New poker room at the casino

There is a new poker room at the Halifax Casino. I was at the Casino last Friday. I met up with an old friend who was in town for the evening. The new poker room is pretty nice. It's basically just a spacious rectangular room. There were about 8 tables I saw there. If necessary they could jam probably 10 more tables in there for a big tournament.

They just had two hold'em games available on this Friday night 5/10 limit and 10/20 limit. I didn't have the $$ to sit down. They have 2/4 limit on Mondays and Tuesdays. I'd like to start out there and see how it goes. I like limit. But I don't really have the spare money for 2/4 either so its in the future I guess. They have no limit tournaments too. There is a $100 buyin, 160 person tourney on April 8. Regrettably I didn't have the coin to grab one of the few remaining seats to be had for it.

The poker room was kind of sparse. Clean and well lit, but no themes or fancy decor. The new room was just recently openend, so I don't know if they are planning to add that later or if it is that way by design.

I doubt if the house makes a lot of profit on poker. Consider a 5/10 limit hand unfolding something like this.

preflop
- 6 players limp (pot=30)

flop
- EP bets, MP calls, LP raises, EP calls, MP calls, 3 fold (pot=60)

turn
- EP bets, MP folds, LP calls (pot=80)

river
- EP bets, LP calls (pot=100)

So at showdown suppose the rake is 5%, then the house makes $5. Compare that to the winning player. The winner put in $35 and collected $95, for a profit of $60. That's not the way things usually work at the Casino.

With that $5, the house loses a chunk off the top to the province per their operating agreement. With the remainder they have to pay the dealer's salary, the poker room manager's salary, utilities, and the rest of the cost of doing business. So I can't see the house making much profit on poker.

What I suspect is they use poker on a break even basis to draw people into the Casino and lure them away to more profitable games. People may show up to play poker but realize they don't care for folding 70%+ preflop, which you have to do to be profitable. Or it's a lot slower than on the Internet. Or they brought only $200 bankroll for 5/10 limit and quickly lost half of it, so moved on with the remaining $100.

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Me and my buddy enjoyed a beer in the casino bar. Of course there were gambling machines in the bar. I found some quarter slots and played them for a little while. I ended up ahead $3. That's fine with me. I was within a whisker of hitting a $2000 score, but I just missed it. So it goes. I wasn't even expecting to get ahead at all so I'm not disappointed.

My friend was much more fortunate. He was up about $200 playing the quarter slot next to mine in the same amount of time. We then went to look for his girlfriend who had found a complicated swinging bells game in the main area. It was funny when I went to cash in my bucket of won coins for real cash. There was a lengthy lineup at the cashier. I nearly turned away to try again later. I realized that was exactly what the house wanted me to do, go back to the machines instead of cashing out. I kept my discipline and waited in that line about 10 minutes and cashed out my small profit.

My friend's good luck continued. While I was in the cashier lineup, he had managed to fill yet another bucket with won coins at a quarter slot machine in the main area. So that was about $200 more he was up. Good for him.