My housemate sucked me into watching Texas Hold 'em tournaments on TV and now I’m a little addicted but don’t have any outlet. The local casino passed around a survey to see if it was worth introducing and the latest I heard is that it will be about 6 months before they will have it in the casino (but the Sydney casino has it… is it really worth travellig a couple of thousand kilometres to loose a bundle of money???).
Anyway, that’s beside the point - my question is: How does Texas Hold 'em work in casinos - does the dealer play a hand like in Blackjack? It doesn’t seem like the kind of game that people can just wander in and out of like other casino games becasue people would just skip out when the blind comes around to them.
And how they make it at Star City. At the 5/10 tables every player pays 75cents per hand. So $7.50 per hand disappears from the table. 30 hands an hour - $225 dollars per hour goes off the table to not be won by the players. I have played there for fun but you are fighting a losing battle unless you get a hot run or find a table of idiots (I never have).
Canberra is the place to go for a fun game. Canberra Casino have Thursday night tournaments for much of the year. Buy in is $50 or $100 and that is all you can lose. Join their club for free and get email updates about stuff. If you are in the area and want to play a tourney book early, it’s only 30 seats
Oh and go to PartyPoker, download the software and start looking around. You will see how everything works there. Money games, multi table tournaments, sit and go’s, single table events, step tournaments, satellites. And you can play real poker with play money so long as you don’t play real money games.
That’s right – there’s a fee to play, which can be quite large in tournaments where the stakes are high. The house does not participate; all action is between the players. Sometimes the players wager real money, and take home whatever they have at the end. Often, though, they are ranked at the end of the tournament and given a prize according to their standings.
Poker is profitable to the casino because the entrance fee can be very large (upwards of $10,000 for big tournaments), and because of the ancillary spending by poker players. Poker areas, in my experience anyway, are always extremely busy (to the extent that the casino will often have to announce when a space is available). While waiting to play, the players may spend substantially in other areas of the casino, and most of them bring someone with them who will likely be gambling somewhere else during the poker game.
In a typical Hold’Em ring game, you play only against other players. The dealer merely deals. To make money, the casino imposes a fee usually in the form of either a rake or a time charge. With a rake, the casino takes a percentage of the final pot for itself. With a time charge, the casino charges each player a fee per unit time for playing. There are other methods (whoever has the dealer button in the hand must pay a fee, collection from all players every hand, etc…). The casino should have its fee policy listed clearly in the room.
You cannot skip out on paying blinds. To even sit down initially, you are required to post a blind. Thus, you want to be dealt in as close to the button as possible to maximize the number of free hands you’ll see for your initial blind posting. If you take a break, you are allowed to sit back down for free so long as you haven’t missed any blinds. If you miss blinds, you are required to post all the blinds you missed before you are dealt back in.
And $7.50 / hand to the house in a 5/10 game?! That’s outrageous!
No, you are only required to post one big blind and one small blind. The big blind is live, and the small blind is dead. That is, if you post a $3 big blind and a $1 small blind and the action is raised $3 to you, you have to bet $3 to call the raise, not $2. The $1 small blind doesn’t count towards your bet.