Burner account to prevent harassment/trolling

TLDR: Op purchases $2000 of “seat time” in a time-raked “seat rental” social-club style cardroom in Texas and then gets banned for a ridiculous reason. OP still has a balance of $1345 with the cardroom and the cardroom is trying to screw OP out of most of his money.

Hello everyone,

I started playing at Prime Social in Houston, Texas back in May. They were one of the first poker rooms to reopen after the corona lockdown, so I packed up and drove to Texas. There are usually only 1 or 2 games going at this room and it’s almost all the same people. The games are so good that I ended up staying for 8 months.

Last week prime ran a promotion where they will “match” any funds deposited into your prime card, which is used to pay the $16 per hour time-rake seat charge. Seeing as this meant effectively paying half-rake, I bought $1000 and had $1000 matched, giving my card a balance of $2000. (Enough to play about 120 hours)

Anyways, there is a small group of bad wanna-be regs at prime that are the biggest crybabies ever. I have been crushing the game, and pulled more than $53k out of the 1-3 game in about 8 months (751 hours). Prime’s player pool is pretty small, I’d estimate it’s probably the same 50-60 people, with usually 1 or 2 tables going. A small group of bad, barely-winning regulars have got together and protested to management that they refuse to play while I’m playing. Objectively speaking, my honest observation is that I am the biggest winner in this room by a significant ammount. I believe this group of bad regs is colluding to have me banned, since there is often only 1 game running, not having me in the game would benefit their winrate significantly. I do not mean this to sound full of myself. I honestly believe that some of these players are only winning when they are playing against a table full of drooling mouth breathers (common in Texas). Removing a player that is a $71/hour drain on the game and replacing me with a random losing fish stands to benefit these bad regs quite a bit.

On Thursday, the room manager asks to have a word with me. He tells me that there are enough players refusing to play with me that the owners of the club have asked him to ban me. I agree politely and rack up my chips. When I asked to have the remaining balance on my prime card liquidated ($1345) the room manager told me he’s not sure what he can do, and told me to come back on Friday.

On Friday I go back to prime and meet with the same manager, who’s name I will redact for privacy. He is a nationally-known tournament director so I kind of (naively) expected a fair resolution to getting my $1345 balance paid. He told me he’s waiting for the “owners” to get back to him. It has been over 24 hours since the meeting and 48 hours since this happened, and I have still not heard anything back from anybody. He told me that even if he were to be able to issue a rebate, the promotional funds would not be counted toward the time played, and the time played would have only charged my original cash funds which have been combined with the promotional funds in my card. This totally defeats the purpose of the promotion in the first place, as there are cheaper (hourly) rooms to play in the area. I would gladly accept half of the balance, as the balance was originally half deposited funds and half promotional funds. One could argue that once I’ve purchased the funds, the promotional funds are mine too. Either way, I’m pretty sure I’m either getting nothing or I’m going to get screwed.

Withholding the funds seems kind of scummy.

What do you guys do? Am I being ridiculous for wanting $672? (half)

1. You need to talk to Brent. Justin Hammer is just the tourney director.

2. Go play at 52 Social. Games are much better there.

Thanks for the reply. Hammer is the one who kicked me out, though he did say this was not his decision. Apparently it came from the “owners”, who are never around. I have not heard from Brent.

Might be hard to do, but is there a brochure on the promo, or just a poster? Not knowing how 'promotions' are regulated in TX I'm a little blind, but there should be some 'fine print' that details how funds are applied within the promo.

If I were you I would 'accept' no less than $345, assuming the worst case scenario that non of the promo funds get applied until the deposited funds are used up. It's also possible that your card has terms and conditions to prevent you from selling your card, or just transferring the balance, to someone else.

They very well may just take the stance that you have a 'gift card' and it's only good at their place, too bad. Plenty of comments that quite a few 'owners' of these rooms don't run the business side of things very well, could be just a bad spot for you.

Get a hold of Fireman Scott and put him on the case .. GL

Don't think you are being ridiculous at all. Not sure if you are a Tournament player, but if they are not willing to compromise on a refund, you might inquire if they would be willing to apply the funds toward buy in for the many large tournaments they are running this month.

I see from your locked thread that the promo is basically just a text .. so no fine print necessarily.

I do like the idea of the above .. get some sort of equal value in a different format. GL

I'm wondering why you really got banned. There have been huge crushers in poker since poker first began and that alone doesn't result in players getting banned from public games. Clearly the other players don't like you personally and you did something to piss them off. Also, what was the actual reason for the banning?

It would be a bit ridiculous to think you should get the promo money back, but I do agree you should be able to receive back any money you put in, which in this case should be half since the promo was a match.

I see the OP is posting this all over the place. Any resolution?

Why were you banned? You have omitted Prime.Sicial reasoning even if it is bogus?

Never heard of a winner in any level being banned for winning too much. Never doubted you winning...

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Here is the scoop on Effitcall

I know someone who plays in that game regularly:

Effitcall is correct in that most of the players are horribad and basically give their money away.

Here is the true scoop:

1. They come there to have a good time, socialize and basically give $ away. Most of the regs are losing players.

2. EC is one of the only 2 winning players in the game but talks to no one, sits there all day just grinding without interacting with any of the other players, and makes it obvious his sole goal is to take their money.

3. All of the other players hate him and are happy he is gone.

My analysis:

If you are a pro try to at least interact with the other players so they don't think you are a total ******* just there to grind all day and take their $. I have known of several other people that have been banned for winning too much, but in every case it is because the player was universally unliked for other reasons (not being social, sitting there with headphones on all day or watching their phone, playing online apps, etc). Winning players that are socially fun at the table have minimal chance of having this happen to them.

That said, Prime is poorly run and has banned several people like this since they opened. Most now play at 52 Social every day which has taken most of their business. EC should get his initial investment that is left on the card back at the very least (don't think he has any chance to get the promo fund portion returned to him) and go there to play where he should be able to make even more money than he made at Prime. This time though he should try and be a little more sociable.

many people also find the players who come to "socialize" as annoying. shut up and deal. nonstop talking, which causes the dealer to make errors can be aggravating too. its especially annoying if someone is nonstop talking to other players, the dealer or on his phone (this is why casinos ban phone calls while playing) most of us want a quiet game.

curious if i know who this guy is, since i play at 52 so often. prime gets no business, thats for sure. not even with thier free play omaha plo promotion from 10-6 i would think that would get omaha players in the door but nope.

i never wear headphones but i too am a serious winning player and unliked by many. theres no way around this unless u are a fish. all who think they are good for the game and a winning player decieve themself. but i start games up short handed, and that helps. some players are total nits, wont play with less than 8 people. some wont even play a bomb pot when on the button, which is idiotic i refused them UTG but not on the button.

Still no resolution. In fact, things have only gotten worse with the one contact who I thought might be trying to help me. It’s not looking good

This is completely false. There are tons of well liked winning players.

Do you also chop when you are in the small blind and not when you are in the big blind?

no, why would i do this? id never want to have to play a hand HU. only idiots enjoy playing HU. i always chop, even when i have AA, and get pissed when people use the excuse the game is 4 handed to not chop.

was Effitcall doing this?

The edge HU in position is massive. Would definitely be +EV to do this.

only for someone experienced in HU. for someone like me who never plays HU and is too tight, id be raised off every hand unless i wanted to call all the way to the river with no pair King hi. if u were the small and i was the big u could just raise me no matter what and win.

Anyways, my point was simply that it seems pretty angly to only play bomb pots when you are in position and not play them when you are out of position. If the other players knew what was good for them, they would not play bomb pots with you (unless they have position).

It's akin to only chopping from out of position, or only chopping when you have bad cards.

Well,

They should pay what is owed period! There so called owner Chanh who’s always on Houston Poker Live talking about they do people right should step and do right. I doubt they do the right thing these people have no clue what there doing and think that if they run a Million dollar tournament people will come back! The day after the last tournament they will still have 1 or 2 tables of live play and idiots paying $16 an hour. I mean if your just that plain stupid to play at that rate go play at Freerolls where you’ll get robbed at the table and see it with your own eyes. Those 2 clubs FreeRolls and Prime are just wasting there time. Actually Freerolls isn’t cause owner does a cash grab to fund his habits and he has quite a few. Prime could be be #1 in Houston again if they would just drop there price. Let’s see where that Cockiness gets them. FREEROLLS will be the room that gets Houston poker in trouble eventually when the authorities start caring again till them just a cash grab for Trent. #Rake10#Ping10#Moneyofftable#illegal#provemewrong

Not sure if I would "politely agree" immediately after being informed I was being banned from a highly lucrative situation for the apparent reason of winning a lot and not being social enough. I get that their say is final and such but at least put up a fight, yo.

Was this the first discussion you ever had about it with the management?

What I definitely would not have done was post about it on a well-known forum while naming the club so that you can easily be identified by any management or regular players who may be members. You're not gonna get a penny if they know you've been ripping them "anonymously".

Worth noting that you have already been identified by other players above, just a matter of time before management is made aware of the postings by players sympathetic to the room.

What good does that do? Never going to change their minds by fighting it, and by being polite they might make it a temp ban after a while. Meanwhile, if things escalate when you "put up a fight," you're not only never getting back in, but you're getting a bad rep in the community that will likely lead to no benefit of the doubt in other clubs and potentially it could even turn into a situation with legal repercussions.

The 'simple' fight would've been .. "Hey, let me play out my card and then I'll go .. or perhaps you'd like to buy me out?" GL

Maybe not "fight", but politely disagree instead of politely agreeing. It sounds like he just said "Oh I'm being banned? Cool, thanks for the update, guess I'll hit the road." I would be shocked to be told I'm banned in his situation, unless he saw it coming to an extent meaning there's more to the story.

Publicly posting on the internet about it seems a bigger escalation than pushing back on the initial conversation.

Edit: I guess he did ask about the balance refund in the initial conversation, I missed that on first read. I still think outing them here should have been the last step, not a thing to be done while waiting to hear back from ownership.

I agreed without putting up a fight because

A) Arguing in front of everyone isn’t going to change management’s mind

And B) You can always tell someone to shove it up their ass tomorrow, but if you say it today you can’t unsay it tomorrow.

Just an update, they’ve informed me this is a 30 day ban and my balance will be available to use toward playing time after the 30 days are up.

Obviously I don’t want to play here any more, after this. Hopefully they let me play out the hours without any problems

Great news, finally some resolution. Play out the time then move on....

Now we can all move on as well...

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Yes, run it out and move on.

Just to stir the pot .. are the other Players going to get better in 30 days or did they just need a break from you?

Seems like they really didn't think this through very well. A better way would've been to just tell you that once you run your card dry they wont be putting more credits onto it.

Hope all are safe and can get through the unusual weather with just some stories to tell. GL