It looks like I’m the first poster to write a full review. If there’s a better place for this post, Mods can feel free to move this review to a more appropriate area.

I highly recommend this book to anyone working in a poker room, and it will also be of interest to many regular players. Most anyone who reads Cardrooms: Everything Bad will find areas to quibble with, but I think the real benefit of the book is that it can get people to think about areas of poker room management that they might otherwise take for granted. The suggestions for speeding up fills in the “Lammers” chapter is an example of this.

Two chapters that contain advice that is imo essential for the long-term health of poker are the chapters: Excessive Rake and Promotions. In fact, one of my minor quibbles with the book is that, while the Excessive Rake chapter is good, I would have liked to see it go further in depth on just how devastating the effect that high rakes have on the game. Nevertheless, it is great to see Mason’s advice in print, and I hope poker room managers implement it. The Promotions chapter has some great ideas. I particularly liked part 3 of that chapter and it’s suggestion to have jackpots for “steel wheels,” as opposed to Royals as this will both encourage poor play and reward action players who play suited low cards anyway. The book starts with the importance of balancing luck and skill, and the advice in these two chapters would go a long way in fulfilling that goal.

In summary, this is a great and imo needed book for live poker. If poker room managers follow the advice in it, or start thinking about the concepts presented in the book and finding their own ways to satisfy these concepts, B&M poker will be better of for recreational players, grinders, and the longterm bottom lines of the poker rooms themselves.

Hi Everyone:

We feel that there's a lot of important information in our new book Cardrooms: Everything Bad and How to Make Them Better: An Analysis of Those Areas Where Poker Rooms Need Improvement that we want to open this thread to reviews, and and discussion.

It'll start with a positive review,posted right above this post, by our poster Moneyline. But again, all comments are welcome. Also, while the book is on sale on Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/Cardrooms-Eve...8013148&sr=1-1

if you work in poker room management contact me directly and I'll send you at no charge a PDF of the book.

Best wishes,
Mason

Mason gave me a free book, so I just ordered this one. Interesting topic and maybe I can pass along some knowledge to a few people that run underground games.

Hi Your Mom:

If you agree with much of what's written in the book you'll see that poker rooms, which includes the poker games, are run in a very sub-optimal way (to be polite). So, it becomes important that players like yourself, who agree with much of what's written, to explain to those running poker games where what they think that what is right is often wrong.

Best wishes,
Mason

Read the book after seeing this thread. Think overall it was quite good. The room I play in doesn't seem to have many of the problems mentioned here but a few (must move, chronic walkers, chronically slow players) really hit home. May try to sneak one to the new poker room manager.

Fortunately don't notice too many dealer talking too much problems, either. One notable thing missing was players chronically being on their phones (unless I missed it somewhere, I am one of them as well). Maybe the dichotomy of dealers needing to run games but also working for tips (but that is probably outside the scope of this book)

I guess if they understand principles they could sus out solutions

Hi pwnsall:

We do have a free book offer for anyone who works in poker room management. If he's a member of this site, he can send me a PM and we''l get the book to him. Also, I can be contacted through Twitter as @MasonMalmuth.

Best wishes,
Mason

Hi Everyone:

Consistent with the book, an interesting thing has happened in the Las Vegas poker rooms. The plexiglass has come down but the games have remained eight handed. No one knows if eight-handed will be the new permanent policy for the games.

But in time games, the games could go to the former nine handed with the time charge being reduced a little and the same amount of money in over all rake being collected. This should be long-term good for the poker games and the poker room.

In rake games, if you make it nine-handed the amount of rake that each player pays on average should go down a little which would also be good for the poker games. But the games should now play a little slower which means that overall the poker room will collect less rake than if the games stayed at eight-handed. I wonder if this has anything to do with the reluctance to go back to nine-handed.

To finish, I doubt if most poker room managers think in these terms. But they should.

Best wishes,
Mason

I just got back from a trip to Vegas and will throw out one observation regarding promotions. I played at Wynn, Caesars, Venetian, Orleans, South Point and Aria on this trip. Small sample size but by far the worst action was at Venetian where they had a 300 high hand promo every thirty minutes. The game had no action, people weren’t even really playing poker, just trying to hit high hands, not betting hands. It really affected gameplay and in my opinion not in a good way. The rooms that had the best no limit action were the ones with no promotions...Wynn (by far best games), Caesars had good games as well (they are currently doing no promotions...the games when they had the high hand promotions were much worse and attracted different types of locals). Orleans I played Omaha 8 which had promotions but also incredible action (by the way..the former discussion of no one wins with the rake at 8-16 half kill I don’t think applies there as it is often 3, 4 or 5 bets before the flop...your mileage may vary); I didn’t play no limit ther so can’t speak to that. Aria I played a wild low limit mix game (15 or so games) for fun, nice place to play. In observing no limit action it seemed like many of the games had a lot of it (again no promotions). At South Point, I played stud but the no limit games seemed to have some action even with the promotions (and was a good room).

We have high hands here in MD but they don’t seem to affect the action as much as they do in Vegas in my experience. If you must have promotions I agree they spread the money around but I don’t think they affect the action in a great way at least on the Strip. I prefer the action in the no promotion rooms.

Informative post, jeffage. Thx

Hi Everyone:

Here's an article about the book from Las Vegas Review Journal writer JIm Barnes:

https://www.reviewjournal.com/sports...e-run-2359117/

and let me take this post to thank Jim Barnes for writing this.

Best wishes,
Mason

Finished the book last night. Lots of different topics covered in a concise manner. Any poker room manager that doesn't spend 13 bucks to read this book and at least think about the content should be fired.

Main ideas that I appreciated - speeding up fills and chip running, stopping unethical behavior/angleshooting, ideas on promotions, dealers shouldn't carry their own trays (hate this at my local casino), and the correct balance between luck and skill for healthy games that don't die off.

Hi Your Mom:

I just want to mention that any poker room manager can contact me and get a free copy. They can send me either a PM on this website or go to Twitter and send a direct message to @MasonMalmuth.

Thanks for your positive comments.

Best wishes,
Mason

Hi Everyone:

Here's an email I received from a new poker room in Ohio:

We loved the read! It succinctly discusses many issues that we've seen in all our time managing rooms and had to find work-arounds for. In the few months that we've been open with our own Club, it's been especially challenging to find procedures and protocols that stay true to our approach in fairness to our players while maintaining the health of the room. Sometimes those values are synonymous, and other times, players have had to learn that the health of the room or game comes before their own wants and desires! Most have been amenable to that idea, others have met us with profound resistance, but have eventually returned and conceded their efforts.

The issues brought up with the Waitlist and it's functions gave us some pause, and we will likely be altering the way ours functions to fix them. Oftentimes, we do have call-ins that will waltz in at the very last second and there's always some patient soul that's been waiting as unofficial First Up who then has to wait even longer to honor the Waitlist... We've had to have several conversations with a few of our higher-limit players that have attempted to finesse games for their own benefit, and not for the health of the game or room in general, and it was very refreshing to read everything you had written on the subject. I was relieved to know that our instincts were correct, and it gave us some beautiful verbage the next time we ever have to have that discussion with someone who doesn't think they're affecting much at all.

All in all, we're just grateful for you sending us the pdf over! It'll be great to touch base with the book every few months to refresh us and gauge where we fall and areas we can always improve on. We very well may experience issues in the future that you speak of that we're not seeing now, and it'll be a wonderful help and guide as we continue to grow this room! Thank you so very much, Mason. If there's anyway we can ever return your kindness, please let us know!

All the best,
Mad River Poker Club

Hi Everyone:

I recently did podcast with Runchuks where this book and many of the ideas from the book are discussed. You can listen to it here:

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/s...&postcount=111

Best wishes,
Mason

I made a post in the link below on this showing how going 8 handed from 9 handed greatly increases the house rake. Rakes are already out of control, and now going from 9 to 8 handed is just one more nail in the coffin. Please don't be short-sighted and sacrifice the long-term health of cash games for short-term profits.

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/s...4&postcount=41

I found enough time to listen to the first 2 hours of the podcast. It's a great addendum to the book.

Having spoken with and personally known a number of cardroom managers over the years, I frequently hear them say things along the lines of "we listen to our players." Frankly, I would rather they listen to the above podcast and read Mason's book than listen to their players. I have seen policies enacted due to a small number of vocal players who "like button straddles" or "want bigger promotions" without any thought given to the longterm impact these policies have on their games.

Yep, button straddles are just terrible for the game. I'm convinced they have killed a pretty good PLO game that was running locally.

Button straddles are horrible if the sb is forced to act 1st. (Mississippi straddle). Now the sb and bb have to play super tight, just the opposite of what a straddle is suppose to do- create more action. If utg acts 1st on a button straddle, then if no raise, skip the button, goto the blinds, then back to the button is not nearly as bad as having the sb act 1st. But many room managers say "that is too complicated". LOL. I guess they don't think their dealers have any brains.

Hi Everyone:

Since there seems to be some interest in straddles, here's the "Straddles" chapter from the book.

Best wishes,
Mason

.........................................Straddles


One rule that almost all poker rooms have, and which I’ve always disliked, is that straddles are allowed. But not all straddles are equal. Some are worse than others.

For those who don’t know, a straddle is an additional blind that a player is allowed to voluntarily put into the pot. Generally, a straddle is twice the size of the big blind, but some rooms allow for a convenient amount, such as a $5 straddle in a $1-$2 game. And straddles can be used whether the game is limit or no-limit.

Another aspect of straddles is that they can only be applied in certain positions. Virtually all rooms allow the straddle to be to the left of the big blind. But some rooms will also allow what is known as a “Mississippi Straddle” which is a straddle placed on the button.

Obviously, the straddle to the left of the big blind is a poor play, but it’s my opinion that the straddle on the button can at times be strategically correct. Let’s address this some more.

First, in all forms of poker, being in position is advantageous since you get to see what your opponent(s) does. But this advantage in no-limit hold ‘em is stronger than virtually any other form of poker. In addition, excellent players will know how to better use this positional advantage than the weak players.

Another aspect of no-limit hold ’em is that having lots of chips is also an additional advantage for the excellent player. This is especially true if you’re against a weak player who also has a lot of chips. That’s because a weak player is much easier to trap for all his chips than a strong one.

So, suppose the following situation has developed. An excellent player is on the button with a lot of chips and one or more bad players also have a lot of chips. In this spot, I believe the play with the highest expectation for the excellent player is to take the straddle on the button. That is, taking the straddle has become correct and it’s not always the “sucker play” that many players think it is.

But there is something even more subtle going on here. It’s the fact that the proper balance of luck and skill is now being tilted towards skill, and when this happens, it can have long-term negative effects not only on the poker games but on the cardroom itself. And in no-limit hold ‘em, a game that may already be out of balance towards too much skill, this should not be a good outcome.

There are two other problems with having straddles. The first is that they make the games bigger, and some players will be uncomfortable playing the larger stakes. This can also cause some players to go broke quicker which can’t be good for the poker room. Yes, it can also help a player losing in the game to get even quicker since the stakes are now higher, if he happens to get lucky. But if this player is a long term loser, his theoretical loss rate will have also gone up meaning that his average playing time will often go down which can’t be good for the poker room. (The better players might like the fact that this player is now theoretically losing at a higher rate. But if it means that the amount of time he spends in the poker room is now greatly reduced because of some higher losses, it won’t be long-term good for the better players either.)

Second, some rooms have a weird rule relative to the Mississippi Straddle. What happens in these rooms when the button straddle is placed is that before the flop the player in the small blind is now first to act, the player in the big blind is second to act, and the player on the button (who has put up the straddle) goes last.

This does two things. The first is that the skill element in the game is shifted even more towards the button since he now acts last before the flop. This means the balance of luck and skill can again be thrown off, but now by an even higher amount. In addition, the players in the standard blinds, who normally get compensated for putting up their blinds by getting to act last before the flop, lose this compensation. And this means that players in the standard blinds, as our poster sevencard2003 pointed out, will now sometimes play much tighter. That’s because instead of being last to act before the flop, they become first to act with many players still to act behind them. The result of this is that the poker room is now creating games with reduced action, which most players view as less attractive than games with lots of action. And since one of the themes of this book is the creation of attractive poker games, allowing a button straddle where the straddle acts last before the flop, is accomplishing the opposite.

The bottom line is that, except for cardrooms where straddling has become a common, accepted and popular practice, management should consider not allowing them at all. And in those cardrooms where having straddles is common, management should consider scaling back this practice.