Poker Online - Early Poker Rooms

In my day in Las Vegas, there were two types of players that played poker in land-based card rooms; one was your recreational player and the other was the professional. I would say 80% of the professionals were outright bandits - they controlled the card rooms and they fleece legitimate players. It's been that way for decades and decades, even before I got there. There were only about five or six poker card rooms going back to my era, but they blossomed in every casino once the casinos recognized that poker is the only game where the casino cannot lose a dollar, it's a win-win situation. When it came to keeping the card rooms clean, casino management either fell into the category of "know not" or "care not" - both negatives. The perception was that when players walk into their card room they're going to be handled fair and square - that isn't correct, that isn't the case. If players walk in with a bankroll, the pros will gobble them up, whether it would be in an hour, a day or two days - it's a fact of life.

Internet card rooms today aren't danger free, but the existence of collusion is much less then in the early land-based casinos. Part of it is because of the anti-collusion software, but there is no software that has the capability to totally eliminate collusion - there's no such thing. Another part of it is that there is a detailed history of play in an online card room that beats what the land-based casinos have in their ability to gather information quickly.

You never know if the guy you are playing against online is a world champion player, that's a risk that any player takes in any card room. But the majority of poker players online are well intended, they enjoy the game and it's a challenge. But the word challenge ceases to exist when you're double and triple teamed - that has been the case over the decades on the Vegas strip. It's kind of a hidden secret to the majority of the public but it's not a secret to the professional card player or to an insider like myself - it's awful.

The responsibility lies, without any question in my mind, with the casino operators to keep the casinos clean. The casino card room manager could never say to me that 'we're just not aware of it', 'we just didn't see it'. That's out and out bullshit. If he really means that, then he's incapable and incompetent - he shouldn't be in the card room. Collusion can only exist when the card room manager turns his head- in other words, when they don't care.

When I was in Vegas it took us a long time to break the sharks, they really felt that they owned the property - eventually they found out that it wasn't the case.

How did I break it? In one word - termination.

We did several things. Those that we felt were responsible for fleecing legitimate customers, those that were cheating, those that were working with dealers and shift bosses, we just 86'd them from the property on a permanent basis. To some of them, we said, 'the game's over, you no longer lease this property, it's ours and you're not paying any rent. If you want to come in here and play fair and square, fine. If not, we'll bounce you out'. We had to turn over literally 90% of our personnel in that room - dealers, shift bosses, you name it. The only person on the square where I worked, was the card room manager - he was a wonderful fellow, an old timer, but he was just out of touch with reality. He just didn't see what was going on in there. It wasn't a question that he didn't care, he was a great guy, but I think it was time for him to retire and he did. When he saw the numbers that we were generating after we made changes, he felt that he was responsible for what had happened in the past and as a gentlemen he resigned, we had no intention to let him go, it was his choice.

The casino gets a bad reputation when they are not ensuring that their customers a square shake. Now when you walk over to a crap table, you assume that the dice are on the square. When you play blackjack, you feel that the cards aren't stacked in the house's favor. But taking that position into a poker room in Nevada is not in touch with reality.

During my era we made it extremely clear to everybody that if you even looked like a bandit, you were out of there! Our level of tolerance was zero for anyone that would attempt to become part of collusion or working with dealers. I may sound a little cynical, but I just told it the way it is - as an exclusive to you.

Article by Frank Rosenthal.

This article was borrowed from www.gamblingonlinemagazine.com.