+ Register

[alrelax]

I have mentioned it before and lots do not understand it.  But there is no 'House Bank' at the card rooms and some are very large in Southern and Central California.  Unlike the Indian Places, think Pala, Pechanga, Aqua C and Morongo Casinos, the house does not bank.  Players bank and act as the house.  There are also licensed 'Bankers' that bank if players do not wish to bank the table. 

I have played at Hustler and Bicycle Casinos near LAX and a couple of others up around the San Francisco area. 

To some, this is an untold opportunity to the 10th power.  Depends on your experience and outlook.

http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article94454347.html

[alrelax]

A year ago I became interested in a fantastic restaurant and small hotel that held a gaming license with a 20 table and 50 machine expandable 10 year clause to its current license which covered 25 machines and 6 Poker tables.  I learned about the 'licensed Banker' clauses and how they actually operate.  I talked to a couple from the Central California region.  They do pay a 'kick back' or a 'consultant' fee to the property depending on their takes.  It is an interesting as heck business!!!!

The 'licensed Bankers' generally will accept players wagers up to $30,000.00 a hand to compete with Vegas. 

[alrelax]

It is an interesting concept in California, still the Wild West, LOL.

http://ggbmagazine.com/article/california-games/

[alrelax]

Here is another article of the California card rooms 'non house banked games including baccarat'.

http://www.playca.com/311313/california-card-rooms-and-tribal-casinos-bickering/

[alrelax]

(This will also explain a bit more, I know a few people that love playing at the card rooms for the reason that the player becomes the dealer, etc.)

Re: California Player Banked Games -- How do they work ??

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I worked for one of the major corporations here in LA for about a year and a half. Hopefully I can answer all questions.

A corporation (technically called a Third Party Proposition Corporation) has a contract to be the sole corporation in a casino. Actually, there is a separate contract per game. Our corporation was (still is, I think) the biggest one in LA. We're the main corporation at most of the casinos. I worked at Commerce, where we banked the Blackjack, Pai Gow Poker, and Caribbean Stud Poker. Some other corporation banked the pan 9 and Pai Gow tiles game which were only a total of maybe a dozen tables.

In this 3 way relationship of players, the corporation, and the casino, the corporation gets the major, major raw end of the deal. We actually pay the casino, it's not the other way around. The jackpots that exist are completely funded by us. In addition, the players are constantly trying to cheat and pull all sorts of scams, to which the casino turns a blind eye. About a third of our training was in how to spot and stop cheating players.

When other players are banking and we're only covering the action behind whatever they don't we don't pay a collection since we're not the main bank. We do pay a collection when it's our turn to bank.

At the version of bj they had at Commerce, No Bust 21, perfect basic
strategy yields a 1% disadvantage to the player, however, no one knows what it is expect for us. The players are mainly guessing, so we probably have a 3-8% advantage on our action, more than enough to make up for the $3.00 collection. As mentioned before, we also "sell" action when another player is banking. For $5.00 we will wager $100 and play perfect basic, netting us $4.00. It's such a terrible deal to the player, but this is where we make a lot of our money.

One thing that we needed to watch for was bank chasers, mainly people who tried to go 50/50 with other players banking when it wasn't their turn. It is very common, but the rule is that you can only do this 6 hands per orbit. By the way, this is a good way to make money as a Pai Gow Player. I think the stats say that you will show a profit if you bank 12x as much action as you bet.

Our advantage was actually razor thin and we had some losing quarters on many games.

A little on my experience:

I moved to LA six years ago to pursue a career in acting and found out about this job. It sounded like a pretty sweet deal. I took the 10pm-6am shifts so that I could have my days free for auditioning, plus it paid $14.00/hr, two bucks more than during the day. In addition to the pay was full benefits plus 401k, and $13.00 per day that we could use towards food service while we worked. (The menu was super cheap and you could easily get a day's worth of food for $13.00)

At first, you are only trained for blackjack. Learning to train for Pai Gow Poker is optional, but after passing tests for optimal strategy (which was a ***** to learn) you get an immediate pay bump of $3 plus if you show major competence you can work your way up to the high limit tables and make up to $22/hr. There are also quite often openings for supervisor positions. They give you two sets of special shirts and pants to wear, with the pockets sewn up so you can't steal chips. We also had to get in the habit of clearing our palms after every time we touch a chip, and to this day, I still clear my palms after I touch anything as a force of habit. It's nuts.

The first few months were pretty fun. Got bored of bj quickly so I studied for the pai gow test and passed it a week later. After another few months, I worked my way into the high limit rotation. There were only a few of us.
It was pretty exciting sitting at a table with a box of 4-500k in chips and a bunch of rich behind degenerates who would show up every day, blow their 10 or 20 gs, then go home. All of our players were pretty much made up of the same 30 or 40 people so I got to know many of them pretty well, except for what they did for a living. They would always say "I'm in business" and that would be the end of it.

After about a year, our head supervisor started pulling a bunch of bs on a lot of the employees with regards to policies about the pai gow pay bump. Others had seen how quickly I'd moved up in the ranks and wanted to follow suit but what they didn't know was that it was like pulling teeth to get him to process the paperwork for my raises.

In addition to that, the lifestyle was starting to take its toll. I had probably put on about twenty pounds (eating one large meal every day at 2am will do that after a year and a half) and the graveyard shift was affecting the quality of my auditions. Plus, poker was my main hobby, and we were forbidden to play at the casinos because it was seen as a conflict of interest. Ironically, the dealers are allowed to play all they want.

I was making more playing poker online than at the job, and we also lost our contract with Commerce and so I was going to be transferred to Hawaiian Gardens. (I lived in Studio City so this added an extra 45 min each way).
Because we were going to have too many employees now, our company offered a "voluntary layoff" for those willing to quit, they would be eligible to go on unemployment. So in March of '03 on our last day at Commerce, I hung up my pocketless pants and took it.

Feel free to ask me any questions