How does my game fare?

Pop Can I went to that link. Found a definition of non-house banked games on page 29, but nothing about house banked games. Or did I miss it ?

Did find this interesting :

TCA shall not license and shall revoke a license
previously issued to, any covered game employee who:
a. has been convicted of any felony or an offense related
to any covered games or other gaming activity,

Not sure if still true, but in 1990 when Colorado legalized gaming, you could be an axe murderer and if served full sentence, including any probation , 5 years after that point you could get a license. My instructor at BJ school had been a butcher, charged and found guilty with a felony about poaching. Moved to Colorado and had to wait 6 months till his 5 years was up.

But God forbid you ever got busted when vice had to make it look like they were doing something, raided a social club, and you got ticketed for misdemeanor gambling. Life time barred from a license. Upon reflection, that is only fair. A friend explained it to me.
That misdemeanor mean you have committed the ultimate crime against the state.

RECREATION WITHOUT TAXATION !!

frankly, i have always hated everything about oklahoma,
from the scenery to the politics,
to the sanctimonious bigoted pseudo christians.
i can now add the casinos to my list.

OOPS my bad. Rereading thread DUH !!

Quote: ShiftyRicky

...we are the only casino to offer ES and Late surrender;

Are there any catches to your Early Surrender (e.g. can only Early Surrender to a 10)? If not, wow. I'd use a cover-heavy 1-3 spread with a high playing efficiency count and I'd do some nice damage to that game. The funny thing is I'd bet you guys sweat your 0.47% edge DD much more than your 8D game which is off the top positive to the player if you explained your rules correctly.

Quote: ShiftyRicky

When i say "I pay the ANTE", the casno pays it...we move a $.50 (or whatever the total is for the hand) chip to the ante tube, and eventually it gets dropped in an ANTE box.

OH. MY. GOD. You viciously clever bastards! YOU are not paying the ante, the PLAYERS' POOL is paying the ante. You take $0.50 out of the rack, the gambling proceeds of the game you're not supposed to get revenue from, and drop it in the ante box. You Oklahoma guys are skimming the players' pool! That's incredibly ballsy, I applaud you. Given that the state takes 10% of the players' pool I have no idea why they let you get away with that other than ignorance on the state's part. The reason your execs won't let you pay the ante of the lower limit players is because you'd quickly run the players' pool dry.

Quote: buzzpaff

Of course that is with perfect Basic Strategy, which is seldom displayed by the average player. Of course, if all players played perfectly, then the only table open would be those with an ante.

When weaselman said 0.09% he wasn't talking about not being able to double 8; the 0.09% difference comes from losing the ability to double soft totals. Even the average player who doesn't strictly follow BS will still make several correct soft doubles. If you'll allow me to make up a number, I'd guess that the effect is around 0.04-0.05% to the average player.

please do not share any AP information with the casino personnel on this site.

' When weaselman said 0.09% he wasn't talking about not being able to double 8; the 0.09% difference comes from losing the ability to double soft totals. Even the average player who doesn't strictly follow BS will still make several correct soft doubles. If you'll allow me to make up a number, I'd guess that the effect is around 0.04-0.05% to the average player. "

That is what I was trying to express. Sometimes I wonder if English should really be my first language.

Quote: PopCan

OH. MY. GOD. You viciously clever bastards! YOU are not paying the ante, the PLAYERS' POOL is paying the ante. You take $0.50 out of the rack, the gambling proceeds of the game you're not supposed to get revenue from, and drop it in the ante box. You Oklahoma guys are skimming the players' pool! That's incredibly ballsy, I applaud you. Given that the state takes 10% of the players' pool I have no idea why they let you get away with that other than ignorance on the state's part. The reason your execs won't let you pay the ante of the lower limit players is because you'd quickly run the players' pool dry.

Yeah, that's how I remember them doing it at Downstream. The thing is, to me, it didn't matter on my one trip there. Everything seemingly functions as a casino, and I didn't even realize they were collecting antes for about an hour. I knew they had to get around it somehow, but I wasn't sure how they were doing it. As far as the State, I'm pretty sure the Tribal Councils could care less as long as they get their cut...

I have a Buffalo Run chip in my collection, but for the life of me I can't remember which one it was. I think it was one that was relatively nice (for OK) and I believe I did play that DD game. I remember the rules WERE S17, and I was there at a non-ante paying time, so I hit it hard. The other thing that struck me as odd was a live 3-card Poker game with $2 mins. Pair Plus bet was the generous 4-1 on flush.

Quote: Tiltpoul

As far as the State, I'm pretty sure the Tribal Councils could care less as long as they get their cut...

I'm not talking about Tribal Councils, I'm talking about the actual state. Here's an excerpt from the Senate bill that allowed Oklahoma gaming to exist as it does today:

Quote: SB 1252

1. The tribe covenants and agrees to pay to the state a fee
derived from covered game revenues calculated as set forth in
paragraph 2 of this subsection. Such fee shall be paid no later
than the twentieth day of the month for revenues received by the
tribe in the preceding month; and
2. The fee shall be:
...
d. ten percent (10%) of the monthly net win of the common
pool(s) or pot(s) from which prizes are paid for
nonhouse-banked card games. The tribe is entitled to
keep an amount equal to state payments from the common
pool(s) or pot(s) as part of its cost of operating the
games.

That means that the casinos are actually removing money from the pool that gets taxed and dropping it in their own coffers which is safe from state taxes.

When I first read about ShiftyRicky "paying" the antes of $20+ bettors I dismissed it thinking he meant no ante was dropped at all. Then when I read "we move a $.50...chip to the ante tube" it was the same twist-ending feeling I got from watching The Sixth Sense/Fight Club/etc. My jaw dropped reading that.

Ok Can anyone enlighten me? How does it work, who deals, what is the ante per hand, who collect it, etc. I know the house has to make money, that's a given !!!

Sure, it's tricky at first. The law is based around the idea of poker rooms where the casino doesn't act as the house; rather the house facilitates action between players. This what is meant by "non-house banked card games". The casinos interpret that to mean any game where the outcome is determined by cards and the house does not profit from the gambling aspect of the game. Instead the casino charges a per-round ante/collection/rake. This can be done in one of three ways:

-Player Banked: The games can be player banked. Each game must have a player that's willing to cover the action of all other players on the game. If 5 players want to play blackjack at $10 a hand then there must be a 6th player to bank the game with at least enough money to cover the highest possible payout ($400 if DAS is allowed). The game is dealt by a standard, casino-employed dealer but all pay & takes are done from the banking player's chips. The table's rack is used solely for buy-ins, cheque change, and coloring up.

-Players' Pool: The win/loss from the game is collected into a separate pool of money administered by the casino. This money MUST be returned to the players in the form of bonuses and/or promotions. Examples would include: Three suited sevens wins $x,xxx, car giveaways, etc. The casino may or may not be allowed to take some administrative fee out of this pool. Oklahoma takes 10% out for the state in fees and allows the casino to also take 10% for administrative purposes.

-Both: The casino may be allowed to do both. Players can optionally bank the game. If a player decides to bank and can't cover all the action on the table then the pool will cover the rest.

In all the above examples the casino will generally charge each player (and banker, if there is one) a fee to play the game. It may be a flat fee or it may scale with the bet. This ante/fee is (ostensibly) the only way the house will profit from the game, similar to poker. The game itself, other than the ante, will usually be indistinguishable from a standard casino game. All the procedures are the same, cards are the same, probabilities are the same, etc.

Now maybe you can see the shady, yet beautiful, move the Oklahoma casinos are pulling. They're having the pool pay the ante for some or all of the players. In other words, they're taking $0.50 per hand from the pool they're supposed to redistribute back to players and giving it to themselves. The beauty is that since they're saving the player from having to pay that $0.50/hand they're technically distributing the money back to players in the form of the fee. The problem with what they're doing is that win is usually recorded by shift or at least by day. Since they're constantly draining the rack of money their win drops substantially and therefore the 10% the state gets is also significantly reduced. Brilliant.