Ah the good old days. Now you can play PLO with 10% uncapped rake (and run it twice so only the house wins).

The challenge these days is finding games where the rake is beatable, where you're not getting squeezed by house players and colluders, and where someone on the inside isn't letting the robbers in or tipping them off when a winner is leaving. It's possible to find good games but they are few and far between.

does anyone remember that other club that hosted regularly too?

Acepoint, Playstation, Straddle, Fairview, Galaxy were all in manhattan ... there was a huge spot called Kings in brooklyn for a while and in Queens you had Green Room, High Society, and a bunch of random clubs in Flushing that would pop up until they got robbed or threatened

Andy Bellin's book Poker Nation, detailed some stories about NYC underground game.
Poker Nation: A High-Stakes, Low-Life Adventure into the Heart of a Gambling Country

Going back further, the Mayfair Club was frequented by Howard Lederer, Eric Seidel, Dan Harrington, etc. I grew up in the Kips Bay area of NYC. I was surprised to learn how close Gramercy Park Hotel was near where I grew up. Literally a few blocks away. Unfortunately by the time I learned about it in the 2000s, the club was long gone. Also article details the stuff that went down at the Playstation.

Update:
The scene reached its nadir in November 2007, when a club on 5th Avenue and 28th Street was held up by armed robbers in ski masks. Players watched helplessly as the thugs beat a cashier and stole their money. Things would have gone smoothly — and remained unreported — if one of the nervous thieves had not dropped his gun. It went off and fatally shot a 55-year-old math teacher from New Jersey. Nearly three years later, two men were found guilty of murder in the botched heist.

I literally grew up on the east side of 28th street right next to Bellevue Hospital. Lol, there was and still is, a swingers club (Le Trapeze) on 27th street near 5th avenue.

Inside the seedy world of underground NY poker
clubs

Andy belin is a moron and his knowledge of the underground poker industry in nyc is and was very limited. He was a fish in a pretty sizeable game at one point. I felt sorry for him he was usually just so wasted. From what I've heard he has family money . He played mostly private games, I don't remember him being around the poker clubs in the early 2000s.

The quoted article about the robbery says the club was on 28th and 5th and it was on 33rd and 3rd, so that's not in Andy's favor either.

You are missing out, and I'm not explaining why.

I came across this Vice piece (hosted by Michael K William) about the NYC underground gambling scene. Was skeptical at first, esp when they start by visiting the gambling den/booty bar, but it turns out to be an excellent glimpse into the degen side of the poker world.

Interesting watch just to see who pops up. There's footage from one club's entrance that's instantly recognizable; I kinda hate the idea of going there anymore. The bottom dealer's technique when he lands a card in the 1/10 seat is eerie because a lot of people make that same motion every time they deal to that spot (the placing the last card down and spinning the rest). The robber is super loud; idk if that's an actor but an awful lot of his face is visible and he snitches on himself about a nearby crime and gives specifics of the dice game he robbed.

Most of that seems very scripted and safe and with people not so involved, but somehow involved. Getting robbed is always a concern at a card game, but not really getting shot. That robbery was a fluke; the guy dropped his gun. In general the person robbing a card game knows they're getting a good chunk of whatever's there, and a few ppl putting the $ in ur sock or underwear is halfway standard in NYC's card scene. The real pro tip when gambling is to carry two stacks, one concealed somewhere on ur person with the bulk of your cash(inside ur clothes and not in a pocket (an ankle wallet or a belt/clip inside ur pants/shirt)), and one smaller with smaller bills you got from purchases that you can readily hand over in a robbery. In a one on one scenario you can generally act very scared, fumble with the money, drop the money, and run off when they go to pick it up. If there's a dice game or a blackjack game at your poker spot, you're not at an actual poker game and it's significantly more dangerous.

When games transitioned from taking time, to taking a rake or percentage of pots. The recreational players are already at a disadvantage in most games. Even if you're a winning player these games are not worth playing. Most of the players who used to lose tons of money started to realize that the house was taking a huge amount of money. So most of the people (stock brokers,hedge fund guys, real-estate ppl) are smart folks and they just left the scene for the most part. Early on guys who games were built around started hosting games. Mainly because they were broke I think. But some games had hosts who were losing alot of it back . But that isn't the case anymore. Alot of these guys got jammed up in 2013 I believe. I believe that they had really wealthy people betting sports and someone I believe made threats about the debt. So the feds looked into it probably because a wealthy individual was threatened and they found a big operation. When I say people were taken advantage of I mean gambling in some of those poker games people win and lost numbers they were used to. When they got involved with these people who were in the bookmaking world their loses just went out of control. I saw personally some guys that were in very deep.

- Getting robbed at gunpoint.
- Getting cheated.
- Getting slammed with rake.
- Getting raided and going to jail.

Truly got to be a degen to want to play in underground games.

There are risks in underground games as a player but the one I've highlighted is not one of them in NY. Nobody's arresting a player let alone prosecuting them, convicting them, and sentencing them to jail.

I can't say I've ever been at a game while it got raided, and I agree with you it's highly unlikely players suffer legal consequences, but if a game got raided and there was a lot of money, or guns or drugs recovered in the raid there is a non-zero chance players would be detained/arrested.

I agree there is virtually no chance anyone gets prosecuted or sentenced. But there's a perspective thing here. Some would see getting handcuffed or spending a few hours to a night in a precinct cell as a mild inconvenience, other would consider it a traumatic life altering experience.

I also think this is a veryyyyyyyy obscure possibility, but if a game got raided and there were guns/drugs in the room, and a player had a record and/or wasn't a person with connections/resources, they definitely could wind up on the rock for a time which is an experience almost all people would consider a severe issue.

Sooooo, the real question is if Bubba says he LIKES you, do you give it up?

No player gets handcuffed or prosecuted. At the very worst you are stuck at the club for a few hours while the cops sort things out with the owners/staff. The dealers may spend a night in jail, but with the $ they're making they can afford a lawyer and would not face any serious jailtime. When the door breaks down and ppl with guns come in, you are relieved when it's just the cops. This is also a super rarity in nyc, and the raids come in waves, so when one club gets hit, it's easy to just take a few weeks off and see where things land. I would add also that police know when clubs are operating in their precinct. The extra traffic, the comings and goings at late hours, and just the overall ignorance of people discussing where they came from or are headed while walking around the area or visiting restaurants is something that police will easily be notified of. Cops basic job is to look at people living, and make sure they're not committing crimes. This means basically they do nothing, except wait and watch for strange or new behavior. You can't open a 20-30 person a night business without the police in that area noticing. You have to also consider that the volume of delivery orders to an address at night tells them how many people are inside. Clubs are super noisy as well and most chip-clicking can be heard from the street level. There is an order and a cooperation that is assumed in the industry; do not become a nuisance or a dangerous place, and you can continue. Occasionally there will be a raid or a walk-through (cops sometimes come and walk through just to look over the place and then leave though I'm sure this is not public info), but this is pretty standard.

The experience of playing at clubs is other-worldly. You are in a super relaxed atmosphere, there are incredibly interesting ppl in the game and running the spots, everyone is pretty funny, and you are gambling with people who generally came to gamble. The rake is not noticeable unless you are a winning player. There are only one or two of these in each game over a long-term period anyway. Clubs have free food, free drink, and you get to know the people at the game and have fun playing a game of skill with them. Getting robbed is a 1 in 1,000 chance if you're playing at a normal club (not some ratchet heel-clacking venue like shown in the documentary), and these clubs generally are approached before a robbery takes place with demands so they know to shut down or pay out.

Getting raided happens, but if i went to play cards a few thousand times during those days, it only happened once. Really with any club things are great at first, and then it devolves over time. Rake goes up as rent goes up, or the owner gets on the hook for too much while trading action at other clubs and he sends his whales there now instead of your game. Bookies get involved and people go broke super quickly, and as people start winding up broke the more favored players get credit extended and the game becomes a credit-based economy. This is fine for a while, but then broke players become dealers, and now half the players in the game are club staff which feels bad when you lose to them. The quality of dealers goes down initially (since ppl take time to train), the club feels more informal and like a home game, and people stop going.

The feel of going into a freshly painted spot with new chairs and tables and professional dealers is amazing, but the people running these spots have no long-term vision because they know they're going to get shut down anyway. When they have their hands in other things also (bookmaking/drugs) then the staff working with them can get hit with larger charges as well. There was a big racketeering case directed towards some mafia types a while back and one of the dudes from Straddle who was just a super nice kid got indicted along with them. It's not a dangerous pastime but you have to have your head on your shoulders and avoid the people who are going to implode. Being able to navigate or simply learn more about different worlds is something that is extremely useful in life; judging those worlds having never lived them keeps your world small. Being in a Chinese restaurant basement in Flushing or a coffee shop backroom with some velvet tracksuit types or a huge russian spot in BK where everyone is wearing yankee hats is a pretty cool experience, and you learn a lot and develop good networks and people skills. The 5am game is broken should we all drive to AC experience is fun also, and the more people you know in the industry the more safe and looked out for you are. The game ending showdowns (everyone puts up a certain amount of money and a hand is dealt and whoever's hand wins takes the $) are a fun tradition. Winning a ridiculous amount of cash is also something most people do not experience regularly, so there's a certain appeal to have $4,000 in 20s sitting on your desk after a wild night. Betting on whether people are actually coming back when they lose and say "i'm going to the ATM i'll be back" is fun. Drinking or smoking in the smoking room between hands is fun. Playing in the club's weekly tournament or hearing who won it is fun. Degenerates in nyc are not some scumfrog group of predators; they almost always are really funny people to be around. It's a whole entire extra world to add to your life, and it's one that is always interesting.


PS If bubba likes you, you don't have to give it up. Consent is important. Honestly, spending a night in jail is not serving a sentence in prison. The people in jail are together in holding cells and most are miserable, and coming down from whatever substance enabled them to act rashly in a bad situation. You might see a few arguments or fights but nobody's makin love. You can literally just sleep.

Damnnnnnnn, sounds like you speak from experience. So you gave it up to Bubba huh? I'm sure he was gentle once he realized you were soft and gentle. Did he remind you of Mike Tyson?

"The experience of playing at clubs is other-worldly." - it may be because I'm a half Chinese Brooklyn born guy who wears a Yankee hat who has had a ton of experience with Russians and interesting and eccentric people of all backgrounds, often times in environments like cardrooms or underground bars where we can smoke and do drugs or whatever, but I don't see those factors as making underground games "other worldly." I agree it's fun, it's a positive life experience usually, for me anyway. The free food and free booze and ambiance is not gonna make up for the insane rake unless the players are bad enough that they make up for it. I still get a nice feeling from walking away from a winning session with a stack of cash, but I'm just as happy to smile at my bands in my room at Borgata smoking a nice joint before bed.

"Honestly, spending a night in jail is not serving a sentence in prison." I agree a night in the precinct is literally nothing, I agree in most (all?) county jails from what I've been told there is little to no sexual assault, can't speak from personal experience. I also can't speak from personal experience about the rock specifically, but from several dear friends who are more familiar than they'd like to be and a even a few COs, it's not a cakewalk.


"No player gets handcuffed" - here I can speak from personal experience, idk if I've ever even been stopped by the police without getting handcuffed or at least thrown up on the hood of a car or something. Plenty of that had to do with being an adolescent punk, but there's also been times they were just going off. I can assure you, in today's NY, if cops raid an anything, and find a gun, everybody is wearing bracelets until they sort it out.

"Degenerates in nyc are not some scumfrog group of predators they almost always are really funny people to be around." I know plenty degens in NYC both in the poker world and not, most fit your description, but with most games being Chinese or Russian mob backed, heroin pumping the way it is in the city,etc etc the dirt goes down more than you might think

I wrote the post for ppl who haven't experienced it/were speculating about why ppl would want to play there if the rake was unbeatable. It's not surprising that a world that you live in does not seem other-worldly. Casinos are impersonal, and generally do not feel like a home the same way your local club will. The rake is a distant concern for most people since they aren't good enough to win $ consistently anyway, but it does make almost all club/home games unplayable unless you're there for the experience so that's why I noted that more. I agree with the rest.

I would assume the cops know about most of these rooms everywhere and get there cut. I don't know why the ones in NYC seem to get raided so much. I thought most legitimate stores and such in NYC had to pay off the cops and generally the mob.

I thought Lederer, Harrington, and Seidel were all NYC poker room regs in the 90s or whatever. Those guys probably could have gotten professional jobs, so I assume they did decently. In "Rounders", it implied there were many NYC regs taking advantage of all the rich fish and that they mostly went to the Taj in AC on weekends. So I had no idea NYC poker rooms were so bad.

There have been agreements between governing bodies and clubs, but usually this is wildly exaggerated. The police are aware of most illicit activity going on in their precinct, but don't just go knocking it all down unless it becomes large (too much $ is dangerous cuz it's a robbery threat) or if it becomes violent (fights or the wrong kind of drugs). In the 90s and the poker boom the clubs were fresh with people who were just learning and had plenty of money. It was a good time for the economy and alcoholism was the main waste of money people had so diverting this towards some gambooool was not the end of the world. They also charged something nominal per hour at this point, instead of raking games. A minimal timed charge is beatable, so there were a lot of people making decent money in the games. A timed game can have 3-4 winners. A raked game (at the kind of 5% capped at x rates they do in ny) will have 1-2 max. The trip to AC is generally a "this game broke, but people still want to play" venture. The timeline of profit diminished live over time the same as it did online. Smaller clubs, diminished player pool, and the general advancement of everyone's level over time dries up an economy. The worst players go broke, and the best players become so good that people don't really want to play with them (same as recreational players online don't want to play against bots and ppl using solver software). Online poker used to be beatable up to the highest stakes if you just had a pretty sane preflop chart and a general sense of betsizing and hand ranges postflop. Now the .25/.50 guys are studying 10 hours a week and grinding 8 tables at once. The same transition happened to live games. The old stories are true, but that world does not exist anymore.

Good post overall but I disagree with rake going up of rent or dealers getting worse over time. Home game dealers make way more than casino dealers so home games usually have really good dealers. Rent is barely a rounding error with NY rakes -if the rake goes up it has nothing to do with the rent and everything to do with the fact a bunch of degenerates will keep paying it.

Fair point. It's greed and lack of collective bargaining. Same thing with sportsbooks, who would be profitable if they charged -105 across the board but still push things as high as they can with no pushback. The losing players don't care. The single-session winning players don't care. Worse still is the players that do negotiate to pay half-time, have their time returned, or have some set $/hr returned as rakeback don't want to tap the glass so they let everyone around them get raked and play in a worse environment.

I still miss Fairview Elite, hard to believe that was 14-15 years ago

I was at straddle club when it got raided and nothing happened. They took everyone’s ids and then one by one named everyone and handed them back letting one person leave at a time. I’m pretty sure the cops were more interested in the brothel downstairs.

I had the largest stack at 2-5 and the floor tipped me to cash out as he saw the cops outside waiting to come in.

My buddy wasn’t as fortunate but the owners later paid him out in full.

But ya these games were totally degen. My other friend was at a club that got robbed once. Then there was the new club that opened and had an accidental murder.

There might be more games than ever now but now I have a wife and kids I’ll be sticking to the casino.

Not that the casino is risk free and the safest place ever.

Epic post… I can confirm that this all took place..

I remember going to straddle at 1-3 in the afternoon and grinding.

Then Fairview opened and that was the hot place. I played w Jonathan Vilma at fairview.

And ya these dealers were fast and some of the best of all time.