Just give us all the information
Note to card room managers: make sure you are upfront and explicit about all rules, fee structures, payouts, etc. when running a poker tournament. There is absolutely no reason not to and you can avoid situations like what happened over the weekend at Watauga Social Lounge in Watauga, Texas.
On Saturday, the Watauga Social Lounge held a $3,000 guaranteed, $100 buy-in bounty tournament. On the flyer posted the club’s Facebook page, it explains that $50 of the buy-in goes to the pot (the prizepool), $25 is “access,” or the fee to the house, and $25 is each player’s bounty. The flyer also advertised a $60 add-on at the break for an extra 25,000 chips (players started with 15,000 chips).
There was no prizepool/fee breakdown listed for the add-on, which is the source of the drama.
Voices were raised!
Poker player Ben Ross, in a video he livestreamed on Facebook and which Todd Witteles stitched together and posted to his Poker Fraud Alert website on Monday, said that the card room took a rake from the add-on. In the video, he was being kicked out of the tournament and banned from the club for allegedly calling the place a “rathole.”
After he left, Ross explained that he noticed the problem when the prizepool figures were posted, as the math just didn’t add up. The owner of the Watauga Social Lounge confirmed with him that the add-in was raked 20%, or $12. Ross complained that they did not advertise that rake anywhere and the owner agreed to include the entire add-on in the prizepool.
It seemed like that might have been the end of it, but Ross said that there were two other issues. First, he did not like that the poker room counted antes before big blinds. But what really set him off was confusion as to what they were doing during a color-up. We won’t get into it here, but it didn’t make sense to Ross and his frustration boiled over.
Ross called the lounge a “rathole” and while he was taking a smoke break, management told him that his membership had been revoked and that they would press trespassing charges if he stayed. The beginning of the video shows Ross appearing to try to keep playing in the tournament, but to no avail.
Upsetting Ross even more was that there were just seven players remaining and the tournament paid to five places, with $1,500 for first. Fifth place paid $347. Watauga Social Lounge eventually refunded Ross’s buy-in and monthly membership he was able to cash out his nine bounties for $225.
Poker room knew they messed up
Interestingly, it appears that club management knows they were in the wrong. Not only did they agree to put 100% of the add-on in the prizepool, but the person who ejected Ross (the owner?) can be heard in the video saying that the add-on rake “should’ve been” disclosed.
The Watauga Social Lounge did advertise the add-on rake for its Presidents Day tournament on Monday night and even, for some reason, used Ross’s controversy as a badge of honor, printing on the flyer a picture of a rat with the text, “Come and get this cheddar at this rat hole! – dissatisfied customer.”
It will be interesting to see if there is any postscript to this, namely the legality of charging a rake in the first place. Texas card rooms are very hot right now, but live in a legal gray area in the state. It is illegal to charge a rake from poker games, so to get around this, the card rooms charge membership fees and/or time fees. So the question here is if taking a rake from tournament buy-ins and add-ons violates any laws or does that only apply to cash games?
