I always played online, and was never confronted with this situation the rare times I used to play live (max 2/4).

Now that I exclusively play live (mostly 10/10 or 10/20), I am sometimes not so comfortable with the amount I carry. Especially when I stop to consider who it is I am playing against. Nothing against anybody in particular, it all goes really smooth so far. But it only takes one person.

Anyway, I already made the mistake of taking advantage of the driver services, so many people know my building (it is hundreds of apartments, but still, not very clever on my part). I don't think I made any secret about it when I began playing there either. This makes me very vulnerable.

I don't carry much money going there, because I get credit. However, credit goes both ways and I sometimes have to wait until the next time to get paid out, because many people are also benefiting from this. This can lead to issues where two owners of different games pay me at once, and I have not even begun playing. In this situation, I don't really want to refuse the money, because I don't want to have to wait for our schedule to coincide again and take a risk (all of them are good for it, but it only takes one mistake for them to be in jail or whatever else). At the same time, I don't want to carry that much either.

I already have an arrangement with someone else in my city where I bought a bolted safe for his place and can hold money there until I am ready to move it to my safe (the bank is in another city, so not super convenient). But this does not work on week ends, so I can hold a lot at home if I do good or get paid.

Anyway, I think that moving is a priority, no question there. However, I am curious to know what other measures other players take or what advice/wisdom they have to offer.

I have to add that I am in EU. Unfortunately, my country does not allow me to carry a weapon with me. Not to say that I never do (I'd rather not expand on this), but a gun is absolutely out of the question.

1) A bolted safe at your friend's place is a bigger risk than a bolted safe at your place for a variety of reasons.
2) Are you able to deposit/withdraw money to an ATM? Obviously you need to keep enough of a bankroll for a couple session downswing, but beyond that why do stuff that makes you nervous?
3) A large building actually reduces risks. Make sure you know your neighbors and they know you, so that they would call police if someone were trying to get access to your apartment.
4) Using the drivers does not particularly increase your risk. Unless you live completely off the grid, if they know your name, they can probably look up your address.
5) Use 2 wallets. When I used to play in questionable places I usually had a small mini-wallet with like $200-300 and a couple older cancelled credit cards and then another one that is harder to find.
6) That is not easy and somewhat dependent on your physical profile, but try to carry yourself in such a way so you don't look like a victim/target.

Just keep it all in your prison wallet.

1. I get that. It's just a temporary holding place. There is never more than I could afford to loose there. I feel it is safer than my place, because if I am held at gunpoint or something like that, they can't force me to open it, it's just not there. I keep just enough at home to have a comfortable grind week, and I feel that this would be enough to satisfy any potential robber.

2. Given the amounts and the fact that the games are not exactly legal, this is not really an option I think. It would be difficult to explain the source of this income. As far as I know, deposits through ATMs can only be made from inside the bank in my country as well. And it's often closed when I end the game.

3. Agreed.

4. I mean that it increases my risk because they know where I live. The more people know, the more the risk that somebody decides to ambush me outside my building one day. I trust the drivers and I am friend with some. But they could send someone else to pick me up or drop me off, and disclose my address without seeing anything wrong with it, then there is another person aware of it. It can snowball pretty quickly. People who work for underground games often have gambling issues themselves, and that is how their status changed from players to freelance employee. If someone loses more than they can afford, there is no telling what they would do to pay it back.

They only know my first name, and I am pretty much nowhere on social media, so there would not be many other ways to find me. I guess I did at least one thing right there.

5. It's not really an option, because a wallet often cannot hold the money. This is made even worse by the fact that the bills used for payouts vary depending on what people brought. Since I am often among the last to leave, I also get last pick. To give you an example, I was paid 7K in 20s on Friday. It takes a huge amount of space...

6. I don't, and I have friends there. It sounds stupid to say, but people "respect" me. But as I said, it only takes one person. There are not many types of 30 yos who can afford to loose tens of thousands every week, all the while playing several 8-24 hours sessions (so not working either). I imagine that they have met stronger people than me, and I don't think that my attitude would factor in that much in the mind of a desperate person.

I guess there is no obvious solution and I just need to accept that this a drawback of the type of game I chose to play in. Kinda like playing on a shady room to get 70% RB and keeping your balance on the site as low as possible. I'll just try and change things around to start somewhat fresh somewhere else, be a bit more secretive about things that could help people find me easily, and take taxis back every time.

I want to stress the fact that I have absolutely no reason to feel unsafe at the moment in these games though. However, I know that some games have been robbed in the past for much less than 5K (not too recently, or one of the games I go to), and these games were sometimes ran by people you really don't want to rob. Two month ago, shots were fired in a city nearby when somebody robbed a 1/2 game for something stupid like 1.5K. I feel that it would be very naive to ignore the fact that being a winner can make you a target, especially when people know that you can't really complain about it to the police.

Cant you use PayPal or Cash App or some cheap crypto?
In todays day and age to have everything in cash is just absurd

There is no way to carry enough money on your person to play 10/20 and be 'safe.' I wouldn't play anywhere but a casino at those stakes, because I've been at (3) games that were robbed at gunpoint, and that's enough for me.

Not sure if it will be helpful to you, but I have the same problem, only difference is - I play online.

Decided to keep my money in crypto. I use ledger hardware wallet and keep funds in USDT currency - stable coin. Chances of it crashing are very slim. I keep my wallet in wall safe.

Update

As some have mentioned, I found a solution in crypto. Thanks to you guys!

I did not even know that was possible in my games, but I now get paid almost only in cryptos. It brings other issues regarding volatility, taxes and security, but it is absolutely a game changer when it comes to moving to and from a game.

Similar to my idea with the safe being away from my place (which indeed turned out to be a mistake, although I won't elaborate), I also have someone else I trust handling 2FA, that way I can't get robbed out of this either. I also always carry some cash, and take parts of the payouts in cash, that way I can decide how much I am willing to get robbed for, if it were to happen. Which still has not happened, and hopefully never will (although I have no illusion it will at some point, it happens to regular people, it only makes sense non regular people would be more exposed).

fantastic stuff here

this

OP, i used to play high stakes private games and there's a very good reason why i don't anymore

as you've mentioned repeatedly, doesn't matter how good the group is, it just takes one person in a terrible situation to dramatically flip your world upside down

also, cheating is rampant in these games, any host can easily setup cold decks etc etc and there's a lot of financial incentive to do so in a game that goes that big - remember they deal in credit, so they're always facing a lot of financial pressure themselves, a few guys stiff them etc and suddenly they have trouble making ends meet and can morally justify setting up a cold deck or two to get back to even

and also, even if your friend is 100% trustworthy, there's a non zero chance he uses that safe as a conversation starter because it's an interesting story that makes him seem important - the classic "hey i know a guy who know's a guy if you know what i'm sayin" so even if he's being totally legit with you there's a much higher risk of word getting out that there's a safe filled with cash at his place than your own

glgl and unsure of your environment but if there are casino games available then strongly consider making the switch to that otherwise you should spend a lot of time on the various websites that sell cheating electronics and review all the "lamps" and other items they have available and see if you can spot any in your poker room

cheating is very easy to do if the host/dealer is involved and almost impossible to detect and even harder to prove unless they are completely incompetent and recklessly greedy about it

good thing you got a crypto solution but if you do carry cash, i can't emphasize enough to keep two rolls on you - if you get held up they want cash and to run, they aren't going to search you and/or count it all out