All the rooms I play at you cannot request the dinner button for another 6 hours after your first one. Yeah no one is really timing it, but if someone tried to get the dinner button AGAIN after 90 minutes people at the table wouldnt have it. ive seen it, its like the whole table gets up in arms.

Its a pretty solid rule though.

Also its only 1 dinner button per table of 10. Hence why the demand is high and the players get ansy if you try to take it a 2nd time too soon. Its truly great at limiting the ******ed walkers.

Only maybe? LOL. Making nits unhappy is a feature, not a bug.

In a sense, if the nits don't complain about their rake dollars subsidizing other peoples' poor play and accuse you of being a snowflake socialist, you're not doing it right.

The ideal scenario for a poker room is that 9 people each with the exact same loss rate push money back and forth until it all goes down the drop.

If they had 1 meal button rather than 2 at my casino it would be an awesome improvement.

I've played at a lot of places and I'd never even heard of a meal button.


They should instead have a meal list. You pick up your chips and give someone else your seat, then when you come back you get moved to the front of the waiting list.

Personally I don’t mind playing against some nits at the table.

Nits certainly do have their merits because they calm crazy tables down. This doesn't apply with aggro fish though who keep shoving until they're done.

Putting aside the question of whether playing nits is EV+ or whether it's more EV+ than playing psychos*, from a metagame standpoint loose players are better for the room because more people want to play in loose games than tight games.

Nobody texts their friends, "Hey, remember that guy who only plays Sklansky Group 1 hands and never goes all in without the nuts? He's back, get your ass down here ASAP." Text chains get activated for anti-nits all the time, though.

Like if people ask where da donks at, nobody assumes they mean "where da group of octogenarians who all know each other and have the house rules memorized verbatim and get mad if you don't chop at."

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* I have mostly played midstakes LHE where blinds are large relative to action and people underdefending blinds to a late position opener is a huge leak, so I fully understand the "rather play nits" attitude. I still think it's preferable to play with people who will put in multiple bets with total air.

It's even more tilting when someone puts their away button down and eats dinner at the table for an hour. IDK whenever I eat at table I stay in game and just take a more passive approach and watch game and eat. Never understood the long breaks away from table.

What on Earth do they take for shorthanded rake where you play? Actually, aren't you in CA? The rake reduction should be automatic by law if I'm not mistaken, and it should be enough to incentivize them to fill HU games. Dealers, floor space, etc don't scale down as games get short.

You're probably right that the sweet spot from the house perspective is the minimum number for full rake, generally 6 or 7. But people walking around aren't sitting down at other tables to start games anyway so I don't see the difference. To the poker room a 9 handed game with three walking is no better than a 9h game with no one walking. (The slots manager may disagree.)

HU rake is greater than 2/9 of FR rake per hand, but even if it were slightly less, HU games move way faster you generate more rake per hour.

I'm a Recreational OMC who is at best a break even player....but I have the $$ to have fun with....and I can hurt you when the deck hits me in the face....and when I lose buy in...Rebuy.....

I FN hate these douche bags who take a seat and play 2 hands per hour....And walk the slots, pits, etc the rest of the time.

Since they are "regulars" the limp dicks, AKA Floors will not do a GD thing about it...

And this happens at busy times like Fri, Sat also.....

I can't stand it either. We frequently have 3 walkers at my table. Personally, I wish they'd pick the guys up. I've been at several tables that broke quickly because 2 guys left and we already had 3 walkers.

If you get up right after the blinds you’re not put in lobby until the blinds come around again. By then, dealers sometimes forget to put a walker in the lobby, unless another player reminds them, especially if there’s a dealer change during that time.

I’ve never seen a meal button, though Harrah’s Philly will put you on a dinner list at the podium, which I guess is the same thing. At the few rooms I play in in AC it doesn’t matter why you’re walking. You get two dealer changes. There was one player who would be clocked in at both the Taj and Showboat and would alternate back and forth so he could collect points at both places at once.

Harrah’s Philly has a “third man walking” rule. If you get up from the table and there are already two players walking, you get ten minutes before your chips are bagged. Fourth player gives up his seat immediately.

I’ve suggested many times in AC that they institute a third man walking rule. I remember one game in the old Showboat at a full table where, one by one, people got up to walk until we were down to four players. We asked to be moved to other tables so the walkers returned to find the table broken up. I remember playing at one full table that, for several hours, never had more than five people actually playing. As a player, it’s frustrating to have to wait an hour or more for a seat while watching a table that’s only half full. Or playing at a table that’s only half full while there’s a waiting list.

IME people at higher levels are more willing to play short. There's only one table so people can't table change and the game doesn't run 24/7 so people want to get their gamble on.

Also IME a little acting goes a long way. When the game looks like it's teetering I nonverbally make clear that I have no intention of leaving the table. If people ask if I want to play short, I'll shrug and say I have nowhere else to be / nothing else to do. Then I get to play 4-handed with people who think I'm a clueless degen.

It’s paticularly a problem in LHE. In NL there’s still a profit to be made with only 3 or 4 people. In limit it’s hard enough to just break even with a full table. When it gets short, the blinds come around faster and the pots get smaller. Limit table often break up when they get down to five players, and almost always at four. Even at six players some look around and think that now might be a good time to grab some dinner and, boom, we’re down to four or five. Three or four players walking can kill a limit game.

Is this "people's" perception of shorthanded LHE or what you believe you be true of shorthanded LHE? Either way it's not even close to true.

I’ve been playing limit for years. When you’re down to four players the blinds do come around more often, the pots are smaller, and tables usually break up. What part of that isn’t true? Is that just the east coast? Are things different where you play?

Edit: just realized a possible source of the misunderstanding. I was talking about low limit. 2-4 or 2-6, the only kind around here except the Borgata in AC and one of the PA casinos that I know about. Maybe different at the higher limit games, but most limit players play the 2-4.

Pots smaller in limit is the issue for me. Compound that with the only local limit is 1/3....so it's a rake trap anyway.

1. For small stakes, all three of blinds faster, pots smaller, tables breakier is true.

2. For midstakes, only the first two are true. The third could be true but that's where your interpersonal skills come into play.

3. For all stakes, the value of mistakes that opponents make on a per hour basis, which is your maximum winrate, increases as the game gets shorter.

3.1. Even though the pots are smaller, the game is faster and you can win a higher percentage of pots.

3.2. It is true that it is difficult, if not impossible, to win money as a TAG in shorthanded games.

3.3. People who primarily play small stakes FR games often don't have the experience in LP vs blind situations to crush. As a matter of fact, FR TAGs are your primary target in SH games.

Yes, sorry if i misinterpreted context. I've not really seen small stakes games where players were happy to keep playing short.

Well, sure. It's difficult if not impossible to win any poker game with a strategy tailored to a very different kind of poker game. As you imply, the T in TAG is just horrible in shorthanded limit games. It can be overcome in big-bet with other skills and bad opponents (e.g. who don't notice or care that you still always have 99+,AQ+ to open even when 5-handed UTG = HJ in NLHE).

In the limit games I’ve played in the rake gets reduced when it gets short so I like playing short.

Yes it’s usually half rake with 6 or fewer players, but that’s half the maximum. They still take rake out at the same rate. So If a room usually takes $1 out for every 10 in the pot up to a maximum of 4, instead they’ll take $1 out for every 10 in the pot, up to 2. With 4 players at 2/4 the pots usually don’t get above $20, so in effect, the percentage is the same. Plus you’re paying blinds every 4 hands instead of very 9 or 10. I can see how a 10/20 or 20/40 can still be profitable short handed but not 2/4. Like I said you’d be lucky to break even at a full table.

I prefer how some do it in Socal. You want to go to dinner you get picked upped and your first in when you get back.

This is short sighted.

Rake goes down on a per hand basis, yes, but hands per hour goes up, and the fraction of that rake that you pay goes up. It's unclear to me whether this is a discount at all - that is, instead of paying 1/9th of $5/hand x 30 hands/hr = $150/hr, you might pay 1/4th of $2/hand x 40 hands/hr = $80/hr, which is actually more rake. If the discount exists, like shorthanded being $1.50/hand x 40 hands/hr, it's small ($17->$15/hr instead of $17->$20/hr). It's definitely way less than the per hand rake discount ($5->$2/hand) would suggest.

Regardless of whether you pay slightly less or slightly more, what makes a much larger difference is the quality of the average opponent. You go from a scenario where you end up vs an exploitable player 1/9*1/9 of the time to 1/4*1/4 of the time - a 5x increase in the number of opportunities to exploit.

And vs TAGs (whose playing style goes from FR shark to SH fish), the per-interaction exploitability goes from neutral (you can't really exploit their FR game) to solidly in your favor (they will make tons of SH mistakes).

This statement is true but it's off target.

If you play well, your SH winrate will always be better than your FR winrate for the reasons listed above.

It's possible that your SH winrate will still be negative but then your FR winrate will be even more negative. This may be the case for 2/4.