Rob Mizrachi will be at Playground tonight - wonder if he is going to play in the tourney (Gavin Smith did when he was in town and he took it down)

Here's some interesting news: Snakes just announced that they are reducing their rake. It's a little short on specifics (i.e., the %) but it's max $5 for all limits of NLHE and PLO. I have to assume it's 10% max 5.

In addition, a) bonuses are up - quads pays $100 and a royal flush pays $1K; b) it looks like they're adding a $1K overlay (???) to the Sat afternoon deepstack tournament.

With all that's going on it's clear that the players would benefit from the (still anticipated) increase in competition - and I've also heard rumours that not only is Stardust coming soon (for real now) but that Four Aces may be revived. But as I said to a friend just the other day, I thought competition would come mainly in the form of new promos, not a rake reduction.

So - good thing, or desperate move?

Jaho - I read on FB yesterday that he was supposed to play in the tourney but had to reschedule, so I assume he'll play tourney tonight plus cash later.

Good thing for the players in the short term. Bad thing overall. There is no way that a $5 max rake room will be able to maintain the standards set by PG and Snakes so far with regards to player services (food, drinks, competent staff etc) for any reasonable amount of time. They are basically cutting their own throat with this move. If they start a rake-war with the other rooms the only long-term winner will be the Casino de Montreal as they CAN afford to cut rake without losing any services (between the table games/slots and the fact that there ARE no services provided, they have a lower overhead hands down). If the other rooms don't follow suit, Snakes will see an uptick for a short term for sure, but unless the uptick is very significant (say 50%+ more cash game hours per day) they won't even be able to break even with where they are now - and if they had to make this decision now in an effort to stir up business, how much worse is it in a few months when they're losing money from lack of rake?

As far as the bonuses go - when the BBJ goes up that much slower do you think it will be a good thing or bad thing?

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As for Rob Mizrachi - I understand he was playing in the Malibu Room ($5-$10 PLO?) for the afternoon and later played in the $300 tourney...

Keep dreaming on rake reduction at the CDM. They won't even consider it for the next few years and after that when they consider it it'll take years to implement. They don't care about what other rooms offer. I've been told from everyone from casino staff to the society. They just don't care.

Also promotion is on the front page of snakes website.

http://www.snakespoker.com/

The only question is will it bring the games over? Or will the free services still dictate where people go (playground). Only time will tell.

joseph - I am not saying that CDM would reduce rake - I am saying that they are the only ones who could afford to reduce rake as a longterm proposition. Snakes' rake reduction will be the death of the club as a profitable entity. There's enough money in their pocket already to survive for a short-medium term in a negative cash-flow situation but not enough to survive this decision longterm.

CDM makes just under 4$ a hand on 2/5 (5% 10$ max), and 3.65$ a hand on 1/2 (10% 7$ max).

Do you think snakes will be loosing money at 5$ a drop (take into consideration rake is front loaded and the larger the pot the lower the effective rake)? Also how much does it cost to run a table on average? (non sarcastic questions). I do think they will still be able to make a good turn over IF people come into the room.

I don't think they can survive at the new rake levels unless it significantly increases the # of tables they have running as a result. The cost of alcohol, food, utilities, and staffing is just too high for a poker room that doesn't have any alternative income like the CDM does. Whatever money the CDM brings in through rake has to be considered gravy - it's nice for them to have but it's pretty insignificant compared to the money brought in from pit games and slots. With Snakes and the other rooms on the reserve there is no pit games to pay for all that stuff and that's why the lower rake will be unsustainable longterm IMO.

I agree with this (and the rest of your post).

I find all of this to be really interesting to watch. The current situation in Kahnawake seems to meet most people's needs - i.e., wait lists aren't too long, tournaments are full but not overflowing (and big enough to have interesting prize pools). Dealers are uniformly very good trending to excellent. Promos are fun and provide players with fun opportunities to "top up the bankroll" so to speak. Facilities are very good (regardless of personal preference), and cater to a variety of tastes.

At the same time, we're on the brink of one and maybe two new rooms opening (re-opening).

In anticipation, Snakes has reduced their rake. Playground has also anticipated - the Players Club seems to be at least a little bit a reaction to Stardust's slate of team pros. It's pretty clear so far that Stardust is looking to cater more to the "young balla" crowd, where Snakes is all about a friendly working class vibe and Playground is about a high-end, classy, celeb-and-sports kind of vibe. And Four Aces, should it re-open, seems destined for... well it's not clear. It's a little less potentially intimidating that Playground, a little more friendly in terms of atmosphere.

Whatever happens, it's pretty obvious that the trick is going to be to expand the player pool - if it comes down to a competition for the same player pool I'm not sure that four rooms plus the Casino (which after all does more cash table business than PG and Snakes combined) can survive.

Point being - I'm not sure how they expand the player pool. Getting someone out once to see and play with hockey legends doesn't convert someone to a once-a-week player. Promos are good - but at the end of the day there are two problems - a perception problem (poker is still viewed as marginal in 'polite society') and a transportation problem (Kahnawake is difficult to get to from a city in which a lot of people get by without cars). The thing is - both of those problems can ONLY likely be solved by common action among the Kahnawake rooms, which I don't see happening at this time. Something like an hourly bus service downtown could be really helpful. Something to highlight the legal safe atmosphere would be helpful as well. Stuff like that is what industry associations were bred to do, but the rooms seem more interested in either ignoring each other or competing to the death at this point.

I agree. Also public transit there would be a dream for them. I keep hearing from old retired regs at the CDM that they would go to play ground if they could get there. Might be just talk but they don't have much else to do all day, they want to take advantage of the food and different scenery. I doubt they care about rake. They fold everything except aces anyway.

Just wondering if anybody has gathered any information regarding Stardust Poker Mansion's official opening. Also any info concerning Four Aces license reinstatement would be gladly appreciated. Can not seem to find anywhere I can apply as a poker dealer at either of these poker establishments. Thanks

No news since my last post about this - but others probably know more than I do.

Steve I suggest you take a look on Facebook - I am sure you have some contacts in your friends list that are connected with Stardust. Many of them even have a Stardust logo as their profile pic.

There is some news about Stardust - it now shows up in BravoPokerLive, the iPhone app that shows how many tables are open at a location. So it looks like things continue to move forward, though there is still a lot of information missing about the launch.

So the new Super Beat Jackpot at Playground is now officially live. Lose with Queen-high-straight-flush with both players using both cards and it's worth a cool million. $400k to loser, $200k to winner, $200k to the table and $200k split among all other cash game players currently seated at the time.

No drop taken for this so it's a purely +EV promo for the players.

Linky if anyone wants to read the fine print:

http://www.playgroundpoker.ca/superbeat-jackpot

Okay scratch that. The actual split is as follows:

Current standard BBJ amount split as I mentioned above. $1M minus current BBJ amount is then split 50/50 between the winner and loser of the hand. SuperBeat is not payable to whole table or all games running - my bad.

Yeah its a nice promo even though it's impossible to hit. Check out the playground thread there is some discussion there.

I was out at Playground tonight. I played in the leader board freeroll (from Nov - nursed my tiny stack to 12th, might have folded to the money but it was truly a puny stack lol). There was also the freebuy with a $5K guarantee. It sold out early but they got through at least 40 alternates. Prize pool was about 5.4K, so they covered the guarantee but it's promising for an overlay tomorrow night when the guarantee is 10K.

Action at the cash tables was crazy - probably 14 tables including a 1-2 PLO with a sick group of players.

Over all, clearly a successful start to the anniversary weekend.

Hey Mike - I played in the freebuy for a couple of hands. Almost doubled up with two pair versus a missed flush draw for my first hand and then I ran KK into quad Jacks less than an orbit later and decided it wasn't my night so I didn't bother rebuying. For the $10k freebuy tonight I would not be surprised if there is an overlay because last year they used all 21 tables for the $10k freebuys and they just made the guarantee in one and just missed it in one - so considering this is capped at 100 plus alternates it will definitely be tough to meet the guarantee IMO.

Considering moving to Montreal (from New York) to play online. Anyone got any tips, advice, areas to avoid, or anything like that? I know absolutely nothing about the area but something in the city and near live poker would be pretty cool.

If you follow this search: http://www.google.ca/search?q=site:m...ontreal+moving you can look through the results for some answers to this question. Even older answers are pretty much completely relevant and up-to-date today.

There's very little "near" live poker in terms of living, but nothing is that far either (by car).

I would focus on a) Plateau Mont-Royal (or just "the plateau") or b) NDG as two areas with lots of apartments and good places for newcomers to land. There are a bunch of neighbourhoods in the centre-south of the city that might work as well - Griffintown, St-Henri, etc.

You basically don't need a car (except to get to playground poker cab is like 40$ I'm guessing) but if you do have a car you can pretty much live anywhere you want. Avoid short-term rentals in mtl they are a rip off.

Hey guys, I just got to Montreal Tuesday night. Been looking around at apartments and exploring the city. I've been reading up on the threads relevant to the obstacles I might face getting set up here, but if anyone has any advice for me or anything that could be helpful that'd be welcomed. And if any 2p2ers wanna grab a drink or head to a casino let me know. I came by myself and would love to hang with some likeminded people.

Matt

Hey matt, don't think I can help you with places you can live since I still live with my parents and don't live downtown, but I play at the Casino quite a bit and know alot of the regs there. Pm me if you wanna chat.

Vinc

So Bad Beat has changed at Playground. Once the current jackpot (around $65k right now I think?) gets hit with the usual requirements the BBJ going forward will now be a minimum of $100k but the requirements got a bit stricter too.

Still AAAKK minimum losing hand but for a boat or quads to count you must have a pocket pair. Under the old rules a board of 22233 would be a BBJ if one player had 24 and the other had 33 - now that will no longer qualify.

Happy New Year everyone!

JaHo I think the new rules are reasonable, and probably good news for regs. I go on the assumption that I'm never going to win (and certainly not adjust my play to try), so the bigger the jackpot the better because that's what brings newer players to the tables.

In other news, Snakes announced today a new $330 freezeout tournament to be held every Tuesday night. Max 40 players. It seems that players bored or uninterested in $50 tournaments are starting to have a regular schedule - the $165 6-max at Playground on Monday, Snake's $330 on Tuesday, the $110 deepstack turbo on Wednesday, the $300 freeze at PG on Thursday and the $125 bounty on Friday.

I won't be playing all of these, but my resolution for 2012 is to avoid $50-$60 tournaments as much as possible - and play more larger tourneys. Luckily my results for the 2nd half of 2011 have made this a reasonable choice...

As far as Stardust is concerned, I keep hearing rumours about a grand opening but no hard news yet.