Live Poker At The Edgewater (Vancouver)

A friend of mine was in town and we decided to hit up the Edgewater Casino to play some $1/2 NLHE for entertainment. Both of us are online professionals and routinely play for very large pots, so we weren’t terribly concerned about our monetary results. Every time I end up at a live game something entertaining generally happens. There are always several interesting characters around the table and this night was no exception. Have you ever been to a casino and met the “smug nit” or “table regular” or “resident station” or “Mr. Know it all” or “The Educator” or “I Live to Crack AA”. Well, if you have played enough live, I am sure you have met all of these people and many more.

On this particular evening we quickly developed an aggressive image. After a couple of players limped and my buddy limped, I decided to steal the pot with a pretty outrageous raise to $25 pre flop. Unfortunately, I was limp-shoved on by the man we’ll call “Kings”. I folded and in the next 45 minutes this particular player was dealt KK on 6 different occasions and managed to be down a stack. His passiveness was his downfall as he failed to raise KK pre flop on most of those occasions. He was also dealt AK and limped that, at which point my friend decided to pump up A5o. Now for the record my friend is a very good player, but I would generally not recommend raising A5o at a full ring table. However, this table was very soft. Nobody was three betting and there were ample opportunities to steal post flop. In this particular case “Kings” and a “table regular” called, and the flop was K 4 2. After the other players checked, my friend c-bet $20 into $30 and was min-check-raised to $40 by “Kings.” At this point, folding would have been the obvious play but I think he was in the mood to gamble, and with $150 still behind, the odds were pretty close. After drilling the gutshot on the turn they got the remaining 150 chips in the middle and my buddy took down a nice stack. “Kings” was not impressed, to say the least. The look of disgust and disdain at the way my friend had played was very apparent. He began discussing the “long run” in the game, which was very entertaining coming from a weak passive live guy. At the end of the night my friend ended up about $500 and benefited significantly from a meta-game perspective by this loose play.

Play at this table was generally very soft. Players were calling raises to $20 pre-flop with A4o. The “resident station” was playing 63o versus a tight opener who had 60 BB and opened to $10 pre-flop. Normally, you can simply play fit or fold poker and then take some opportunities to steal with position. That is essentially what I did, though I ran into a couple of hands which hurt my results, though I was still able to turn a small profit.

The cardroom itself is pretty solid. I would recommend calling in ahead of time to put your name on a waitlist. We did, and once we arrived the wait was only about 5 minutes. Oddly enough alcohol does not come free at BC casinos. It costs about $7 for a beer and $12 for a shot, if you want to drink. However, if you are looking to make money, I would not recommend drinking while you are playing (that is a bit of a toxic combination).

It really blows my mind that people play this live game on a daily basis. I simply can’t even begin to fathom how horrible it must feel to be on a down run playing live. Obviously, because the play is so soft I don’t think your downswings have to be as nasty as they are online. However, games also tend to run deeper live and a few nasty matchups can really put you deep in the red. If you play 30,000 hands in a month online and break even on a tough month, just imagine how long that would take at a live game. At 30 hands per hour*8hr per day=240 hands per day it will take you 125 days to break out of an equivalent downswing. In all likelihood you only play around 20 days per month, which would suggest you can easily go 6 months without making money. This is assuming a decent win-rate as well. For the online grinders that have smaller win-rates, breakeven stretches of much longer than 30,000 hands is common. How appealing does 6 months of driving to work 5 days per week all to net nothing sound? It sounds pretty horrible to me! So while going and playing live can be entertaining from time to time I can’t imagine doing it for a living. For you guys that make it work I have a lot of respect for you. The live game can be super soft, but tough!

-ThePokerCapitalist