5/5 at the most for a week or two in month of March.
Which city do you guys recommend

Prefer rooms with multiple tables and also where games start early in the day and last all night even during weekdays

Also any major hotel chains close to the room be a plus too.
Thanks a lot

Pretty sure every casino ever has taken a cut of the promotional fund. Its always been there in the fine print at legal establishments, and hard to imagine underground or "semi-legal" places not doing it, too.

No clue, other than that Houston is known as the place to go for PLO.

I don't think that's the case in Vegas. Pretty sure every dollar of the promo money has to go back to the players, but I'd love to be proved wrong. Now at Winstar, that certainly seemed to be the case. They'd have 40+ cash games running for most of the day taking $1 before each hand was dealt, and yet the bad beat would only go up like $1k or less the next day.

The problem in the Watauga poker room is that they did not disclose the money they were taking out. A place can take whatever they want out of the pool, but if it's not disclosed beforehand then they are stealing.

Not true many casinos take no cut off top of promo funds. Not because they are nice but because it isn’t allowed. Other places can and do take a small fee because it is allowed.

In the tax rooms, with no regulating body, I would expect some rooms are abusing the promo fund and using it as a revenue source

Of course it would raise the question that if they are raking the pot for promo fund and if house is taking from the promo fund is the house now benefiting from the game. Does thus violate state law? Is this enough to dissuade at least the more legit rooms?

That's a common misunderstanding about the money taken at WinStar (and probably other tribal rooms). The $1 isn't a promotional drop. It is money that goes straight to the tribe. That is their cut. The rest of the rake is then used to pay all expenses, including salaries and all forms of overhead. After all expenses are paid, the excess money is then put towards promotions. The same is true in the pit. When you post an ante while playing blackjack, the ante goes straight to the tribe. The money won out of your regular bets is used for expenses, and excess profit after paying costs is used to fund promotions.

Cheers, Greg Raymer (FossilMan)

Is there much difference between weekend and weekday games?

Just to expand on Promo Funds .. Promo funds are typically escrow accounts that are governed by the 'rules' implemented when they are first set up. Typically every casino has a Gaming Commission that acts as a 3rd party separate from the casino and patrons. These can vary in scope between Tribal and 'State' governed facilities. The amount of authority they wield could be a thread itself ..

It may take some inquiry work, but certainly in state facilities you should be able to request a copy of the funds original guidelines and that is where you will find out if the casino is allowed to take a cut. More typically (and much easier to obtain), each promo 'event' has a set of guidelines posted. This may or may not indicate an allowed administrative fee.

When you see a $2 drop, it may be split between promos as well. With half going to the 'main' fund and the other going to the promo currently running that hour. My home casino typically has a monthly/weekly sheet showing additions and subtractions to the funds. Some escrow accounts can't exceed a certain amount, so the facility is forced to run promos to deplete the fund and not be found in violation of the 'rules' (and possible face a fine from the Gaming Commission).

At Tribal facilities it may be much more difficult to obtain these guidelines, but they all should be made available if properly requested.

An escrow account also has some federal protections, mainly that the 'holder' of the account can't profit from, borrow or take 'advantage' of the fund for their own benefit 'directly'. Certainly poker rooms take advantage of promos to 'indirectly' benefit from assumed increased rake when promos are running. GL

PS .. What does all that have to do with Texas? Probably absolutely nothing since 'promos' at a Texas card room are more in line with 'advertising' expenses and there 'shouldn't' be a drop specifically for that purpose. Any promo with a value of over $600 would be subject to the IRS 1099 requirements just like any other 'prize' giveaway via radio, raffle or other.

On Saturday TCH Dallas had 44 players on the 2/5 waitlist. This is pretty normal. You can expect that most of those players were rec players whereas most of the seats occupied were likely grinders/pros. That's the big negative of playing there on the weekend vs during the week.

By contrast Poker House never even started a 2/5 game even though there were plenty of interested players (this was on Day 2 of their $250k freeroll, which makes it doubly disappointing they wouldn't even get a 2/5 game running then). My 1/2 game ranged from pretty good and big to possibly worse than any 1/3 game I ever played in Vegas.

I suspect the best weekend games around Dallas are at Winstar and/or Choctaw.

I'm interested in what the action is like for a mid-week trip.

At Dallas TCH, midweek games may very well be better than weekend games. It's gonna vary though from table to table and vary based on who's in town (ie euro pros, and other traveling grinders).

I just played a 2/5 where 3 players bought in for $200 each and at one point had stacks of $80, $120, and $175 respectively. Then another table broke and a Euro pro wat down at our table with $7k+. Overall 2/5 was sort of ho-hum fine but not great at the tables I played at. However, apparently the 2/5/T game that was running was playing quite big as I heard there were multiple $8k pots in a very short period of time.