Hey guys, longtime listener to radio from Texas. Got a scandal for you regarding the Social Card Clubs of Texas.
Please know that poker is not explicitly legal in Texas, and card clubs get around it by branding themselves as private clubs charging membership fees. Social Card Clubs of Texas currently charge a $100 annual membership fee.
They also need to pull shenanigans as far as holding tournaments and being able to charge an entry fee.
Social Card Clubs of Texas are currently in the process of hosting a multi-venue $250k guaranteed tournament. You can play Day 1 in either Austin, Houston, Killeen, or San Antonio.
Buyin is $300 + $50 which already is a bit high (14.3% rake) and you get 12k tourney chips. However the trick comes in where you can get another 12k chips for just $100 more, except that $100 doesn't go into the prize pool! It goes to what they call a charity. However, the charity is called "SCCoT Education and Advocacy Efforts", which is their lobbying group for legalizing poker! This obviously is no charity and is equivalent to another $100 rake. Sure, you can just not pay it, but then you start with half the chips of everyone else, and that's big time -EV, so almost everyone pays it.
When it's all said and done, you are paying $150 rake on a $300 buyin tourney, which means the rake is 33%. Fucking terrible!!!!
Here are the details: https://www.socialcardclubsoftexas.org/tournament/
Well you might think this is the scam I'm talking about, but it's not. At least you can figure this out before you play and just not register if you hate the fact that they are raking 33%.
Well on Sunday they were advertising an overlay, but didn't explain how far behind they were.
I sorta quit playing at Texas Cardhouse in Austin (one of the locations), but went there Sunday to see how the games were.
So.. through table talk I learn they have added ANOTHER first day! This is from the same place that was advertising an overlay earlier in the day via their texts.
Fucking scumbag move, right???
See, they had Day 1s in 4 locations on November 30, December 1, and December 2. On December 2 (Sunday) they realized they were way below the $250k guarantee and started texting the overlay. Obv still not enough people showed up so they added a December 7 date at Austin only.
This place has also allowed private games to ruin the experience. Remember the controversy you talked about on radio regarding Aria doing this shit?
Well it's happening here too.
So basically the more likable guys who are more willing to go around fluffing the fish, get them to go into their "private" game. They pull these same players from the public games where they meet them at the cardroom. This keeps out a lot of the better players from the games and actually kills the live games. These places all have these private game rooms.. which is unfortunately legal here unlike Nevada where it's illegal.
The private game rooms are meant to allow a group of friends to just show up and play together without the public joining in. However the reality is that very few people use them for the intended purpose, and almost all seem to do it to abuse the system by pulling the fish out of public games, creating a 'private' game with them, and shutting out the solid players from the public who want to join it. Management doesn't give a shit and lets it happen.
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