Taking the Underground by Lee Jones

The poker media industry is an interesting beast. It spends a lot of time covering tournaments because, well, tournaments are fairly straightforward to cover and people like to know who’s winning what. You have a starting day and an ending day and the tournament promoters have an interest in providing information to the media. You can show chip counts, the big winners and losers for each day, and more.

However, there’s a lot more to poker than tournaments and one of the reasons that I’m writing for Poker News Daily is that they understand that. While these other aspects of the poker world are not as easy to cover, they’re still interesting and important.

Recently, I was traveling and heard about an underground poker game. I suggested to my editor that it would make an interesting piece – including ideas about strategy changes one makes for such games. Let me pause here to say that I define an “underground” poker game as one that (1) runs fairly regularly, (2) is a for-profit enterprise, and (3) is illegal or quasi-legal in its jurisdiction.

Underground poker games are, of course, a long-standing tradition throughout the United States – simply the commercial version of home games that have made up the backbone of poker playing today. Most of the poker luminaries of the last generation – Doyle Brunson, Amarillo Slim, T.J. Cloutier, and Bobby Baldwin – built their bankrolls playing underground games. In fact, well-known blogger, geek, writer, and actor Wil Wheaton got his start in the poker world by writing a delightful piece about an underground game in Hollywood.

The venue of my underground game experience was not in Hollywood, but I won’t be more specific than that. One simply doesn’t give out the GPS coordinates of underground poker games. The host told me a general area of the city to go to and then asked me to call him; he gave me directions from there. I found myself at a nondescript, unmarked warehouse in a nondescript light industrial area. The description fit the instructions I had gotten on the phone and there were eight to ten cars parked where he told me to park. I immediately noticed one thing: the cars were all parked facing outward, as if people here had succumbed to the British passion for backing into parking places… or thought they might be leaving quickly.

I got to the unmarked door and pushed the doorbell. A few seconds later, an electric latch buzzed open and a young man in jeans and a sport shirt welcomed me in. “Lee? Hi – I’m Rich [names changed here]. Come on in.”

The warehouse had been minimally decorated, but as a functional poker room, it had everything you needed. There was a bar (everything is complimentary), a couple of big screen televisions showing sports, and Mexican food. There were a couple of couches in the middle of the room, but even with all the accoutrements, including the two casino-size poker tables, there was still plenty of room for a three-on-three soccer game.

The owner/host, Jerry, came over and greeted me warmly. He may have been running an illegal poker game, but Jerry was a consummate businessman and host. He worked tirelessly to ensure that his customers were taken care of.

There was a tournament that evening with a very reasonable fee and extraordinarily generous blind structure. Everybody was able to play a lot of poker and nobody busted out for at least an hour. Once eight or nine people were out, they started the cash game, which was really the centerpiece of the operation. On his busiest nights, Jerry had two tables going, but with the tournament, just one cash table went the night I was there.

The cash game is where Jerry made his money and this is where we’ll switch to discussing strategy changes for such games. First, the rake in Jerry’s games (and virtually all underground clubs) is high. Jerry’s price is 5% of the pot with a cap at $20. Basically, you’re paying Jerry’s insurance premiums. I note that while this would be considered usurious in any U.S. casino poker room or California card club, it’s actually less than people routinely pay elsewhere in the world to play poker.

Two important lessons come from this high rake:

Rule #1: Play Fewer Pots.  When the pot is being raked that heavily, splashing around and picking up small pots on the flop costs you a lot of money. You’re never getting quite the price you think you are and you’re basically just “churning” your money like a stock day-trader paying commissions on dozens of trades every day. It means you have to be that much more profitable just to break even. For instance, with Jerry’s structure, the rake isn’t capped until the pot reaches $400, which is an all-in coup between two players with $200 buy-ins (a typical amount).  Your goal should be to play fewer pots, but try to make those pots larger. In a perfect world, you want the pot to be over $400, reducing the actual percentage of rake that you’re paying.

Rule #2: Watch Out for Winning Regulars. As I played in the cash game ($1-3 No Limit Hold’em), it became clear that most of the players were regulars. I also quickly figured out who the tougher players were. Now, these guys are not only beating the game, but they’re also beating the crippling rake. So, they have a pretty good idea of what they’re doing, not only in general, but also in the specific context of Jerry’s game. They know who the fish are and the mistakes the fish are making. In fact, somebody who may be a fish with respect to the sharks in that game might have an edge on you simply because he knows these people and plays with them all of the time. Many of the players in these games battle against each other in home or underground games three to four times per week or more. That kind of intimate knowledge can make the difference between being a shark and being the target; it’s unlikely that you’ll be a favorite the first time you sit in Jerry’s game.

With that said, underground games certainly have their appeal. I will admit that it would have been fun if Jerry had a John Malkovich-inspired Russian accent, but poker is pretty much the same around the world. Once we settled down to play, both in the tournament and the cash game that followed, it could have been the Bellagio or my home game. There were cards and chips, blinds, raises, and bad beats. Some of the players were good and many were bad. There was certainly plenty of EV for a solid No Limit Hold’em player.

I’ll leave with just one very important disclaimer: when you play in an underground game, you have stepped out of the realm in which most of us live our lives. There is a reason why there’s a heavy door with an electronic lock and video cameras watching every outside corner of the building. The place could be busted by the police at any time or, much worse, held up. You are also almost certainly breaking the law. Think about all that before deciding to try out the underground poker scene.

Lee Jones is the Card Room Manager of Cake Poker and has worked in the poker industry for six years. He has been associated with professional poker for almost 20 years. He is also the author of “Winning Low Limit Hold’em,” which has been in print for over 14 years.