OP is right. Card rooms should bar anyone who wins too much.

fyp

I suppose that it's a good thing B&M's don't have a doom switch.

Am I missing something here?

In poker you're playing against players, not the house. The house makes money regardless of who wins or loses, they get this thing called rake...hello? Pros play lots of hours and in doing so give lots of rake to the casino.

I must be misreading something because I can't believe I'm the first one to say that.

I believe that point has been brought up, even by the OP who is a professional that admits he pays north of $20k in rake a year.

The issue is that the professional is pulling money off the table that a recreational player would slowly pay in rake. In addition when the professional player busts the other player, the game may break; thus killing any opportunity for the house to rake pots.

This is a simple and overly-generalized example, ldo.

Edit: spelling, duh.

Ah ok sorry for insulting everone's intelligence lol I kinda knew I had to be missing something and was just too lazy to figure out what it was. Now it makes more sense.

But I still doubt if pros cut into the room's profit.

Sure they might bust people out more quickly on average, but at the same time they're filling seats in the first place. Had they not took the seats, maybe some fish would have, but then there would be 1 (or more) fewer tables open. Also, pros stay at the seat for a longer period of time. Pros might play at odd hours when most other people are in bed or at work. Fish often rebuy anyway.

Overall I think pros still add profit to the room. Especially in time-raked games. In time-raked games a pro is definitely more profitable for the house than an empty seat. In pot-raked games maybe they don't contribute exactly the amount they're paying in rake, but still some profit to the house and not negative profit.

In a pot-raked game the only danger a pro would pose is when the game is short-handed and the next busted person could result in a broken game. But consider this-- if not for the pro, his seat would be empty and the game would have already been broken.

And what about cases where it's just 2 or 3 people left and the pro still wants to play (because 1 or both of his opponents are fish)? That never happens with 2 or 3 fish. But me I've played short-handed and heads-up with fish plenty of times.

If you take out the people who win the most, people who break even or win a smaller amount are going to start winning more. So they should be kicked out too? Poker is relative, with all ponds forming a system to the ocean where the big sharks live. It'd be damn near impossible to find two people who are so perfect that their two styles break even against each other. The worst players are going to lose money, and almost certainly to other players faster than to the house.

I'd guess there are badly run rooms that see the world in this way, for exactly the same reasons you give. History has shown otherwise, the rooms with a lot of pros are the best rooms. Driving pros away from the room kills the room. If Aria had succeeded in getting the big game away from Bellagio by hiring DN, what would the Vegas poker landscape look like? Look at Mirage when the big pros moved to Bellagio.

Even without famous tourist draws, rooms where you show up and see people playing tend to be the successful ones. Drive out the pros and have a bunch of tourists/rec players that won't take a hand without 7 at the table. The fact that the pros will play short and will keep the game going when it gets short, that is worth way more than busting fish faster costs them. It is easy, poker is a game best played with a large player pool. Look at the history of online poker and see exactly the same things. A room that drives away its game starters is dead, no matter where the game is.

It was Wynn that hired DN to try to move the big games over there when he was having 100k-500k HU freezeouts.

Sorry, I'm old and forgetful. I knew that.

You make a damn good (pre*********) point Doug L.

Why?
We rake ALOT
we play every day (and are willing to start games)
we will play shorthanded
we are (usually) friendly to other players
sometimes we are even friends with the dealers/housemen

Yeah, the people who show up every frickin' day like clockwork are what keep the games going. If you just had random people who show up 5% of the time, somedays you're going to be packed and some days there will be no game going. This has a feedback cycle of people not wanting to show up because they're not sure if they'll have to wait 2 hours for a seat, or if there will be no game running.

Cardroom managers love people like me. I show up at the same time every day, play regardless of the lineup, don't bitch about being short or skip out on orbits or what not, don't ask for new setups or sit out because it's my unlucky dealer or ask to table change and then change my mind, yadayadayada.

One time, this security guard was mildly rude to me (he stopped me with his hand when he asked me for my ID, and I told him to follow me to my seat) and the shift manager went over and chewed him out for like 20 min.

You should be flattered you still get carded.

Some months after I went pro, keeping a very regular five-night-per-week schedule, the shift manager described me to one of the other regulars as "one of our best employees."

When I heard that, I asked him for a raise. He didn't go for it for some reason.

lol.

I also dont get carded when I go to my regular casino even tho i look like i am 16.

Only 10k? Id kill for 10k.

I didn't mean in a normal public casino or cardroom, where I doubt this would ever happen, but in a "semi-public" (there is such a thing) game in a bar or club. (This goes back quite a few years.)

I disagree with the bolded part. What you say is only true if the recreational player who loses chooses never to come back. If this were typically the case then you also would not benefit from winning at some point because your game would lose all players worse than you and the remaining players all better than you would force you to quit. This would lead to no more games.

But the fact is that you only win some % of the time. I would guess between 60% and 70% of your sessions are winning ones. This leaves the other players with some hope. That it is a false hope matters not. They will keep coming back mostly losing. You will keep coming back mostly winning. And management will keep providing the games, always raking.

What is the alternative?

No regulars?

Or everybody playing and nobody winning?

In the end it is OK as long as the game isn't impacted. I have to say that the FW 20/40 LHE game has been somewhat to severely impacted by the recent influx of internet players. The internet losers have weeded themselves out and now the game which was supporting 2 to 3 tables on a busy Friday and Saturday night is down to sometimes 1 table. Which means that the losing regulars who used to fill up the seats are no longer coming or are coming much less frequently... This may also partially be because of the economy and FW's new policy on rooms (they seem to be driving up the prices for poker players and offering fewer free rooms).

Of course is it! I pay them rake, and if I wouldn't be a pro/reg (i.e. a winning player who takes money out of the game), I wouldn't come to the card room to begin with.

So yes, it's a win-win situation.

Stupid question.

the pros and the regulars help keep the games going which allows the house to schedule a given number of dealers for a given number of days and hours. pros and regulars open games .

I admit if the pros and regulars acted more professionally we would have a much better game for the most part. really pros we dont have to have a hard nosed table captain or rule nit and its not a big deal if someone gets an extra hand or two before paying the blind. and if some one acts out of turn it usually OK if they take their bet back.

acting like a deek costs you way more than any of these things.
plus it slows down the freaking game!!

should of asked him for a line pass to the EDR

Am not a pro, but I think I'm on pretty safe ground in saying that while some nitty regs may behave this way, 90+% of true professionals do not.

Is a "true professional" your idealized notion of a great player, or do you really mean the actual people who actually depend upon poker play for their livelihood?

I'll concede that it may be a little more of the former than I'd like to admit. Touche.