  |
|
December 6, 2007
|
Going all-in When Rich “The Chalupa” Plante walks into one of the half dozen or so poker rooms in the state he enjoys the most, most of the people who have shared a table are on notice immediately. It’s not that there is this movie moment where a hush falls over the room when one of the state’s semi-pros stops by, or that there is a respectful buzz from the management to make sure he’s happy and comfortable. That sort of thing only happens for the really big fish out at Foxwoods. People know that Chalupa is in the room because he makes sure of it. With a loud, boisterous game that hinges on mixing aggression at the table with a constant barrage of distractions, Chalupa is a true New Hampshire poker shark. He’ll survey a table after sitting down for a game and seek out the weak link. There’s always a weak link these days, thanks to the rising popularity of poker and the gambling culture as a whole. It might take a couple of hands, but he’ll find his mark. Maybe it’s a 19-year-old overwhelmed and playing beyond his means. Perhaps it’s the guy with a pocket full of hundreds who is loudly announcing that he doesn’t believe in the math of the game. Usually he’ll find the guy at the table already down on his luck a little, possibly still steaming over a bad bet on a previous hand. Finding a weakness, be it in the cards or in the psyche of the player, is what good players do, and Chalupa is no exception. Once his target is found, it is likely only a matter of time before the poor sap is out of chips and watching the action. This particular evening, Chalupa’s found a real treat, a poker newbie who has been boning up on the “correct” way to play poker. The kid has dreams of an easy life of playing cards professionally, as long as he follows the guidelines in the books he bought at Borders the other day. The kid has a pretty good head for numbers, he figures, and that’s all poker is. Math. If he does his job, Chalupa has all of this figured out before he has been dealt a hand. “What’s going on, kid?” he asks, a bit of chewing tobacco curled under his lip. He wants to be the kid’s buddy; that makes things easier later on when the losing starts. On the first hand the kid raises, Chalupa re-raises with every chip he has in front of him. The kid’s eyes bug out of his head, and he folds. Smirking, Chalupa shows his hand as he rakes in the chips. He was holding a worthless hand; a seven and a three. “What are you doing folding there?” he asks. “I had nothing, see?” Twice he does this, then a third time. Each time, the kid does the right thing (mathematically, anyway) and folds. On each hand, Chalupa gets louder. He’s laughing it up, making a big deal about how he’s playing with nothing and no one has the stones to call him. Finally, frustrated that this guy is taking his chips and playing “wrong,” the kid makes a stand on a hand. This time, however, Chalupa pushed all in with a real hand — an ace and a king and the kid’s ace-jack is a big underdog. See, the table pro had seen that his mark was getting fed up three hands ago, and Chalupa had stopped raising with garbage way before then. Five cards later, the kid is done for the night, and Chalupa has bagged his first fish of the night and added about $50 to his bankroll. A guy with a beard and a flannel shirt says he’s coming after Chalupa next. Odds are, it’s him that will be the next on the rail, and playing for vengeance is an easy way to lose. Also, Chalupa has already amassed a stack, and there are few players around more dangerous with a chip advantage. “Once I have a stack in front of me, I start to play for real,” he explains. “You can’t do anything with just the buy-in.” If Chalupa did his job well, this new mark will go “on tilt” and pump even more money into the game by letting his emotions get the better of him and chasing after the lost money with reckless play. If he did his job perfectly, the mark is having such a good time listening to Chalupa’s stories he doesn’t even care. There are plenty of sharks like Chalupa in the state, guys who are feasting on the popularity of the game and turning what was once a hobby into lucrative pastime. Ask them, and they’ll tell you point blank that what they do is not gambling. In the eyes of the state, however, it is, and gambling is illegal in New Hampshire. How then, are Chalupa and many others like him able to conduct his business for the evening? It’s all for a good cause, that’s how. The chance industry It is easiest to see how the odds get squeezed in a game like roulette. The casino prefers you think of a roulette wheel as having 36 spaces numbered one through 36, half of which are red and half of which are black. This is almost true, except that most wheels include two “zero” spaces that are colored green. These zeros are how the casino makes its money. The simplest bets on the wheel are 50-50 wagers like whether the wheel will land on black or red — odd or even. Make a bet, guess correctly, and double your money. Easy, right? Wrong. Adding those two zeros makes the odds slightly worse than 50 percent. In the above situation, there’s actually only about a 47 percent chance that ball will land in a black space, and the same goes for red. The casino makes you feel like you are betting on a virtual coin flip, but in reality the player only has about a 47 percent chance of winning. Those three percentage points may not seem like much, but it is small shavings like that that assure that the gambler is doomed in the long run, and that, plus the Hoover Dam, assures that the lights will always stay on in Las Vegas. One of the best bets against the casino is blackjack, where flawless, robotic play can get you within one percent of a fair play. However, even in blackjack, the longer you play, the more likely you are to lose in the long run. Sports betting, meanwhile, gets its advantage by tacking on a “processing fee” to each wager. Place a bet of $50, and “doubling your money” means winning $45 more. Most forms of horse or dog track betting follow this pattern, but the math gets more complicated with the different odds that are available. As a rule, the worst bets a casino offers include slot machines, which can be set to give the house whatever house advantage the casino wants. If there’s a slot machine offering the chance to win a million dollars with a one-cent bet, there’s a good chance the odds of hitting that jackpot are very low. Poker, however, is unique in that it earns money for a casino in a completely different way. Instead of placing bets against the house’s seemingly limitless vault of money, players make bets across a table against other players. When a poker player wins, the money always comes directly out of the pocket of another player, not the casino. To get its cut, a casino instead takes a few dollars out of every pot played at a poker table. If the poker game is a tournament, then a portion of the total purse of player buy-ins goes directly to the house. In poker, the gambler is essentially paying the casino for the right to sit down and play against others in a safe, comfortable environment. Instead of winning when the player loses, the casino can expect a calculable flow of income that is separate from the game being played. In states where gambling is legal, there are two parties involved: the player and the casino. In New Hampshire, however, gambling is only allowed if a minimum of 35 percent of the revenue is given directly to a charitable organization, said Paul Kelley, president of the state’s Pari-Mutuel office, which was created in the 1930s to license and regulate gambling at the state’s dog tracks. In 2005, bingo and lucky seven games were re-aligned to fall under the auspices of the commission, as were charitable gambling events. Prior to then, most of the smaller “Monte Carlo Night” fundraisers in local communities were approved and regulated through local police departments. With the change came tougher regulations on who could operate charitable gaming, and a requirement for background checks on dealers and those who run the games. Around the same time the Pari-Mutuel got involved, poker started being televised and took off as a national phenomenon. Kelley estimates that in 2007 as much as $70 million will be wagered in table gaming in the state. At the Seabrook Greyhound Park, waits of 90 minutes or more are not uncommon to land a seat at one of the 42 poker tables. This past summer, some charities got as much as $23,000 in one weekend as the featured charity. By rotating benefactors, poker rooms such as Sharky’s in Manchester and Nashua offer gaming seven days a week, giving guys like Chalupa ample opportunity to ply their trade. Meanwhile, while New Hampshire tries to figure out exactly what sort of gaming it is going to consider legal, some states have already integrated gambling into their way of life. Talk continues on whether or not Massachusetts will open its doors to a casino. If it does, the Bay State would join the dozen or so states that allow Indian-operated casinos aside from Nevada, including Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Wisconsin, California, Colorado, Washington, Montana, Arizona, North Carolina, Kansas, New Mexico and both North and South Dakota. On top of that, several states, including Mississippi, Louisiana, Missouri, Illinois, Iowa and Indiana, offer riverboat gaming. The Windsor Casino in Ontario is across the river from downtown Detroit. Cruise ships leave from Florida and offer gaming in international waters. Actually, the same can be said for all major ports, including Boston. That’s 20 states and counting. Gov. Lynch is on the record saying he opposes further expansion of gambling law in state unless he sees “compelling evidence” that the state’s quality of life won’t be compromised. “Exceeding expectations” The center, which is open Monday through Thursday at 55 South Commercial St., has used the money it raised through gambling to pay its rent on the facility and pay for a full-time director. “Overall, we found it to be a very pleasant experience,” said Abbott. “We did very well; in fact we exceeded expectations.” He said he recently talked with the poker room about setting up a second round of fundraising with the gaming group. He said that For Manchester would again be the sponsor for poker in June of 2008, the next available date. “I think they are pretty booked up over there,” he said, adding that he would definitely recommend charitable gaming to other nonprofits unsure about whether or not to take the plunge. Kelley agrees that the gambling halls offer opportunities for nonprofits, but added that his office’s ability to protect the money is limited to bonding a gaming organization to $20,000. In 2006, Nashua-based New England Fund Raising Co. lost its gaming license after stiffing 13 different charities for upwards of $60,000, Kelley said. The Pari-Mutuel took action in August of this year, suspending New England Fund Raising’s license for the remainder of 2007. Owner Joseph Ross said that his business had gone under and that there was no money to pay. Kelley’s only recourse was to divide the $20,000 performance bond the state requires among the charities. “It didn’t cover anything, but it was the only thing we could do,” said Kelley, who is pushing for legislation to improve the system, including a larger bond requirement in order to better protect the charities. Kelley has also looked for additional staffing for his department and a higher maximum bet on limit games. He added that it isn’t his department that makes the law, however, and that his job was only to enforce the laws the state had already approved. A bill that included many of the adjustments Kelley mentioned was defeated in the House this past summer. “They legislate, and I regulate,” said Kelley. “Whatever they decide is fine with me.” Lack of enforcement “We do the best job we can with the tools that we are given,” Kelley said, adding that enforcement of gambling rules is not really possible by the commission at this time. “There’s an element of ‘buyer beware’ out there,” he said. One area Kelley would like to see changed is how the charitable organizations get their cut. In table games like blackjack or roulette, the charity simply gets a “rake” of the amount taken in at the table. If a blackjack dealer fleeces the victims playing for $100, the charity gets $35 and the house gets $65. In poker tournaments, however, the charity’s cut is made after the prize money is determined. If the tournament director decides to give the players 90 percent of the purse for a game, then the charity only gets 35 percent of what’s left. Kelley would like to see legislation introduced where the charity gets 35 percent of the total purse regardless of what is returned in prize money. Kelley added that there’s no law protecting the player from unfairness in a given game of chance. If a casino decides to increase its take by putting four zeros on the roulette wheel instead of the standard two or further stack the odds in some way, the business is free to do so as long as the rules are clearly posted. The Pari-Mutuel does not currently have the staff to enforce fair play, said Kelley. “This isn’t Las Vegas, and to do something like that we’d need cameras on all the tables and that sort of thing. We don’t have that here.” Kelley did add that many of the state’s gaming businesses, especially those associated with the race tracks, are part of much larger gaming corporations that would be unlikely to risk their global reputation on small-stakes New Hampshire gaming. Sharky’s Poker Room in Manchester already has video cameras on all tables in its establishment, said George Georgopoulos, co-owner of Sharky’s and three other card rooms in the state. Georgopoulos said he is satisfied with the level of state involvement in enforcement and that his establishment’s reputation speaks for itself. “They [the customers] do see the cameras in the room, but we don’t advertise that we have them,” he said. Maximum bets A maximum bet cap eliminates the peaks and valleys found in higher-stakes wagering. The player is protected from a crippling run of bad luck, but it is also mathematically impossible to see real winnings. The result is something many gamblers are not exactly looking for from a gambling experience: boredom. “You can’t do anything in the limit game,” said Chalupa. “It’s just two bucks, two bucks, two bucks, and then you turn your cards over. You might as well flip coins to see who wins.” To circumvent the system, most poker in the state is played in tournament style, where the chips are simply markers in a tournament, and that tournament happens to have a $60 dollar buy-in — then players are free to bet as much as they want. The state allows for tournaments with a buy-in as high as $250, Kelley said. If not for tournament play, players like Chalupa would likely not bother with local games. Even as it is, the high rake needed for in-state tournaments to make money and pay the charities put the games at a competitive disadvantage to full casinos like Foxwoods in Connecticut. Higher rakes mean lower payouts for players. “If a casino opened up in Mass., I’d be done with these games,” said Chalupa. “I’d be giving money away.” Hardcore players like Chalupa look for big games, but Georgopoulos is less concerned about the talk of what a Massachusetts casino would do to his business. “We do worry, but I think we’d be okay,” he said. “We wouldn’t lose that many customers.” With that said, Georgopoulos did add that if the maximum bet were raised to $5 his card rooms could offer what is known as a $2/$4 limit game, a popular cash came offered in many mainstream casinos that would cater to more players. “A five-dollar maximum would help protect local charities from anything that could happen in Mass. People aren’t going to drive there to get something they could play here,” he said. Currently, a pro-casino bill proposed by Gov. Deval Patrick is worming its way through Massachusetts legislation. If it’s approved, The Mashpee Wampanoag Indian tribe and the Cape Cod town of Middleboro, Mass., would likely be the benefactors and build the state’s first full casino. Studies have suggested that the state is losing as much as $1 billion in taxable revenue a year from its residents to Foxwoods. Sitting right on the line between legal and illegal are what poker players commonly call “60/50” single-table tournaments. Many card rooms in the state offer the game, but they all call it something a little different. Generally speaking, a 60/50 game lasts an hour and involves somewhere eight to 10 players. Management collects the entry fees and delivers chips to each player at the table. While the buy-in may change from place to place, it is commonly understood that if the buy-in to this kind of game is $60 then $50 will go to the total prize pool. Prior to the start of the game, all players at the table agree that they will split the pot based on chips collected, not based on the prize money as it will be delivered to the table. At the end of an hour, the game will end and anyone with chips in front of him will receive a cut of the total purse. If all players start with 2,500 in “chips,” and they know that their buy-in represents $50, it isn’t hard to figure out that 50 “chips” equals one dollar. In these games, management delivers the money to the table and literally walks away to let the players take care of business among themselves. By agreeing to the payouts ahead of time, the players play the closest approximation of a cash game that can legally be allowed. Management can’t participate in the payout — that would place them in violation of the law, which requires that a tournament have established payouts. It’s a tournament, but it’s a cash game, it allows for players to go all-in and make bets of more than two dollars, even though they aren’t really playing with money at all. Some serious players heartily prefer this game over the $2 maximum bet games, Chalupa explained, because it allows for deeper strategy. Making bets large enough to frighten off other players is a key part of the game, and that part of the game is lost completely in the “legal” state games where the player’s only options are to bet $2, raise $2, or fold. If there is already $20 in a pot, what’s $2 more? “That’s why the [limit] game sucks,” said Chalupa. “Call, call, call, call, call. I can’t make a move to get someone off a pot, because it makes no sense to fold.” Hence the appeal of the 60/50 game: Chalupa would argue that even though the bets are higher, the element of risk is diminished, because instead of “just gambling” he can play poker. Broken down further, the money can be followed easily in this kind of game. If there are 10 players in a 60/50 game, then $10 of each player’s buy-in, a total of $100, is taken off the top for the house. The charity of the evening gets 35 percent, or $35 out of the game, and the house gets $65 for the hour of play. The House (and Senate) always win New Hampshire loves its lottery games, said Rick Wisler, executive director of the commission. The state has the fifth-highest sales per capita in the country. When events like Powerball tip the scale with a large enough jackpot, the commission enjoys a windfall of its own. The largest “Powerball Fever” boom hit in 2001, when a $211 million prize sparked $12 million in ticket sales. “It’s one of those things that we can’t count on, but it’s nice when it happens,” said Wisler. Unlike charitable gaming’s $2 max bet, the lottery commission has enjoyed watching the ceiling rise on its scratch ticket games. The commission was recently granted approval to print and sell $30 tickets. Wisler said that high-stakes scratch tickets are very popular, with tickets costing more than $10 representing approximately 40 percent of sales this past year. “They seem to want to play for the bigger prizes,” said Wisler. “The bigger the ticket, the bigger the prize.” Though residents are allowed to “bet” in larger denominations in lottery games, the odds don’t offer the same advantage. Wisler said that for every dollar spent in lottery games, 63 to 70 cents goes to the prize pool. For scratch games, odds like that are about the norm. Compared to some table games, however, the odds don’t match up as well. To provide the same kind of house edge, a roulette wheel would need 15 to 21 zeros along with the red and black numbers to assure that the casino collected 30 to 37 cents of every dollar bet on red or black. Laws governing the payback to players, especially among lottery and slot-type games, are not uncommon. Maine requires a slot payback of 89 percent, New Mexico requires that slot machines provide a minimum payback of 86 percent to the player, and West Virginia requires a payback of 80 percent. All of these slots are allowed on for-profit businesses, however. Cleaning up He doesn’t win every time — any player who says he does is lying, Chalupa says, because there is an element of luck involved even for top players — but there are more winning nights than losing ones. Chalupa enjoys gambling, but to him and to those like him it is less of a game of chance than it is a game of strategy. Unlike any other game offered in a casino, poker can be beaten. It is possible to make a living sitting at a table and feasting on those who don’t take the time to learn the nuances of the game. The people who come out looking to gamble, in other words. Guys like Chalupa go where the game is, and that includes the home games played in basements, in garages and at dining room tables everywhere. In the event he can’t find a table, there’s always the Internet, which offers real cash games on offshore gambling sites 24 hours a day. With poker sets sold at every Wal-Mart and Target, poker on television at seemingly every hour, and newspapers running Las Vegas spreads on major sporting events, gambling may be illegal but it is far from criminal these days. “It’s fun” is all Chalupa will say about why he plays. Ask how much he clears any given year, and he’ll say he has no idea. He’ll tell stories about big wins, crushing losses, and that one hand that you’ll just never believe where he cracked aces with nothing in his hand, but as with any poker player, it all has to be taken with a grain of salt. The best in the game are masters of deception, and Chalupa is no different. It is part of what makes the lifestyle so appealing to many. Guys like Chalupa go where the game is. Right now, the game can be found just about anywhere. If you know where to look, that is.
|
Gambling terms
|
Navigation
