My first time playing poker at a casino
Cantebury Park. Southwest of Minneapolis. I picked it because it was close to work. Yesterday was my first time playing in a casino.
I started playing poker for real around two months ago, when a friend invited me to their weekly game. The first night was a disaster - I busted twice before winning a single hand, and the first hand I won, I won two hours into the game. So… uh… yeah. No. Not acceptable. I started doing some research and studying.
There are a few basic numbers poker players use to measure their level of aggression and conservatism. They’re called VPIP, PFR, and AF. Don’t worry about what they mean - the important part is that I did some research after that night and saw a recommendation for them. The baseline recommendations are:
VPIP: 25%
PFR: 15%
AF: 3
My numbers that night were something like:
VPIP: 80%
PFR: 0%
AF: 0.3
That explains it! :). Still not understanding too much about the game, I went back the next week and just tried to target these stats, and I won the very first hand! (for a pittance). By the end of the night, though, I lost just as much money as I did the first night. But I felt good.
The next week I won 2nd place, for a gain of $45.60! (meticulously tracked in a notepad on my phone. It’s not about the money… it’s about keeping score). And the next week, I won first, for a gain of $200. It’s been a few weeks since then and I haven’t won much since, but I haven’t lost much either. So I decided it was time to try and see if I could hang at the casino, for real amounts of money.
(This pink line off to the left means this is a sidebar that doesn’t fit anywhere else.)
A week ago a buddy at poker night told me that in Minnesota, only native americans are allowed to run casinos. Other races are just not allowed! I went to confirm this before writing and found MIGA’s site, which sadly does not stand for Make Indians Great Again but rather for Minnesota Indian Gaming Association, and the site was not very helpful, but the language model Claude confirmed.
So I go to Canterbury Park, I park in an empty lot way too far away for no reason, and make the walk to the doors. I go in there and I am a total newb. I see security off to the side checking a guy’s bag and ask them if I have to get checked. They look at me - carrying no bag at all - and are confused and point me across the room. When I find my table I don’t know where to get chips. When I go to the chips counter I don’t know how to buy chips and almost accidentally ask them for a cash advance. When I order a coke and ask how to pay for it the waitress looks confused and tells me I don’t have to pay for that. I don’t know how to do anything. But I manage to get chips and get into the game.
At weekly poker night, we buy in for $20 or $30, and first place wins extra. So I could risk small amounts, and still have the potential to win relatively big, like the $200 I won when I got first place. But at the casino, there is no first place, no one wins extra, and also you buy in for $300. At poker night, the max I could lose on a single hand was $30. But at the casino, the max I could lose was $300. A lot more!
And it turns out, at the casino, people play fast. Everyone knows when it’s their turn - I usually know when it’s my turn, but am so afraid of playing out-of-turn (which is considered fairly bad in poker) that I’m always asking the dealer “is it my turn?” even though no one else is doing anything and he’s staring straight at me. Everyone has this incredible ability to reach into their stacks of chips and grab exactly the amount they want to bet; I count my chips one-by-one like a child, and frequently say the wrong numbers, calling the yellow $2 chips “one”. When I look at my cards, I pick them up and lean back and show them to 1) myself, 2) anyone who happens to be passing behind me, and 3) the guy to my right. It turns out the guy to my right is a dealer at that same casino, and just playing in his free time, so he is kind enough to tell me that most of the time I look at my cards I am exposing them to him too (but he always looked away). He teaches me how to look at my cards without showing anyone, and I do it and the dealer, a friendly woman in her 50’s, smiles and tells me good job.
I have no idea how to act, but I have some idea how to play, and when the Indian guy across the table (subcontinent Indian, not MIGA Indian) bets a lot of money before the flop (suggesting he has high cards), then continues to bet a lot of money after 2, 6, 8 come out on the flop (low cards, i.e., not the ones he has), I raise him and he folds. I won a pot! And it was like 50 dollars!
(He later bet $70 - all the rest of his chips - on a board where I was ahead, I called, and the next two cards were incredible for him, so I got owned and lost like eighty-five bucks. Sad.)
Poker is a good game to play a casinos, because the odds are not in the house’s favor - the odds are the same as at home. The way the casino makes money through poker is via the rake. The rake at Canterbury Park is 5%, which means, for every pot, the casino takes 5%. If the winner of the hand would have won 50 dollars, the casino takes 5% - $2.50 - out of it, so he actually wins only $47.50. This isn’t amazing for players - it means that, if you’re exactly as good as the average player at the table, your expected winnings are negative - but the odds are fair, and you can typically play like you would if you weren’t at a casino.
I play on, staying at the same table. The dealer-who-isn’t-dealing to the right of me is very intense, seems to be in a sour mood, and continues to very kindly help me with a million things, though I make a point only to ask him about table rules and not about strategy. I am not even sure if I am allowed to get up and go to the bathroom, so I ask him if I should announce it (that I’m getting up and will be back, not that I’m going to the bathroom) and it turns out no I can just get up whenever I want. A scary young guy with a red-hot sunburned face sits down at the table and bets a ton and wins it, and I am intimidated, but 20 minutes later he has lost a lot, I have good cards that match the board, and I win the pot and take all his remaining chips. I busted the scary guy!
Time goes fast. The dealers switch often. Very often! Before I know it, my table has had four different dealers. Turns out they swap every half hour. I ask my bad-mood mentor next to me why they switch so often - he’s employed as a dealer, remember - and he thinks and says that it’s
To spread out the big tippers. Sometimes after a good hand, the winner will toss a chip or few the dealer’s way. But sometimes there’s a magnanimous player who is tipping the dealer $20 every ten hands, and every dealer would want that table, so the quick dealer rotation makes it fair.
To cool off players who are mad at the dealer because they were repeatedly dealt bad hands. If a guy is unlucky for four hours, he might start taking it out on the dealer. But this doesn’t happen when the dealer changes every half hour. This seems weird to me - the shuffle and deal is pretty obviously fair - but sure.
I am just way too new, so every time I bet, I put my chips about two inches in front of me. Always too far for the dealers to reach. I am reminded of this again and again, say sorry again and again, and promptly forget, again and again. One dealer - an older asian guy with cool grey-black hair - has seen me do this enough, and makes fun of me for it, telling another player “usually people get it after one or two reminders…”. I laugh and another player laughs and jokes “I think they’re talking about you”. I tell him they can’t be talking about me, since I haven’t gotten it! And it turns out the half-hour is up - the dealer gets up and walks away, his final action at the table having been totally owning me. I tell my mentor I’m starting to understand what he meant about people getting mad at the dealer ;(…
There is sometimes a wait to be seated at a table - the lady on the phone when I called that morning said sometimes you get a seat right away, sometimes you have to wait an hour - so I have brought a book. The book is The Theory of Poker. Turns out I get seated right away and did not need the book, but there is nowhere to put it, so it sits on a small table next to me for the hours I am there. At one point a person passing by happens to know the person sitting next to me, sees the book, and starts making fun of him for bringing Poker For Beginners to the table. I stare steadfastly ahead.
The most popular version of poker, in the US and worldwide, is No-Limit Texas Hold’Em. In Minnesota, No-Limit is illegal (until 2005, Hold’Em itself was illegal!), so casinos have to get creative. Canterbury Park’s version of creative is Spread-Limit Hold’Em: a single bet can be anything from $2 to $100, but no larger.
I was pretty worried about this, since my only experience was with No-Limit Hold’Em. But it turns out 2/100 Spread-Limit plays almost exactly the same as No-Limit. In three hours, I saw the max $100 bet happen in only two hands.
Naturally I thought this limit meant that on a single round of betting, a player could risk no more than one hundred dollars. But this is wrong - you can totally manage to put $400 in on a single round of betting. I learn this when, pre-flop - before anyone has seen any of the shared cards - one player bets $15, another raises to $30, the first guy raises to $60, the second guy raises to the max of $100 (everyone else has long since folded, including me - hell no!), the other guy raises to another $100… and before long, both players are all-in. They show their cards. Both have pocket aces! The best hand in the game. So no one gains anything… but remember the rake. The casino takes 5% of all pots, and this pot was like eight hundred dollars. Get pocket aces, lose 20 bucks - such is casino poker.
Before I played any poker, I had the vague idea that “no limit” meant there was some kind of direct line to your bank account, and that all-in meant you were betting the contents of your checking account or something. Maybe I am the only one who thought this? But I thought it. It isn’t right. No-limit means you can bet all the chips in front of you. So if have $300 worth of chips in front of you, your “no limit” highest possible loss is $300 - not your house, car, and dog.
After two hours, I’m sitting at something like $330, which is a $30 gain over what I started with. I am happy with this - I am new enough that losing all my chips would not have been a surprise - and I start to play defensive. I get good cards, I put money in pre-flop, and… I miss the flop and I fold. I’m just too scared - I don’t want negative winnings. This is a very bad way to play! The essence of poker is making positive-expected-value bets. I was making “I’m new and I’m scared, please don’t hurt me” bets. The same Indian guy did his pre-flop-raise, low-cards board, big-bet-again thing, which I’d exploited so well earlier; this time I was frightened and conservative, so I folded). These bad plays meant that after another 45 minutes I was down to $260. And I feel the fear, and I know I am playing badly because of it, so I decide this all was good enough, it’s time to go.
But I am too new! I am afraid of making some kind of social error by standing up and packing up my chips and withdrawing at a disapproved time. So I am unwillingly dealt another pair of cards. Sighing and embarrassed, I look at my cards. Pocket aces. The best hand in the game. Very rare. I bet, another player stays in, we bet more and more, and I win the hand, for a gain of eighty dollars. Insane luck.
So now I am definitely ready to go. I’m up, I gained, I’m happy, this is great. I announce to the table that that was my last hand, don’t deal me in, I’m finished. I start gathering my chips up into the carrying case… and the dealer deals me in. Oops. I say Oh wait, no, I’m done, I don’t need these, and my mentor tells me that I can just fold them and be good.
Except I look at them and they are good cards - a Jack and a Ten, of the same suit. These hands are good because they have a good probability of making a flush (since they’re the same suit), a good probability of making a straight (because Jack comes right after Ten), and a good chance of winning with a pair (since they’re relatively high cards). I sigh, remember poker is a game about making good expected-value bets, and enter the pot, putting my slim winnings at risk.
And….. I get the flush. My opponent bets badly, letting me wait things out until I’ve completed the flush, and then putting a lot more money in once I’ve achieved it, and I make more than seventy dollars. I have $416 - a gain of one-hundred and sixteen dollars. I would love to say my win rate was $30 an hour, but that’s complicated when all the winnings were on the last two hands, neither of which I wanted to be in..
So I have my $116 of winnings. I just have to gather them up, and walk a short distance to the cashier. But the chips wanted this number to be $110. When I stand up from the table, I drop three $2 chips without realizing it, and the angel to my right helps me one last time, calling me back to get them. I collect them into my rack of chips, and carry them all the fifty feet to the cashier, as careful and focused as a three-year-old trying to carry a glass of milk without spilling it.
At the cashier, I hand my chips over and watch him count them, and when he’s finished, I notice a random three chips over on my side of the counter. I’m like, Uh, Are these mine? and he’s like I don’t know, Are they? I have no idea and am terrified of inadvertently stealing from a casino and say I don’t know and they call Surveillance to look at the camera footage. They are mine. I assume they are the same three chips that tried to escape me at the table. But they didn’t get away. They’re all mine.
I drive home, and am so high, so in love with the idea of playing any kind of cards, that I call a close friend I often play two-player card games with, and invite him over to play a deck-building game we’ve often played before. Over the course of three hours he destroys me, twice. C’est la vie.