Pros Find Rich Marks New MGM Casino MD

Story about successful poker team and how they operate. The story says the leader of the team makes 400 - 800k per year.


https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/a-poker-pro-goes-all-in-on-mgm-national-harbor-and-its-rich-card-playing-whales/2016/12/29/d5bb4fb4-c6f7-11e6-85b5-76616a33048d_story.html?hpid=hp_local-news_pokerhouse-610am%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.d982e795d323

Nothing special. These are World Series of Poker type players (or nearly so). Have played thousands of games, used to long, late-night sessions. A new opulent casino attracts victims just as the opulent Venetian attracts vacationing victims to its poker room.

No allegation of collusion or cheatiing of any sort. Casinos usually don't care since poker players take money from each other and the house merely takes its rake.

Because the amount of saps playing poker on vacation has decreased, the few hawks left have had to get creative and actual do some research and work. Back in the poker craze, tourists would fill the poker rooms of Vegas casinos and the locals would fight to get into tournaments with them. They just wanted to play Texas Hold Em like they see on ESPN. Just look at how many poker rooms there are today compared to 5-8 years ago. Even Flamingo & Paris used to have 5 $50 Tournaments a day.

I've often wondered just why the much ballyhooed 'poker craze' suddenly seemed to fizzle. Campuses used to have non-stop poker games in the dormitories. Some Friday night Jewish services were openly referred to as "Poker Shabbat''. A "Brush" in Vegas was a man of the greatest respect and people constantly auditioned to be poker dealers, suddenly many of these men got their walking papers.

The M Resort used to have one of the better poker rooms for "ordinary people". It was no whale-inducing oppulent Venetian but it was well run and consistently brought money into the casino as well as bringing in players who gambled at the M casino whenever they were not in the M's poker room. Then management started focusing on poker contests and players started playing for the table and room prizes that were being offered rather than even playing for blinds.

Finally M Resort restablished their Poker Room as a room for poker, not special poker promotions but soon thereafter management simply ordered the poker room closed.

Quote: FleaStiff

I've often wondered just why the much ballyhooed 'poker craze' suddenly seemed to fizzle.

I think part of it is that people ran out of money. It is unfortunate that no-limit hold'em took over as the dominant form of casino poker, since bad players lose money faster at no-limit than they do at limit.

I think the strong restrictions on being able to play online had an impact. I was a profitable online player but after UIGEA, I simply quit, because I wasn't making enough money to where it was worth jumping through hoops or risking anything. And the closest brick-and-mortar casino alternative was hours away.

Also, the boom was really big among people in college and their early-20s, and a lot of us now don't have as much free time for various reasons, e.g., full-time jobs, kids.

Is Power the real Romes?

Quote: odiousgambit

Is Power the real Romes?

Ha, sorry to burst that bubble but no. We have a lot in common, but I carry a full time job and am in my 30's... so running and living in a poker house is something I've already done in college and haven't done in a long time =).

The thing the article barely discusses but I'm sure happens much more than people realize is when you get some higher limit games and 4-5 teammates on the game that weren't upfront with the casino telling them they were part of a team. At that point they could signal or whatever to mention cards, outs, if they spotted another players card(s), etc. During college we all played mostly cash games, but started getting in to some single table tourney's because they were so easy. Well, we'd all get together with our laptops/etc at 1 persons room/house/etc and play, usually not at the same tables. Of course it didn't take us long to figure out we could all get in the same single table tourney and split the winnings, which would be small, but we could all get in 20 single table tourney's at a time and basically it would take a miracle of running good for the other few players (who's money we were splitting) to take it down. We actually could have gone to higher stakes or further with it, but we didn't, as we're more "white hat" type people/players we didn't think it right to continue to do so... but not everyone in the world is as worried about that as we were, which is why I still tread carefully when I do play occasionally at this point.