JCT: On March 30 2009 I went to the opening of the Montreal Poker
Room
with live dealers. It's a nice large room and all 14 tables were
packed. It
was mostly no-limit up to $10/$10 which I find slow and elementary
compared
to the possible 4 bets of information at every round in limit. They
did have a
list for $5/$10, $10/$20 and $30/$60 which I got on but by the time
the list for
the $10/$20 had grown big enough, there were no tables left! There was
only
one $3/$6 limit game going on.

Several things I did not like. The gaming area is cordoned off so
people can't stand around to watch like in many other rooms I've
played in. What better way for someone to check out the game before
giving it a try? I see absolutely no reason for closing off the floor
from spectators and wonder why they do.

The big unsustainability is the incredibly high rake-off. $10 per pot
and $1 for the bad-beat pool.

Take the typical $10/$20 game with a session fee of $10/hr, about 25
cents per hand at 40 hands per hour. $100 an hour leaves the table.
Many players manage to beat that $10/hr fee and provide a nucleus of
professionals and competent amateurs acting as unpaid shills to keep
games alive 24/7 even short-handed.

Take the typical $10/$20 game with a $5 rake-off. At about 40
hands/hr, that's around $160 off the table per hour, $16 an hour
instead of $10, 40 cents per hand. A lot less competent amateurs beat
$16/hr than $10/hr so the game becomes that much less sustainable.

When smoking was banned at the Taj Mahal in Atlantic City in the late
1990s, the smokers convinced management to switch from the $10/hr
session fee to the $16/hr rake-off so they could go outside to smoke
without it costing them anything. But for spans of hands where
they're
gone, the $160 an hour is divided by remaining 8 players for a $20/hr
or 50 cents per hand cost while they're gone. And it also speeded up
the game so the other eight of us were paying even more than $20 an
hour, 50 cents per hand.

Seven-handed games are even worse with the cost reaching in excess of
$25/hr. That explains why I could find only one $10/$20 game in
Edmonton Alberta only on Friday nights that died as soon as it got
down to 7 players. In Brantford, they've had $10/$20 and $20/$40
games
that have gone on 24hrs/7days for years. Smaller session fee but full
time action instead of Alberta's bigger rake-off and almost no
action.

So the TajProfessor got 140 signatures on a petition in one week-end
to convince the Taj management to switch back to the $10/hr session
fee from the $16/hr rake-off and saved every professional and
competent amateur more than $6/hr since then. But it also kept the
Taj
Mahal fuller of free-shilling competent amateurs and professionals
than any raked house ever could.

Now consider the $10 rake-off in Montreal which is the same carny
rip-off rake as for the few weeks at the Canadian National Exhibition
in Toronto. That's $320 an hour, $32/hr or 80 cents per hand that no
competent amateur and few professionals could beat.

So their greed is going to kill their game unless they switch to the
session fee to sustain 24/7 action like in Brantford. Luckily, I've
heard that the Quebec gaming ministry does have provision for
charging
a session fee so there may be a chance to convince them to change.
Unless they charge $30 an hour because they can get away with it
until
all their poker players go broke.

I won't be going back soon but if I do, I should bring along a
petition to switch from the rake-off to the session fee, unless they
can be convinced to do the smart thing on their own by reading this
post. Based on the Taj Mahal session fee structure, I recommend:
$5 or $10 game is $10 per hour
$15 game is $12 her hour
$20 or $25 game is $14 per hour
$30 or $40 game is $16 per hour
$50 game is $18 per hour

Should they switch, I predict a long and prosperous run for the
casino
and its large pool of professionals and competent amateurs.