ShareA couple of months back, partypoker figurehead Rob Yong tweeted about the difficulty of getting invited into the private high stakes game in Las Vegas. He says that poker is booming in Sin City but all cash games over $25/$50 are run privately by “hosts” who shun decent professionals.
Poker is booming in Las Vegas, interesting how cash games $25-$50 ++ are all ran privately in casinos by players/hosts + some high stakes games outside. Whole high stakes ecology seems to be controlled by “hosts” now. Very hard for pros to get into games unless you are a host 🤷‍♂️ pic.twitter.com/wu9HGmVJyg
— Rob Yong (@rob_yong_) February 20, 2022
Breaking the Law?
Private poker games inside casinos are no new thing but, as one poster points out, this act of excluding certain players could be breaking Las Vegas gaming laws.Poker is booming in Las Vegas, interesting how cash games $25-$50 ++ are all ran privately in casinos by players/hosts + some high stakes games outside. Whole high stakes ecology seems to be controlled by “hosts” now. Very hard for pros to get into games unless you are a host 🤷‍♂️ pic.twitter.com/wu9HGmVJyg
— Rob Yong (@rob_yong_) February 20, 2022
What the casinos are doing, probably at the request of the game hosts, is to keep a long waiting list on the go for as long as possible. This way the game always remains full and the pros get fed up with waiting.
“Most casinos must disclose what private games are running and allow anyone to put their name on the list. The way hosts combat this is by having a full table so the list is never used to draw seats from. We need the casinos to open additional tables more often as the list grows!”
Maybe we shouldn’t be surprised, because the gap between the best players and recreational players has widened dramatically over the years to the point where good players have too much of an edge for anyone else to even try to compete.
The other complaint by regular players is that they consider pros as nothing more than boring robots who suck the life out of the game. This is, of course, unfair, but it is what it is and that widespread impression isn’t going away any time soon.
