When has uncapped 2/5 run in Austin? I thought the uncapped games were always 5/5. I’ve only played since 2018 between TCH/Lodge — maybe things were different in the early 2015-2017 years? Or are you talking about home games?

Hi Chaos:

You left out the important fact that the players can now see the flop as well as their starting hand. This is highly beneficial for colluders.

Best wishes,
Mason

poker seems like an altogether bad idea because players can collude. they should just play blackjack. oh, but people really enjoy playing poker? well I'll be darned, that's a pretty good argument for it, i guess.

The bomb pots tend to be two boards so you actually see two flops. The colluders know 14 cards right off the bat.

Information sharing is less effective in double board PLO. I can’t run a bluff knowing that I or my colluder friend has the nut flush blocker on one board. Someone will just call me down too often with a very strong hand on the board.

Whats the name of Doug polks new crypto company ?

THEY GOT ME For $10,000 At The Lodge!





I think he is just getting paid to promote, or may be a minority investor in, coinflex. Not going to touch it with a ten foot pole.

When TCH north opened we ran uncapped 2/5 every day for a year and a half before just making it 5/5.

The old TCH south ran uncapped "table 1" 1/2 with the same folks.

It was not sustainable. The tables got progressively worse and more travelling-poker-pro filled over the years.

Yeah, 5/5 doesn’t run anymore unless it’s organized (usually, private). Up through late 2018/early 2019 the 5/5 would run like clockwork starting at 4pm each day. Then it just stopped.

The 1/3 MTS at Lodge has been good since I started playing in 2018. I wouldn’t say it’s pro-infested now. You still see the typical 5-way pots and not a lot of light 3betting. Not sure what’s on the horizon.

Hi Chaos:

Yours is actually an important post. When the balance of luck gets off, you can expect the game to die out. And I think that's probably what happened here. If you're an expert player, the game can be great while it lasts but you won't win as much as you should in the long run.

The reason for this is that the rec player has very few, if any, winning sessions, and thus he quits playing. It's my opinion that with a better balance of luck and skill the weak playing rec will win often enough that he'll keep coming back and lose the maximum in the long run.

This is a little cruel, but this is also the way successful poker works.

A great example of this happened in the Polk / Negreanu match. As part of their agreement the loser at the half way point was allowed to quit, and Negreanu was down over $700,000 (at halfway). But he did have some nice winning sessions and he chose to keep playing, Do you think he would have made that decision if he was down the exact same amount but had lost every session?

Best wishes,
Mason

This is why PLO exists guys

I think Mason is correct. I'm not a big tin foil hat guy but there are multiple ways 2-4 players in a game could suck in players at a pretty big edge.

I have never played in these bomb pot games. Do players have the option of sitting out?

This. The vast majority of Euros I have played with are an absolute cancer to games and none of that has to do with skill, but their atrocious demeanor/behavior as described by Bart in the interview with Polk. And Bart only touched on a fraction of how bad a large majority tend to behave with the examples he cited.

Now that Polk Brad and Drew have brought all this attention to Lodge, every Euro pro in the world knows about Lodge. There might be a massive invasion. Especially since many like to come in groups, including at times 10+ under one stake all playing at same place, as occurred at Commerce.

Polk Drew and Brad would be wise to institute what Bart suggested, and all other Texas clubs should follow suit if they care about the their players the ecosystem and not losing players en masse to underground games.

Interesting I haven't noticed that. Most I have played with are quite friendly. Over the years, the players I've found to be the most unpleasant were Californians. A large portion are very confrontational and angry at the world with a big chip on their shoulder. Maybe that's just how they acted when playing in Vegas and it's certainly possible they've become more friendly since the start of the pandemic (less traffic?).

Regarding the Euros, don't they mostly just play 2/5+. Like the 1/2 and 1/3 should generally be spared from their horribleness, no?

This. Typical Mason take lol

Haha, eternal 1/2 Euro player here :-)

Are you coming to Texas though?

Canadian here, US regs are 100x worse than euro regs in terms of demeanor, attitude etc

However Euro regs are much better than US regs skillwise, so i still prefer americans overall for that reason.

Hi Liluy7:

Nowhere have I said that there is cheating in the bomb pots offered by Texas cardcrooms. But I am saying that bomb pots are ideal for colluders and that all poker rooms need to be aware of this. I've also said, and this is in the Cardrooms book, that when a poker room gains a reputation for cheating, whether it is deserved or not, they should then expect their business to decline.

So, you may say that I'm looking ahead to the future, and my recommendation to any poker room that allows bomb pots, whether in Texas or not, is to reconsider or at least restrict them in some way.

Best wishes,
Mason

Euro regs playing in US are on average magnitudes worse for the game than US regs. This is pretty commonly accepted among folks who have played extensively with Euro pros. No idea if thereÂ’s any truth to what you are saying or small sample size, but first time IÂ’ve heard that.

That being said, a factor that might be at play and to a large extent wrt Euro pros playing in US is that since it is not their home, they donÂ’t treat it as such. Comparable to renting out or AirbnbÂ’ing your house, most are not going to treat your home as well as you are. It has always been my opinion that that plays a huge role. This effect could be at hand with any regs playing abroad - maybe part of why Bart says he uses the term Euro to refer collectively to all foreign pros who have traveled here to grind.

I believe that aspect plays into far too many doing things like: racking up the second the whale busts out (but still physically at the table or standing up), yelling across the room to ***** in their buddies in their language about a bad beat right after it happened, and shameless predatory behavior like rolling up in a large group to a single game as described by Bart or 10+ under a single stake playing the same cardroom daily (likely to keep an eye on each other since same stake, as otherwise seems dumb to not spread out).

Far too many just do brazenly shameless, awful actions like this that I cannot imagine most would do if it was their local honey-hole back home.

I think the larger issue from a business standpoint, as one poster summarized several posts back, is that in order for a business to consider the future they need to be around in the future. Bomb pots are insanely popular right now across the country but particularly so in Texas. Eliminating them runs the considerable risk of giving other cardrooms a handout in the form of a free & easy competitive advantage. There might be an increased risk of collusion in theory - good luck devising a collusion theory based on getting mostly recs to fold in a game with two boards and 36 cards out - but a cost/benefit analysis must be made, and I agree with Polk’s assessment and I haven’t observed anything fishy in bomb pots.

That being said, I do agree it’s good for management as well as regs to be aware of this potentially increased risk for collusion, and as always be vigilant.

Well that's a relief. We can rest easy now. Because we all know your high level skills of observation when it comes to sniffing out collusion and cheaters.

The discussion of capped vs uncapped structures ITT has been very interesting and I’ve learned a lot from others’ informed perspectives.

The discussion of collusion in bomb pots has been pretty speculative and the concerns have not been well motivated IMO. Collusion is a concern in regular PLO. Collusion may be a bit more effective in double board PLO bomb, but double board PLO bomb is only played once per dealer change in a lot of clubs. So overall collusion in “NL+dealer change 2x board PLO bomb” is less of an issue than in “regular PLO”. If you really care about stamping out collusion, w/o providing evidence of specific instances, shut down the PLO tables.

Hi Lilu7:

I think you have this about right. Management needs to be aware of the potential problems but they also need to balance this against what their customers want. In my opinion, and this is based on a lot of experience in poker rooms over many years, that the need not to gain a cheating reputation is the one of higher importance. However, every situation is different.

Hopefully, the discussion here will make more poker room management aware of what can go wrong here, and that, just by itsel, is worth a lot.

However, I think there's one thing that you may be missing, and again, this is derived from my experience of spending many years in poker rooms. If management ends bomb pots, but politely explained to players on an individual basis why they have done this, while they might lose some players, I suspect they may pick up others. Don't underestimate how some players are paranoid about cheating, and will want to play in the room where they think they are safest.

Best wishes,
Mason

Hi Mr_Time:

I'm sorry, but I think your post is naive. First off, while this is certainly not true of Doug Polk and his team, I've watched inept poker room management in many places for many years, and I've seen a number of rooms go down for many silly reasons that management could have corrected. Second, and I won't get into specifics for obvious reasons, but expert cheating/collusion can be very difficult to pick up.

Best wishes,
Mason