It's better than Bay 101 where they only have 3 tables of 1/2/2 running and then close 1 of them at 7 pm. The poor guy with an ordinary job that shows up on Friday at 5:15 has a 3 hour wait minimum. At least with 5 tables the list at M8trix moves.

Yea I'm dumb it was 2/400. First I had seen it.

Yes, I do.

And yeah, it was a nice 2/400 game. My bad.

I've seen big players (you've seen them on tv) come up from LA play in the big LHE at Bay 101. Maybe someone came into town to visit their old Bay friends, who play at M8trix now.

The 200-400 goes on Tuesdays and Thursdays now.

It's scheduled?

I believe it's a 5PM start. Don't know if that's a hard and fast time or not. I've seen it going occasionally at least 1 other time also.

Wow. I had no idea it was so regular. People talk about it like it goes irregularly.

It was a full table all evening last week and seemed quite reggish

I wish I had known that before I illiquidated my bankroll.

On another note:

Was playing 1-2-3 at the M8trix the other night when I ordered a chicken teriyaki Roll from the sushi menu. They delivered my food and on the plate with the roll there were an extra few pieces of chicken.

One of the regs - a middle aged Asian guy with whom I only ever seen once or twice - looks at it and says. What is that, sea urchin or something? I said no, it looks like chicken.

After a couple of hands he reaches over, picks up my sticks and pokes it, puts them back on my plate and says "yep it's chicken"

Lost my appetite after that. Busted him a few hands later and he left.

I saw that M8trix now runs a Sunday evening $300 tournament. Does anyone know anything about the structure of the game? I'm totally uninterested if it has 20 minute levels, but I might head down there for the right structure.

Does anyone know how early you have to register?

20m levels, caps at 60 players,50 and 10 alternates, but sundays dont usually fill up so you just have to show up before reg closes at 6. field is soft and its a crapshoot but still worth playing because people play so bad. takes around 5-6 hours, people usually chop when its short handed and crapshoot blinds

I only play here on rare occasion, being on the East Coast and all.

But one sees this:

http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/n...-gambling.html

and can't help but wonder why anyone would throw away a money-printing license...

...am I missing something? Interested in regs' take on this.

I'm not a reg, but IMO it is simple: Greed, corruption, entitlement, stupidity.
The same reasons for most large-scale criminality.

Whenever I see this kind of thing, I hope they will somehow ban the "corporations" backing the "California Games". Would like it even more if the CA Games were totally banned, leaving more room for poker. But I'm not sure if the people in charge of regulation understand the difference between that side of the business and the actual poker side, which almost never gets anyone in trouble.

Would be the same thing. Without "corporations", the CA games would dry up. Who would want to have a $500 bet out on blackjack, pay the vig, win the hand, but get paid $0 because the bank doesn't cover.

They understand that the CA games produce a ton more drop per table on average. And at 15% to the local jurisdiction (in San Jose), follow the money.

I'm quoting AT but addressing rob.

Was this not super clear? As much as people bitch about the rake, it would be significantly higher without the CA games.

Was the rake higher before the CA games existed?

Of course not.

But,

1. Garden City, before CA games were introduced, was actually closed four days a year (so the staff could be with family). Once the CA games came in with their high revenue per table/day, GC decided to stay open.

2. Remove the CA games from just the Bay Area rooms and you suddenly nearly double the number of poker tables. Nice on a Friday night, but disaster for the rooms on Wednesday afternoon. So you lose 2/3 (or more) of your revenue by losing the CA games while rarely filling the newly available tables.

3. The Monster demands to be fed. Bay101, M8trix, Lucky Chances, Oaks, etc are used to a certain level of revenue. You will have fewer total tables running, each producing less average revenue per table. What do you think the Management will do? Keep the rake the same?

4. M8trix was built for the CA game crowd. They actively pushed poker to the background (while still at the old building, the GM told me his ideal was to have 32 out of 40 tables running CA games on Friday night.)

Did a gallon of milk cost less before the CA games existed?

Not likely. Banking is +EV. Who wouldn't want to bank? The Corporation doesn't do it out of altruism.

Ironically many of those games sit idle, even on a Friday night, while poker games often have lists over 50 names deep.

You're the one claiming a link between the two, not me.

So, you think if they nuked the CA games and replaced them with poker, the clubs would keep the same rake/drop for the poker games?

I'm not sure what would happen, but I think it is wrong to say the poker rake would automatically go up because the CA games were stopped. Prices aren't set by just what business owners would like or because they feel entitled by a certain level of profit. You pointed out that the supply of poker tables would go way up. Increased supply usually leads to lower prices, not higher ones.

I also don't think it would mostly be the same management. It seems to me most of the current management of these rooms are criminals. If there was a housecleaning of corruption and canning of the CA games, these guys would mostly be out, and the licenses would be worth much less, so the new management wouldn't need or expect as much profit.

I also don't think it would be a terrible thing if the rooms were closed a few days a year.

Why does the person without an economics degree need to spell this out for the person with the economics degree?

Increased supply leads to lower prices when demand is elastic. Poker demand is relatively inelastic.

Increased supply is relatively meaningless when poker tables already sit empty. I don't know if "marginal supply" is a term but basically you don't increase the amount used.

But fundamentally, even if poker tables filled the room and were all used, revenue would go down because a pai gow table makes a lot more than a poker table. Go rail one for an hour and count the amount dropped. You can be baffled that management sets prices higher than the bare minimum, but I'm not.