I get giving your money to another player Is not the same as putting it all on black and giving it to the Casino.
But from a business perspective casinos make substantially more money on Rake even on low stakes 1/1. then it costs to put a dealer on a basic wage at a table, that’s not even inc tips. So providing the table doesn’t take up space which could be used for other types of gambling, I can’t see why they wouldn’t have it on providing demand was constant and sufficient to support the wage structure of a dealer.

Would really love to speak to someone who dealt with staffing or understood general running.

The only thing I can think is they are concerned the general degenerate gambler might choose to piss his money away on the poker table rather than in the pit against the house? But this argument isn’t really true as your normal “gambler”. Would find it too slow paced and not high enough return and might not even understand the rules enough to sit at poker

If this subject has been posted before I apologise. Can’t find it. Appreciate the thread link

According to OP, "casinos make substantially more money on [poker] rake" than on roulette.

I don't think that's true, but I don't know for sure. So you'll have to see if a casino professional is willing to post in this thread to give you a definitive answer.

I agree with you, but I read the part you quoted as 'they make more in rake than it costs to pay a poker dealer'

In the US it's rare to force a cash table to break. It's usually kept open until the players ask. I really only see that happen if they need to set it up for a tournament and are likely to lose cash games anyway or if they're converting that table into a bigger game. I've seen some weird things in other countries but don't understand them well enough to comment.

I've never seen pit games be a big consideration in the poker room other than a desire to keep pit degens happy. They WILL go back to the pits unless pissed off or totally broke and poker usually doesn't have enough action for them to lose it all.

Not opening a table when the players think there are sufficient people on the list can happen for a number of reasons:

The floor believes that not enough of those people will actually move over to start the game. Some may have been on the list for hours and might not still be in the room, some just like putting their names on a bunch of lists knowing there's a small chance they'll feel like moving when called, and others won't want to move unless it's to a full table.

Starting the new game is likely to break another. There are already several short handed 1/2 games, adding a 2/5 will pull more players from those tables causing one or more to break. There might not be enough 2/5 players to sustain that game anyway, so that one goes down in short order as well.

There is a lot of turnover. There may be 9 people on the 1/2 list but it's late and players are leaving fast. A new game won't last and those 9 will get seated quickly anyway.

There aren't enough dealers available.

The floor is lazy and doesn't want to do the work to open a new table then probably have to close another an hour later.

A tournament or scheduled game is starting later and they are reserving the space.

a casino makes substantially more money from a cash game than a tournament game. I have never seen a room reserve a table for tourney rather than cash. Cash always takes precedence.

Force breaking a game would only happen because of staffing or "room closes at a certain hour type of deal"

To the op: A single slot machine makes more money than poker table. Poker is a very high operating cost per sq ft it takes up. Compare the size of a small poker room, vs putting in rows of slot/video poker machines. Poker is profitable for the casino but on a per sq ft basis not nearly as much as almost anything else. Many casinos the reason they keep their rooms is for the purpose of keeping the guest in the building. If you play poker for a few hours, you'll probably eat there as well. Maybe you will stop by the pit for 1 roll, or put $ on your bday number, or put a 20 (or 100) in a slot machine "just for the heck of it". Or to play the stereotype, maybe the wife wants to play slots and the husband wants to play poker, so by having the poker room they get the wifes slot play as well.

Sklansky wrote about this ages ago. The question isn't one of average return; everyone on Earth knows the slots are more profitable. The question is marginal return of one more bank of slots when there are already hundreds versus one more poker table.

OP are you talking about casinos getting rid of poker rooms ... Or do you play somewhere that they regularly just shut down full games?

The only time I saw full games get shut down was a room that was going through a sale and casino management had created a strict no overtime policy for the whole property. That was a temporary measure.

But in some jurisdictions there are mandatory closing times for casinos ... I assume you aren't talking about that. Also it's my understanding that some jurisdictions have a maximum number of open gaming seats
... So if they are maximum and they want to open another blackjack table they have to close that number of seats which would obviously be done in poker.

I'm not understanding what it is you are asking. Can you give more details of the problem? Is this casino just closing a game that is full? Do they give a reason? Are you just saying they won't open a game when there is x number of players on the list? What is x number?

I'd be happy to shed some light on this for you if you can give the details.

I have seen poker rooms force break a game in the US a couple of times. In both cases, that was my last time patronizing that poker room.

In both cases the floor person told me they couldn’t force an employee to work overtime and they had to get the employee out. I don’t want to patronize a business that has such an idiotic policy. (One was GVR about 6 years ago and one was Charles Town about 3 years ago).


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You prefer a room where they chain dealers to the table.

Let's face it they can't make anyone do overtime. The most they could do is tell them if they leave they can't come back .... But for some employees that isn't much of a threat.

I prefer to support rooms that make prudent business decisions. Plenty of rooms make dealers work overtime when the situation requires. Ymmv.

As someone who is in the industry, both situations were tables where 50% or greater were industry people that were tipping great. Please “chain me” to that kind of table.


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I'm pretty sure I've read on here of a room that would close a poker table if the only dealers available would need to be paid overtime to keep the game going...and the manager would rather break the game, than explain to HIS boss why he didn't do a better job of predicting how many dealers he would need to meet demand without "wasting" money on OT.

This guy is more concerned by OT costs, and does not accept "but we're still coming out way ahead by paying the OT." All he can see is, they would have made even MORE, if OT never came into play...so the manager breaks the game, and his boss has no idea full games are being broken just so the manager doesn't have to listen to this nonsense.

The only way they can make an employee work overtime is the threat of discipline or termination. If an employee wants to leave they can't physically prevent it.

The other night I had 2 employees refuse overtime. Both had other jobs they needed to be at and both made the decision that they would rather jeopardize this job than the other job. (Discipline is done above me so I don't know what did or will happen to the dealers. I suspect if it is a one time thing they will just have progressive discipline)

In my case it meant that I had to keep other dealers already on OT longer we didn't have to close a game. But if we were in a small room late at night it could have forced a game closure

I get that, but based on floor handling of the situation in both my cases, I don’t believe that was the case.

At any rate, I chose not to patronize them after those interactions.


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Ok. So I’m try and cover my explanations in one go.

I play in a casino in the uk . It has 2 levels. Which is generally only 25% capacity mon-thr 70% fri -sat using just the one of available floors, with floor 2 not being used at all.
So u can imagine gambling space is not an issue for them. There’s empty poker tables on floor 2. Chinese have a few tables of mahjong going on on floor 2. Which incidentally are rake free, hand dealt. Don’t get why they are treated better than poker players. Anyways. Back to point.

There is a decent core of poker players and de gen gamblers that play poker. Demand is constant on the weekends they have 2 full ring tables running. One they close, when still full or say 7 handed. generally its 2am due to staff Changes and lack of croupiers that can deal poker (that the reason what they say to everyone that moans). The other full table then has a huge wait and then they will close the other table at different times. (Approx 4am as a guide) despite people wishing to play on. Again reason given is lack of available dealers staying past the later shift change that are capable of dealing poker. They have staff sitting on empty blackjack/roulette tables when they close the only cash game.

Currently your only guaranteed a table to be running fri sat sun. Mostly mon and thr it will be on. And Nothing at all tue wed. mon and thr will happen. Providing no over demand for the pit games, which come first. With no poker cash table running, they still sometimes fail to run even tho there’s 9 plus waiting to play due to quote “staffing levels”. Tue and wed I believe the games would run but no is the answer when people have asked to play on those days.

They run tourneys thr-sun and normal turnout is around 4 plus tables for them. When people bust they also wanna play cash. But can’t get on.

It’s my belief that 7 days a week they could have one cash table running with 6 plus players constant from early eve till - 2am. And Later On the weekends and more tables on weekend.

I’m trying to factor in that it doesn’t take one dealer to run a table. As they have breaks regularly. And that the cost of their wage needs to spread across the week. Not just the weekend if they are employed full time. Someone once mentioned to get part time, freelance dealers in. But I can see why that wouldn’t suit the casino.

It just seems to me very feasible to keep a table running and wondered what I hadn’t account for. I spoke to a dealer and I can’t remember the exact figure off my head. But I think he said that at 1/1...the table takes £60hr-100 per hour on rake alone.

There is no gambling restriction to my knowledge of why they can’t run anytime there’s warranted demand and they are open 24/7

everyone is moaning at the poor dealers as to why they can’t get on and or why they can’t open another table with 12 plus waiting? When is the table going to start? Why is a full table shutting? Etc

This can’t just be the worse run casino in terms of profit. Surely poker is unprofitable/run even for them

Sounds like it is just poorly run then and they really don't care to change it. They don't care about poker and it shows. Go somewhere else.

Yeah this, it's kind of like asking why the chicken shop cooks crappy chickens.

Unfortunately a poker room in the UK is probably the only chicken shop in town unless you're in London, so you either eat no chicken, the local crappy chicken, make your own chicken (which is a PITA) or drive to another town just to get a damn chicken.

EDIT

On the plus side they have online chicken in the UK...the analogy kind of breaks down here, but you can get some kind of chicken in your living room if you want.

Don't the larger secondary cities like Manchester, Glasgow, Birmingham, etc. have multiple poker rooms now? There's probably a UK thread I should hunt down to answer my own question.

I played in the Genting Sheffield poker room. Found it perfectly competent, no complaints

Cool. I was pretty sure that it’s badly run.

Essentially what I wanted to know, is poker a lot better than run even prospect for a casino? After labour?

I was wondering if it was just a service in order to make customers happy but not essentially as good as the return revenue of black jack, roulette other games requiring a employee to be at the table. Obviously slot machines being high return, with 0 labour costs.

Very much a second class citizen at the casino compared to the other pit games. and I was trying to find if the other table games were hugely more profitable and by how much on average?

Love the chicken analogy, the problem is when this casino is open it serves very juicy chicken as compared to take away chicken.

There are other places further away. But I live next door to this place. So am hoping to have a constructive chat with someone eventually. But I didn’t want to piss into the wind. If poker didn’t really bring much in for the casino. Then I would know that’s why the really didn’t care about making it more regular/better experience.

I have seen this many times. Always makes me unhappy though.

not to nit pick, but a single slot machine win per day is anywhere between $50 and $200 depending on market. poker tables will net that in about an hour


looking at it this way much better

Keep in mind that labour costs of running a poker room are not just dealer.

You have floor,/supervisor, food/bev, housekeeping, maybe cash ops if separate cage, maybe security

Whether you have 1 or 10 tables running casino needs all the above. Running a single cash game table is most likely a loser for the casino.

Well actually if you have just 1 table you could put it in the pit and share those resources.

However people overlook that the costs of a dealer exceed the wage as employees bring other expenses. And also remember that the drop is taxed (at least in most US jurisdictions) and in some places the gaming tax is pretty high.

If players come to a poker room because a tournament is happening at a specific time, you have to have the tournament, even if it means closing cash games.

OP. Poker is easily the lowest net for the house. There is also far more to the casino r v and costs than you perceive for all casino games. They don’t put emphasis on poker because of the low roi.

PT I kNow you have experience in the biz but I then no you have skewed view. Your estimate for slot rev is way low. No way a poker table out earns avg slot rev 25 to 1. You need to cut that ratio some and then flip it to favor slots. An active dollar machine will take about $50 per hour easy

Right but see Sklasky point above re: marginal vs average. If you could just add slots and maintain the average ROI indefinitely then slot areas would be infinitely big and Earth would have no room for anything else.