Game Selection

Sometimes the second largest game in the room is the best

One of the advantages of living in Los Angeles and playing poker is the bevy of games and casinos to choose from. The recreational player pool is absolutely massive and there is a long history of playing cards throughout the state. This has allowed for many casinos to thrive but one has really separated itself from the rest, the Commerce Casino.

If you have never been to the Commerce you should really make it a point to take a trip at least once in your lifetime. For a poker player, it is the Mecca of all card rooms, a real site to see. The poker is laid out in two different areas, the “low section” and the “top section” or hotel area. This creates a very interesting dynamic for table selection amongst games especially in the no limit sections. You see, the $5-$10 $1500 cap no limit game, the game that I play 90% of the time, is in the low section and the $10-$20 uncapped game is in the hotel area. So it is not easy to hop in between the two. You literally have to walk about 100 yards from one side of the room to the other to check the other game out. This means that a lot of the good $10-$20 regulars never go down and play $5-$10. This creates a void of very strong players at $5-$10 and below. For some of these higher stakes regs they never move partly out of laziness and partly out of not wanting to be seen playing lower. But it creates a common situation where the second largest game in the room is one of the best.

This also occurs at the $10-$20 game at the Commerce when they rarely open a bigger NL game, such as $20-$40. This concept is not unique to the Commerce as it applies to any casino. If your home town club spreads $5-$10 as its largest game then naturally some of the toughest players will be playing that game and the $2-$5 may be a really good place to make easy money. Obviously there are times when the biggest game in the room can and will be the most profitable but poker really is not about ego--it is about making the most amount of money with the least amount of resistance. And sometimes you will find that the perfect fit for that formula is the second biggest game in the room devoid of all of the good players battling it out against each other.