Ah, gotcha.

It drives me crazy that no rooms other than Graton are on Poker Atlas or Bravo! I can't see what's running and how long lists are. Every time I call a room's board to inquire, they act annoyed or bothered.

You are now in California. What the customer wants is tertiary to:
A) The State over-taxing and over-regulating businesses
B) The companies barely eeking out a profit (or so they say)
which leads to
C) awful customer service. You are a customer, and you are annoying and bothering the staff.

It also seems to me that the friendlier rooms are on Bravo/Atlas. Graton, Thunder, Peppermill. Stones has their own app.

Agreed, although I had a really unprofessional encounter once with a brush at Graton.

Agreed.

LOL at the idea that Bay Area poker rooms don't use Bravo because of state regulation or taxation. If that was the case, why are the Los Angeles cardrooms on Bravo? Same state regulation, same state taxation.

My understanding that the reason Bay Area poker rooms do not use Bravo is because of a gentleman's agreement among Bay Area cardroom operators that they will not do so. When one talks to a cardroom manager to suggest using Bravo, the typical answer is that the cardroom does not want to lose customers to another cardroom on a given day simply because the waits are shorter elsewhere.

A further complication is that because of municipal ordinance, the cardrooms in San Jose may not incentivize or reward play. No discounts for food, no comp dollars, no jackpots, and so on. Bay 101 and Casino M8trix are thus further disincentivized to ue a system like Bravo for player tracking (because comp dollar rewards are the incentive to players to use the tracking player cards). The San Jose cardrooms are the 900-lb gorillas in the Bay Area poker market, and if Bravo cannot work for them, they would really like to make sure that Bravo is not used by anyone else.

.

Moving down to Peninsula/South Bay in the summer. Between Bay 101 and M8trix, which one's better for NL cash? (Or which one was better pre-covid?) Priority: game availability/wait time >>> everything else

Both are phenomenal places to play.

Bravo provides two services:
1. Tracking player hours for comps. You explained why this service is not needed.

2. Showing waitlists and tournament info to the public. This amounts to advertising. Typically, waitlists are already hours long and tournaments close to sold out if not sold out and taking alternates. Bravo is not cheap and it would basically be wasted money for the San Jose rooms to buy it.

The Bravo that we players see on our phones and tablets is only a small piece of a rather larger integrated information system for casino customer management. The casinos using this system accumulate a treasure trove of information about players and their game preferences (slots, video poker, table games, etc.) play frequency and preferred times, and play volume. That this system is also used for poker table signups and list management and can be accessed by players over the Internet is only a small piece of a greater whole.

"A further complication is that because of municipal ordinance, the cardrooms in San Jose may not incentivize or reward play. No discounts for food, no comp dollars, no jackpots, and so on. "

Thank You Alan, you've SORT OF made my point- Government regulation. OK, its a local regulation, not a county or state. No advertising, no incentive to earn something related to being a customer. Typical California. It all leads to bad customer service.

Without getting into whether it is good or bad (since we don't allow politicking in this forum), the fact is California IS the most regulated state in the Union, so it's just something you all are gonna have to deal with.

I didn't mind it when I lived there. San Jose, IN GENERAL, does not like organized gambling. Considering the high population of far east cultures, many of whom are big gamblers, that lives there and have seen many lives destroyed by gambling, it's fine with me if the residents want to limit gambling.

My understanding, based on this article, is that the increase in tables was approved by San Jose voters. However, the increase in tables violates state law, as interpreted by the California Gambling Control Commission.

Not as far as poker is concerned, not by a long shot. Shake a stick & you find a casino or card room in CA. NYC? Forget about it. Any population centre in NY for that matter, most of their casinos are on native land/in the middle of nowhere. There are rooms either in the city, or darned close in LA, SD, SF.

Also, I'd say a some of the places in CA are VERY fast & loose with the regulations. I played in SD for a bit, and it blew me away how casual the smaller card rooms were with the rules. A lot of it was just small things (chip down/card down? No big deal, just pick it up! No need to call a floor). And the standard small time casino thing where the dealers are very obv. friends with the regs, favour them, etc. Not very indicative of a strictly enforced regulatory regime in my eyes. Just an overall lack of professionalism. I had a similar experience at Lucky Chances in SF as well.

And this is all before we get into the issues surrounding potential collusion with the floor at that Sacramento card room...

That was my understanding, too (from a post I read made earlier in the forum, maybe it was yours). So it does seem like a state thing. Come on, California!

Also, I am DoubleMask? (I and DoubleMask? are one and the same). (I had issues logging in, and it seems to have redirected me to an old log in/user name that I didn’t remember I had).

A further complication of the State law is that the proposition for tribal gambling back in 2002 prevented any new card room licenses.

Thats why inside this state there have been many attempts at a state run online site, but the tribes and card rooms can't agree on how to split. Not to mention tribes are very hesitant to allow any new gambling.

No.


The moratorium on new licenses/expansion started in 1995 and was extended by the Gambling Control Act of 1997. The moratoriums have been extended several times and now extend thru Jan 2023.

Seems like there’s plenty of (poker) business to go around. At least there was before society was shut down.

Cardrooms and their owners are subject to state business and income taxes. Additionally, about $21.2 million in fees are projected to be collected from the industry in 2018-19 to support state regulatory and problem gaming costs.

On the other hand, the two San Jose cardrooms pay about $19 million to the city.

So what you’re saying is cardrooms make a lot of money for the state (and potentially cities).

And themselves.

A true win-win. And they provide lots of jobs! Would you look at that!