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Friday, September 26, 2008
Poker rooms are flush with chips, action
By Bill Previtti
For the Journal
It wasn't that long ago when a few of our state's casinos opened poker rooms — then, when no one came to the party, pit bosses picked up the chips and padlocked the door.
Then the lipstick camera found its way into a poker room, sparked a television gig and — voila! — an international craze began and went from a fad to a trend to a deep-seated part of casino action.
No, poker rooms don't bring in heavy coin like slots do, but they're no longer a chump-change afterthought in casino counting rooms.
New Mexico's casino poker rooms are doing well, thank you.
The four leading Albuquerque area poker rooms, Sandia, Isleta, Route 66 and Santa Ana Star, are quite busy with live action play, along with a mélange of multipriced tournaments. In a word, poker — Texas Hold-'Em in particular — is here to stay; it's like our state motto, "It grows as it goes..."
Sandia's 15-table poker room is the state's largest and busiest, mixing live-action games along with a schedule of serious, high-award tournaments.
Another poker room temptation is the bad-beat jackpot. In this twist, a winner becomes a loser, yet gets the Godzilla share of the jackpot.
Two examples came out of Sandia's poker hut last week: First, two Duke City residents, Miguel Puebla and Terry Shutte, were the last two standing during a 10-player hand. The community cards were a pair of aces, a queen, king and an eight. Puebla was holding an ace and a king, Shutte had an ace and a queen. Puebla's full house beat Shutte's full boat. But Shutte got the big payday, $8,893. Puebla's share was $4,445, and the eight players who folded and watched the showdown each collected $1,111.
In the other bad-beat payday, Albuquerque's Steve Baca was up against Alton Hallmark of Trinidad, Colo. The board had three jacks — a club, diamonds and spades, and a seven and 10, both clubs. Hallmark held a jack and a queen, giving him four jacks; Baca had an eight and a nine of clubs, giving him a straight flush, the winning hand.
By losing a hand that should have been a winner, Hallmark got 40 percent of the jackpot, $13,165. Baca picked up 20 percent, $6,584. And each of the seven rubber-neckers at the table gobbled up $1,880.
Bad-beat jackpots are open whenever a player has what should be, 90 percent of the time, a winning hand.
Each casino's poker room chief decides what hand will open the door to the vault. At Sandia, and Route 66 its aces full over jacks; at Isleta and Santa Ana it's aces full over queens.
Historically, Isleta's higher hand, as small a difference as it seems, makes for life-changing bad-beat paydays. In the last 14 months Isleta's bad-beat paydays have exceeded $100,000. Earlier this week it was standing at $85,000-plus.
The breakdown on payoffs at most casinos gives the bad-beat losing hand 40 percent of the pot. The winning hand gets 20 percent, and those players sitting at the table watching the meltdown cut up the remaining 40 percent.
Where does the money come from to build the pot? From the rake, the $1 to $3 take on each played hand of Hold 'Em. This doesn't mean every rake is $3 — that's the max, regardless of the number of chips in the pot. Most of all rakes go toward the operation of the room; that's the source of their income. Without the rake there's no poker room.
The newest wrinkle on bad beat play is at Isleta. Dave Holliday, the manager, is adding all the players in the room getting paid when a bad beat is hit. Last week 27 players cut up the 40 percent onlookers share.
OCTOBER PROMOTIONS: Sandia is once again taking us into "The Pumpkin Patch" to share in $120,000 in daily hot-seat drawings good for $100 to $1,000. There'll be two winners each hour, 11 a.m. to 8 p.m.
Santa Ana is closing in on 6,000 winners for its September "Play Every Day Sweepstakes." This is the promotion where you stay and play at home, not at the casino. Check www.sanaanastar.com for details.
In October Santa Ana, for the fourth straight year, will give away commemorative Balloon Fiesta sweatshirts. Last year it handed out more than 18,000. For this year it's already ordered 20,000.
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