In many casinos and cards rooms, a rail, a real, physical rail, separates the waiters from the players. You’ll see tables along the rail, of course, but of curse only a few tables can be next to the rail, especially in larger rooms. Waiting players are usually at best discouraged from being by the tables while waiting for games, if not actively shooed away.
That’s one more thing I like about Artichoke Joe’s: it has no rail. They don’t mind someone sitting behind you and they don’t worry about waiting players wandering among the active tables.
I decided to try and get to the club a bit early last night, although I wasn’t as early as I wanted to be. There was a short list for the $3/$6 games, so I wandered around a bit. I spotted a $6/$12 game with a couple of seats free; there was no list for the $6/$12 tables. I stood a bit and watched, and a few hands told me that this was a pretty passive table, just the thing that I can profit from.
So I asked if I could sit down and took a free seat.
The table was nearly perfect. While it wasn’t unusual for 4-7 players to see a flop, there was almost no raising pre-flop. And a pre-flop raise followed by post-flop aggression would push out pretty much everyone who hadn’t gotten a piece of the flop.
It was an interesting session. I played for 5 hours and got pocket aces not once. Pocket kings, OTOH, I got three times. Twice an ace hit the flop, and either a lead-out bettor or a raiser of my lead out bet led me to believe that they player had an ace. Both of those times I folded, and both of those times I was right.
The last time I got pocket kings, two aces fell on the flop. I bet out and had just one person stay with me. It was a pretty substantial pot, but the player who was with me was to my immediate left, and so when blanks hit on the turn and river, I simply check-called. Turns out he had pocket queens, and my kings were good.
This was a new player at the table too, replacing an interesting player who flamed out quickly, as expected. That player turned out to be the typical gambler, who almost always put out a blind raise. And because he was on my left, for a period of time I never got to see a free flop when I was in the big blind.
I tried to temper my frustration, however, and was able to use his over-aggression with weak holding on a couple of occasions, although he did suck out on me once as well. Not surprisingly, he went broke twice, once with his first buy in and again with his second. And it took only about an hour and a half.
I really love the passive tables because they are really profitable when I simply play my game of patience, sitting and waiting for premium hands. While I hadn’t really wanted to play up to that level, I ended up, because I selected a good table for my playing style, nearly doubling my buy-in. (I always buy in at 50 times the small blind.)
One more thing about such tables as well: they are usually populated by nice, friendly people. They don’t taunt or brag when they win, they don’t abuse or blame the dealer when they lose, and they make for a pleasant poker playing experience, win or lose.