The poker scene in early 2000s were great. There were a bunch of clubs that had 10 tables and more. Acepoint was the first one that i found. On Wednesday they had a 50 rebuy tournament. They filled qt least 10 tables. As players busted cash games began. 1/2 and 2/5 and it was great they charged time similar to what casinos do. I hate the fact that new york allows betting on lottery horse racing. You can't win and it's such a waste of money. Poker is a skill game even really bad players win. The second club i found Broadway was another great place to play. The reason the police started to shut down these places was a club (straddle) I believe the name was the club was robbed one night. One of the guys who was participating dropped his shotgun and it went off and hit someone killing him. His name was frank he was a teacher. After that happened over the next month the police shut down all the poker clubs . So people started hosting 1 and 2 tables in apartments. They also began to rake pots and not take time every half hour.I have alot more to discuss .

https://www.grammarly.com/?q=grammar...B&gclsrc=aw.ds

Looks like the grammar police have entered the thread.

That username is a blast from the past!

Lets go?!

Pretty interesting post from OP, no need to be a prick.

I'm definitely in need of the grammar police lol. I apologize for my lack of proper communication. I just wanted to see if any nyc players are on here and remember how good the scene was back in early 2000s. There were multiple poker clubs that ran like casino poker rooms

Those were great times, I used to play at Straddle a bunch. You're right that shooting lead to all the bigger clubs getting shut down. I remember the guy, he was a regular, i think he lived in Jersey, terrible. There was a massive club that opened for a short time just before they all got shut down, on the west side that must have had 40 tables, I remember they had a big freeroll tourney for the grand opening, place was packed.

I believe that was the 2nd playstation club, both on 14th street. I was playing in a juicy 10/20 half kill game when it got raided. Both clubs allegedly got ratted out by a former player who had some sort of beef with Mike Z. (RIP mike)

It's b*llshit that poker hasn't come to one of the existing NYC area casinos. The Hard Rock casino that was supposed to be built near MetLife/Giants stadium has still gotten no traction.

The existing casinos with poker rooms really don't cater to poker players but yet they will lobby and fight tooth/nail to keep it out of NYC area. Makes no sense.

I used to play at Ace Point a lot. Nick Schulman and I went to the same middle school and were friends back then before he won the WPT at Foxwoods that vaulted him into stardom, and we'd go there a lot. I remember smoking cigarettes and weed on the roof. Games were amazing, even though we played pretty terrible ourselves, compared to now. I know they got robbed a few times, too. Every time I pass by, I'm always like, ahhh I used to play poker there back in the day.

What was the place on 72nd and Broadway above the old OTB? I played there a bunch, too. I think that's the club where A-Rod was when it got raided and it made the papers.

I run a unraked mixed game sometimes and the lady who deals it was a dealer at Playstation from back in the day when all the FTP pros played there, she's got some great stories. She should write a book

Was at a home game the Straddle night. Loved that old asian guy who did security there that was always super intense about patting ppl down as if it was dangerous to play for 100$ in the middle of manhattan, and I guess ultimately he was right. Anyway, one kid at the game says he wants to play bigger and I ended up giving him directions to Straddle. When word comes back a few hours later that someone got shot we're all like "noooooooo". That club had really good games, and things went downhill from there.

Acepoint was cool but I hated the idea of someone scanning my ID and just leaving those photos sitting in the "office" for when the club gets raided. Happened to be at Fairview (like a weird sister club to straddle) on the west side when it got raided by the Vice Squad. People burst in with machine guns and body armor as if a war was gonna break out, because some asshat had lost in a freeroll earlier in the day, gotten mad, and called in "officer down" at Fairview's location. Cops walked into a warehouse full of people playing poker and looked like deer in the headlights. Really unfortunate because the club was gaining momentum and had like 10+ tables going. They kept us there for hours, and I remember at one point my friend realized he had a deck of cards in his bag (they had told us not to take anything from the room when they released us and to leave all paraphernalia on the tables) and was scared they were gonna search us on the way out. He ended up leaving them, and they didn't pay us down which is good because I'd stuck my money in my sock as soon as they crashed open the door. The club owners were solid in this case, because they went on the cameras and checked everyone's stack and reimbursed ppl if they came back.

After Straddle things kinda died down. A lot of smaller one or two table clubs and a lot of security stealing the member lists/contact info and starting their own games. Once clubs made the switch from time ($ per half hour) to rake it was impossible to maintain a player pool also since the games became unbeatable. Rake sounds beatable until you realize that you're only getting 30-40 hands an hour an awful lot of the time and that's with a good dealer. The average BB/100 doesn't cut it, and often the math works out to there only being room left for 1-2 winners in the game. Add in the people shaping (who lose but slower than anyone else) and most games have no longterm winners.

I'm sure we all have tons of shitshow stories from back in the day, but we should be careful to make sure we don't accidently incriminate people because a lot of the names/info is regarding illicit business. Not at all trying to harsh the vibe just saying proofread ur posts just to make sure. This thread could be really fun.

I played in the place on 72nd street a decent amount and if I remember correctly we paid something like 5 bucks a half hour in time.

I played at Playstation quite a few times. There were a ton of biggish private games in NYC in the mid-2000s. If you were a good credit and gave a reasonable amount of action, you probably could have played in a private NLH or PLO game with $50-100K on the table close to seven nights at week, with a bigger game 1-2 nights a week.

Rosa what is terrible about it is after all those big clubs were shut down, these single table apartment games were started. I played some of the bigger games from 06-08 appx. It was just outrageous what they were taking out of pots. So it made it very hard to overcome the rake. I worked the floor for a game at some point and every half hour the dealers would switch and they'd bring what they had taken out that half hour.It was an outrageous amount. Even some smaller games started like this 1/3 game that this douche bag Brody was involved with, they were taking at least 3-400 a half hour. It just made it impossible to play it was now like playing a house game in casinos. At acepoint the 2/5 games were very good and they took 7 dollars at most per half hour. And you could win 2-3k there was alot of action. Straddle club I didn't like so much because they had these Italian guys just openly hanging around. They were obviously involved with some sort of underworld people but they were kind of annoying. I hope they open a poker room at aqueduct at some point they have the Electronic gambling legal maybe they will legalize it .

What's even worse is lottery is legal and horse racing. Which both are basically throwing money away when betting on them.

Arod played in the game where this idiot adam black took his picture, and the next day the picture was on the front page. The club was on 23 street somewhere west side. The 72 Broadway club was also great there were just so many interesting people around and they ran a clean poker room. Once games started raking it became a problem. All those games acepoint Playstation, 72 Broadway were run very well and they took time from their games. If you had a few hundred bucks you could go play 1/2 nl but once the clubs shutdown these single table places popped up and were basically ripping people off.

I played with nick he was an excellent player and he had it figured out before everyone else, he made a ton online as thetakover and he was very good in live games. There was other guys that were taking sports bets and they preyed on people in those high stakes games because they were not very sharp and they had a ton of money. It was kind of sickening sometimes when I'd see these guys being all nice and social to some big hedge fund guys and they would get their numbers eventually and then they would take huge action. This kid david Lerner aka perkysmerky, he pumped up the nyc poker scene he must of gotten a huge amount of money when he turned 21 .he would pump games up just going all in blind for 1k at a time and eventually these guys got him betting sports and he got buried . It was so crazy how they took advantage of him.

yea once everything went to one table in apartments instead of a bunch of tables in one place the rakes got obscene.
i haven't played nyc home games in ages.

The guy who took Arod's pic really is an idiot.

when are you gonna tell us the part where people got taken advantage of?

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/1...llenge-551733/

I played at the 72nd club a few times. I remember the Nets were in the finals that year against the Lakers and the game was on in the main lobby. I remember beautiful Brazilian waitresses. I remember the OTB and checking in with a security guard at the door befor taking the elevator upstairs.

I also remember playing in another room before this. Also in Manhattan. They had a side room with more tables in what looked like a game room. Chess boards and backgammon boards were set up on the corner. I remember taking the long train ride from Dover, NJ with $300 to play 1-2 and getting stacked with KK>A3 aipf after 15 or 20 minutes. That was a depressing train ride back home. Ahhh memories.

hahahah I played in one of Brody's single table games a handful of times since a friend was dealing there. It was built around one lawyer who basically eclipsed the egregiousness of the rake in people's minds, so college kids and ppl working nearby would come donate. He is such a douche haha but is somehow also likable enough for people to keep coming back. The worst part of those games was actually that Brody would sit in them since he was basically watching everyone play 24/7 and playing with house money; he would come out as the only winner half the time and I'd genuinely advise my friends to just never give him any action. His other partner was a good dude and would donate 1 buyin a night via getting blinded out basically and providing good table chatter, but losing against house players is always disastrous for customer morale (one of the reasons I won't deal and shape at the same club; the optics are just terrible).

Things haven't changed much. Now people playing in these single table games don't really have the $ to be playing, so the owners have to rake as much as they can before the game dies. The bigger games are private, and the player pools for them are dwindling since the players are so far ahead of anyone new entering the field. There are still some limit games that charge time, but something like 20 or 25$ per half hour in a 20/40 game is more unbeatable than any of the players want to admit, and the younger players don't seem to realize that limit would be the ideal way to gamble, kill time, and not go immediately broke so the only games around are 20/40 and above which most amateurs don't want to play. The problem with an illegal ecosystem is no one manages it towards any stable future; everyone is just super excited to be making money hand over fist and the players don't have anywhere else to turn. The dealers still do well, but in an overraked game people don't tip as well, and losing night after night (without realizing it) tends to create a game full of miserable tilted people.

The bookies offering people accounts are extremely cringe; especially considering these 888red 555green websites have extremely limited options, add juice on both sides of every line, and the weekly structure basically funnels people into chasing losses. If you deposit $ onto a site, you see the balance and though it's internet money you can conceivably view it as important. It's a bit overanalytical, but with the credit system bookies use, the negative balance is incredibly tilting and the $ seems less real until people have to pay out. The pinnacle of that structure is that the game that's going to see the most action is the Sunday night NFL game, which is always the most volatile game that the NFL had on their schedule for that week. The juice in bookmaking should be capped, and with legalization I have concerns on how to reel this industry back in.

Man I wish I was playing innyc back then sounds like the nuts for playing cards. Maybe if online gambling is made legal again than itll shape up again.

This thread makes me glad I never played in underground rooms. Mid stakes games being raked at $20/half hour. Rooms being praised for honest games.