I am seeking a "mentor" who I can ask questions, get advice, etc. for this. I have a business partner and we are STRONGLY considering opening a new poker room in our medium sized town here in Texas. Our town has a couple of small poker rooms, but honestly, they're not terribly nice, not located in the best areas of town, & not run very well.

I have a business background (2 undergrad degrees & a masters degree), which is telling me I need to seek out someone who can show me the things I don't even know that I don't know. We are in the process of putting together a business plan to take to the banks for a business loan and we have begun to look for available locations for lease.

Some of the things I am wanting to find out (not a complete list):

• How do you train your dealers?
• What level of security do you provide? ie. "bouncer", "private armed security", "off duty police"?
• How do you transport money from the cage to the bank, and what time of the day?
• How do you get an ATM placed into your room?
• Where is the best place to get quality chairs ?

Note that we are NOT located in one of the 4 "big cities" here in Texas, so we really shouldn't be competition to anyone who already runs a card room.

I'm really wanting someone I can come talk to in person. Maybe see your card room?

Not a card room manager... But from business experience I can help with a couple answers.

Security will depend on the spend you want, level of training in the personnel, and your insurance company and premium you are willing to pay.

That is to say - If you hire directly, contract a security company, or hire local of duty law enforcement. If security is armed it will cost more in labor as they are trained to a higher degree, and your insurance company will charge more to protect against a firearm involved incident.

For money being picked up - again you would contract with a 3rd party, armed transport. The come into your property and walk it out to their transport and go. Time of day set at time of contract with sales rep.

ATM - you can buy your own or contact local banks and see if they are interested installing one free of charge. If you won the ATM the service fee is yours, if not bank gets the fee.

I am a retired poker and casino exec I can answer some of your questions.
Dealer training: you will need someone who can teach dealing. Many good dealers can't teach. There are video training courses available. "Professional Dealers Handbook" by Mason Malmuth, Donna Harris and Dan Paymor is a good text as well, if it is still in print.
Chairs: a number of poker chair manufacturers are out there. If you are buying in quantity you can deal directly or else use a gaming supply company like Paulson.

One of the problems you will face is that a lot of suppliers will deal with licensed and legal cardrooms exclusively. Don't know what the status is in regards to Texas.

My best advice is to hire a qualified consultant to help you. You will find out that the business is way more complicated then it looks! You will need to invest in Surveillance equipment and training.
If the G2E trade show is held this year, usually in September or October, (but with the Covids situation, who knows) I would recommend you attend. You don't have to go to the seminars, but a couple of days spent on the exhibit floor would be worthwhile.
Good Luck

You might want to post this in the Texas Card room thread here.

Not sure if I'm coming from left field or right field .. but ..

1) Do you plan on being your own Floors? I assume not, so you hire your Head Floor, presumably one that could provide training and guide the room procedures.
2) Do the other rooms have (or need) security? To what extent?

3) Yes, the 'Brinks' trucks can handle your cash transport needs. And you will have to alert your bank as to these cash transactions. How many tables are you projecting? This should help you determine how often you need to send excess cash to the bank. Your only dealing with rake since the Players coming and going will handle their own cash issues.

4) ATM's can be a great thing to own/place, and you may need more than one! Just like credit card transactions you will need to find a reasonable partner to share the fees with .. and it may very well be the same entity. A 'quick' drive around town to the 'not so obvious locations' may help you determine the options in your area as well as the conversations you will have with the credit card processors. Typically transactions of over $500(?) will take place at the cage anyway. (At higher fees)

5) The chair game is an interesting choice .. You can go quality and pay more 'now' or go somewhat cheaper and then replace them more often. Not sure the status in your area, but we have 2-3 'surplus' business supply stores in our area that have both new and used chairs in various quantities based on their flow/auctions purchases. For sure you need to take care of the Dealer chairs. Player chairs don't necessarily need adjustments, but the Dealer chairs do! Same thing for rollers, Dealer's chair yes .. Player's chair, maybe depending on your flooring choice.

Do you play poker? Have you been to the other rooms and observed how they operate? What are they 'not' doing that you feel you can do better? As you should be well aware, you don't need to be an expert to own something. But the less you know the more you need to lean on those you hire. The worst thing you can do is not be willing to listen and/or assume that you know better. There's plenty of Floors on the street who may be happy to sit down with you for a few days and lay out their experience and 'vision' of a room operation/layout. They could also help you lay out a more precise plan for your bank to review.

Are you going to offer food/drink service? To what extent? More licenses would be involved there as well, which means more 'inspectors' coming through from time to time.

In our area, the poker rooms were usually 'partnered' with a complementary business, restaurant or bowling alley, who handled the food/drink aspect. This greatly reduced the burden on the room but may not be feasible within the Texas regulations.

As with any hopeful business, your expectations and reality will go one way or the other. Do you go big and take on the burden of those costs or do you go small, but maybe 'trap' yourself at a location with limited expansion opportunity?

Good luck, Texas is certainly a hot spot for the poker business and poker 'playing' .. with the expectation of casinos coming 'soon' (5-10 years?) IMO.

Not a ton of replies here - but those that did reply have outstanding information! Thank you!


We are in the process of getting a formal business plan put together so we can talk to a bank about a business loan (prefer this to trying to find an investor who would want a % of the business).

We have already sat down with the local chief of police (who mostly discussed security concerns, not the legality aspects). I have a meeting set up with our local District Attorney to make sure we are square with them before we get started.


Specific answers to your questions below:


In my "other life" I am a beekeeper who teaches beekeeping. So yes, I understand that many people who are the best at doing something are not necessarily good at teaching it.

Got any training videos you particularly like?


I can see how the dealer chair might need to be specific, but could the player chairs could just be a quality "office chair"?


I guess you could say that about almost any business. It's certainly true of beekeeping...



Follow-up question:
I can definitely see the need for surveillance equipment to watch the door & the cashier cage. But NONE of the card rooms I've visited have cameras that watch each hand on the tables (like they do in a full-blown casino). My guess is that this type of surveillance is a magnitude of order bigger than a simple "convenience station" type cameras.

Just how important is it to have "table cameras"?


Certainly at first, me & my partner will have to be at least a part of the function of the "staff". This probably means "yes, we are the floor person", with us hiring out the positions of "door greeter", "security", "dealers", & "cage cashier".

IF the state will allow us to also sell food & drinks, we'll need a bartender & a kitchen person.


10-15 tables.

In Texas, we do not have rake - instead, we make our money by

1. selling memberships (either daily, monthly, or yearly)
2. an hourly seat rental (for cash tables)
3. anything we might make off the kitchen or bar

BUT, you make a good point in that those things could just as likely be credit card (debit card) transactions and not necessarily cash. Which would help eliminate the need for us to carry large amounts of cash to the bank every day.


Due to the advice of several builders, we would probably go with "high traffic carpet". Chairs should be able to roll on that pretty well. Our main concern is to have a "nicer place", so higher quality player chairs are definitely on our radar.

How does one find out about auctions or surplus houses?


Both me & my partner have played for a very long time (I was part of the "Moneymaker boom"). Yes, we have visited other rooms - not just in our town but in other cities as well.

Don't go cheap on the player chairs. Quality office chairs are going to start falling apart fairly quickly. You want to buy chairs that will handle a lot of abuse, and be comfortable.


Critically important. I would say mandatory.


Good luck, Greg Raymer (FossilMan)

You need chairs designed for a gaming environment. Wheeled, adjustable height if you can swing it. Gary Platt makes great ones but I'm sure there are others. Dealers need a "dealer height" chair. Some come with a bunch of adjustability options but I'm not a fan personally. More stuff to break.

truepokerdealer has some great training videos, but I have not seen the ones behind the pay wall. Watching them won't be enough, they'll also need LOTS of practice with real equipment and other trainees acting as the players plus a real instructor to guide them.

Hi TxFig:

I just happen to have an offer that should help you. We're in the process of releasing my next book Cardrooms: Everything Bad and How to Make Them Better. Send me via a private message your email and I'll send you a PDF of the book at no charge. It should be quite helpful to you.

Best wishes,
Mason

Hi ignatz:

The Professional Poker Dealer's Handbook is still in print. You can order a copy here:

https://www.amazon.com/Professional-...s=books&sr=1-2

Best wishes,
Mason

Game protection is vital. If the owners are not seasoned poker people, you will need supervisors that are well versed all aspects of the operation. Any room that gets a bad reputation will not succeed. I am not trying to scare you off, we can't even scratch the surface of what you need to know in this forum.

Certainly more and more ppl rely on plastic. However, from a business aspect the more cash the better. Discuss with your accountant. You will want simple easy to edit software. Taxes can be brutal for small business owners.

Thank you. I just ordered it.


I understand what you're saying. I guess my question comes from looking at the difference in

• really NICE rooms in bigger cities (Dallas, Houston, Auston)
• backroom, shaddy places in smaller cities

It was just sent.

Best wishes,
Mason

I think a lot of the advice here needs to be predicated on what size room are you planning to run. I'm going to guess that it is going to be fairly small since you and your partner plan to do the floor work yourself. However, you haven't said the operation hours, number of days, tables, etc. that you plan on having. A two table room open from 4 pm to 2 am 5 days a week has different needs than a 15 table room open 24/7.

We're planning on starting out with 10 tables, open from 2pm until "the last table breaks" (probably about 2-3am). 7 days a week. The spaces we're looking at would use "excess space" for a lounge area (where people knocked out of tournaments can wait for their friends), maybe a pool table or 2, etc. We would hope to have enough space to expand to 15-20 tables at the same location if things go well.

Our employee focus at first would be on dealers, cashiers, security, & front desk/receptionist people. As things grow, the idea is to promote our best dealers to be floor people.

Hi Tx:

This is common in poker rooms. And while you certainly want good floor people, and good floor people will be essential for your success, you don't necessarily want them at the expense of having crummy dealers.

Best wishes,
Mason

Usually the opposite happens. The best dealers don’t want to be floors because they make more money dealing.

Dealing and Flooring are different skill sets. A poor dealer might make a great floor or a good dealer a bad floor. Plus the best dealer often have zero desire to floor as they make more dealing than they could flooring.

Another issue who will be your floors until you find these best dealers? You and your partner might suck as floors and the room get a bad reputation that winds up killing it. Also if you or are running the business do you have time to also floor?

You definitely need a good room manager to set things up (rules, procedures, equipment, scheduling, etc) and at least one solid floor working at all times. If you play too fast and loose to start it will be very hard to reign it in later.

Fore is right - being the best dealer doesn't necessarily equate with being the best suit or even wanting to be a suit.