sonatine, do you think they serve burgers there?
The room is in Round Rock, Texas, which is about 20 miles north of Austin.
For those of you that don't know, Texas poker rooms aren't technically legal. They cannot collect a rake or time charge to play in the game. Instead, they exist in the form as "private social clubs", where you pay some kind of admission or membership fee, but it can't be tied to the poker itself.
The poker itself functions as the equivalent of home game poker (which is legal), where there is zero rake or time charge for playing. There have been attempts in Texas to both fully legalize poker and (separately) to shut down these type of rooms, but neither has gone anywhere.
Lodge charges a membership fee plus $10 per hour for cash games…
Round Rock is basically an Austin Suburb, home of Dell.
Wacko is 100 miles from Austin.
As someone who spent 10 years working in Poker rooms (all Indian Casinos in OK) I'm intrigued. I'm to the point in life where I have a little money in the bank and it's burning a hole in my pocket to get a room open. I don't want to pretend I know the laws here in Oklahoma but I'm guaranteeing the tribes would team up and fight to have your ass in prison here. I can't imagine the effect his has had on Winstar. I'm intrigued enough to email Polk about some of these other rooms he wants to open.
The one nearest me changed from Freerolls poker club to Poker Starrs or some shit…should be sued any minute.
Then another opened across the freeway and another a few blocks away….not sure how they get enough players with Covid going on.
3 rooms within 3 miles of each other…?
Craziest thing about Waco is how many people visit due to the TV show “fixer upper” literally millions of people visit the Magnolia Market because of that show. Place gets more visitors than the Alamo.
Went to Waco once to visit Dinosaur Valley State Park and check out the fossils, you can walk in the stream and see the dinosaur footprints which was fun for the kids. Wife wanted to go to that Market and it was so crowded we had to take a shuttle from the football stadium, waste of time all around….circumnavigated the building but never even went in, was a zoo.
Not surprised at all by this news. Andrew and Brad have meet up games that draw a shit ton of people. Whatever compensation they were getting from the Casinos/Poker Rooms was definitely a pretty penny, but now they are getting rid of the middle man.
I never been to any of these Texas rooms. It is definitely strange to see poker rooms in a shopping center where you would expect to find a Chinese buffet. I guess only in Texas.
Neeme’s vlogs I will watch because you can tell he is a good guy and he doesn’t do everything so formulaic as others do. You have to tip your hat to Brad, even though personally I don’t watch them anymore. He crushes it. It seems like the viewers just don’t get tired of endless hand histories. Brad writes a script and makes things seem dramatic. Doug excels at everything he does. If you don’t believe me, just ask him….he’ll tell you.
I think Andrew & Brad will probably not relocate to Texas. They probably will rent a place out there and travel back and forth. The place will be packed for sure. So many vloggers are going to want to get the rub and exposure from being there. If you are a Vegas based poker vlogger this will be your chance to fill a gap with Brad stretched so thin. Playing relatively high stakes poker at a high end Vegas casino has an allure that a roadside card room in Texas just can’t match.
It will be interesting to see how the viewership does with the live streams. Between Doug, Andrew & Brad that is a huge following. I expect a shit ton of live viewers plus all the free marketing that comes with it. Think their biggest concern will be the legality and ambiguity down there. Hopefully they got a good ole Texas boy in their ownership as well.
No offense to them but if they are too high profile they may get the whole grey area industry shut down.
Need to hitting Austin with some sweet lobbying cash.
cartel shakedowns in 3... 2...
"Birds born in a cage think flying is an illness." - Alejandro Jodorowsky
"America is not so much a nightmare as a non-dream. The American non-dream is precisely a move to wipe the dream out of existence. The dream is a spontaneous happening and therefore dangerous to a control system set up by the non-dreamers." -- William S. Burroughs
Round Rock is actually a fairly nice community. Last year the Khalahari Resort opened there. It is the largest indoor water park in the US. It has restaurants, bars, spa, bowling alley, adult pool area, hotel, etc…. Real Estate has gone crazy the last 18 months. Lots of Californians moving there.
It's also worth noting that there's slot machines out in the open all over Texas. Some of them will say "Gaming Center". I've seen them for at least the last 15 years and there appears to be no pressure on them.
Glad to see the return of longtime-absent PFAers FNdonkey and NaturalBornHustler.
I met FNdonkey about 15 years ago, and he was a really nice guy.
Anyway, I don't think the Polk/Neeme/Owen thing is going to make an impact on the way Texas views its cardroom situation. The state is very aware of what is going on, and just can't decide what to do. There's a strong anti-gambling contingent in the state which would freak out at any effort to legalize real cardrooms in Texas, and there is a strong pro-freedom contingent which would freak out if a clampdown occurred.
However, the way it stands now, both sides are unhappy with this weird middle ground. It's also bad for the players, as there's no regulatory body overseeing these games, so you have zero recourse if you get screwed in some way. The incident at Johnny Chan's 88 Social (where they ran out of money and just closed the doors, with like a million bucks of uncashed chips) was a good example of the risk the players take.
Plz let the Feds get them plz
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