Now the whole point in this, I figure, is that in effect there is never a winner; Tony comes out with money either way. Okay, so Davey Scatino is a degenerate gambler and ultimately ends up destroying his life by getting too much "ziti" into Tony. What would happen if Frank Sinatra, Jr. lost out and had to borrow money from the Family? As he is more high-profile than Scatino, would Tony bust him out too?

And Silvio and Paulie: what if they lost big time on the game? I really don't understand how this whole thing works. Plawrence, (or anybody) you're the man at this thing! Some help, here?

Mick

The game is probably rigged--crooked, fixed. Tony and his guys can't lose. That's why they split up the winnings. Silvio's in the game to provide some "excitement" for the suckers--"gee, I'm playing cards with a real Mafia guy, woweeee!" The main objective is to take the money from rich suckers, such as doctors and businessmen, who keep a lot of cash on hand because they never report it to the tax people. They also get rich by advancing loans to suckers at outlandinsh interest rates. Tony and his crew don't aim to get people like Davey, who aren't real executives. But if they do, they bust 'em out: a sucker is a sucker.

Thanks, Turnbull! Clears everything up for me!

Mick

If memory serves me correctly, Tony did not exactly "encourage" Scatino to join the game!

Without putting it in large, neon capital letters, he was pretty much warned not to get involved, for the exact reasons above!

Paulie also plays, to add on to the excitement.

TB, does Johnny Sack get a share, or can he lose ?

My impression of "real" Mob life is that no Mob operator gives anything to another Mob family without an explicit understanding. We saw that later in Sack's demands for a piece of the real estate deal Tony got into thanks to the State Senator's tip. My guess is that Sack got nothing from the executive card game unless he demanded it, and came up with a good reason for his demand. He could lose, too.

Just watched this episode again. When Paulie is counting the money at the end, Silvio claims that two boxes of ziti (two grand) came from his pocket, so I assume that yes, Sivlio was part of the game and gave up his money. The Bada Bing would have kept him from debt, had he lost.

Mick

Forgive me for bringing up an old post.

The way I figured the game worked, was that everybody brought their own personal money into the game for the profit or loss for themselves. The way the Family would profit would be through the initial $5K that the players pay to buy themselves into the game. But also I noticed a seperate pot in a which a percentage of the betting pot would be put in. For example, if a $5 grand was up for grabs, maybe a couple of hundred of that goes into a seperate pot which will be Tony's and Uncle Juniors take.

Any good poker game,run on or by a
specific group,such as the mafia
or any other oc group goes as follows,
no.1-the house sets a entry fee,you pay
this to sit at the table,the funds buy
food,drink and whats left goes to the
house.dealer included.
no.2 each player buys a set amount of
chips or checks as that goes.
no.3 as a player begins to slowly lose his
checks it is possible that the house will
front the unlucky bastard at some
rediculous rate,100 on the 1000.00
or 6 on the 5,either way the house wins
because there is always 1 poor mook
who can't stop,that game was not fixed,
just not to true too form,still a
good episode though.And you always play
the same game,all night,7-card-2up
4down-last card your choice.

How did I ever miss this thread?

Turi comes closest to the mark, here.

All of these games work the same way:

Players do not pay an entry fee. Rather, a specific percentage of the money in each pot is removed before the winner of the hand is paid. That money, (The "cut" or "rake" or "chop"), belongs to the house.

It's to the advantage of the house that the game last as long as possible, with an even distribution of winnings among the players.

Think of it this way: If 8 people sit down to play in a game with a $5.00 betting limit, and they each begin with $100, there is a total of $800 at the table. If the average pot is $60, and the chop is 5%, then after each hand the house earns $3.00. After 10 hands, there is only $770 left at the table. After 100 hands, the house is ahead $300, and there is only $500 left among the 8 players (or however many of the original 8 are still left).

If every player wins one hand out of eight, and every pot is about the same size, after about 270 hands (15-20 hours, maybe) the house has all of the original $800.

But if one player were to win almost every hand, the other plays would all be broke, and the game would be over before the house had a chance to get all the money.

Those are the two extremes. In practice what generally happens in one of these games is the house is the biggest winner, there are one or two or maybe three smaller winners, and everyone else goes home broke.

As eddietheplumber points out, the house can also make money with the sideline of loaning more money, at very high interest rates (generally between 2 and 6% per week, depending on how risky the loan is) to losing players.

As far as cheating in general, and in the Sopranos game specifically, a few points:

1) The house doesn't need to cheat
2) Players playing at this level would presumably be experienced enough to figure out that they wee being cheated even if they couldn't figure out how, and would never play anymore.
3) To cheat at Poker, you need a very experienced and professional card "mechanic", one who can stack the deck, or deal from the bottom, or deal "seconds", or do any number of other things.
4) All of these games, the Sopranos included, employee a dealer, to prevent the players from handling any cards other than their own, which keeps the game honest by guarding against just this type of thing.
5) The dealer at the Sopranos game was certainly no professional card mechanic.

Plaw, I can't believe you missed it either. :p

Perhaps it's because I'm young and have no experience of Poker, but I find all the "rules" hard to follow when written down. I must just be an active and visual learner.

Mick

The only rule you need to remember: stay away from card games.

Yes, indeed, Turnbull! I don't even play Snap!

Mick

PLAWRENCE-I RESPECT your theory on these games
and agree to some point as to your basic
explanation,but I have never had the house
take a % of the pot,for one there is not enough
money involved for the house to make it worth
while,no2 I know this was an example but
you never sit a group of 8 people down at
a game of 7 card,8times7 is 56,not enough
cards in the deck.
WE have a place in little italy or MURRAY-HILL
as the old timers call-it,where the local
family underboss runs a place called the
card shop,its been going on for 35 years,
its 50$ to sit down on the weekdays and
350$ on the weekends,if a player loses the
next puts down his 50 or 350 and sits in,
there could be 3 games going at once,easily
this house walks out a 2500 to 3000 ahead
on a friday night.With much respect to you I
have only seen games run like this,this is
what I know.

Eddie. I think you may be a little confused or mis-informed here. I can't be certain, obviously, how they do things in the game you use as an example, however I am certain about the following:

1) In a big enough game, it is most certainly worthwhile for the house to take a percentage. I should watch the episode again to be sure, but in the Sopranos game where Davey loses $30,000 (?), my guess is to lose that kind of money it would have to be something like a $200 limit game. In a game of that size, each pot would be a few thousand dollars, so it would be more than worthwhile for the house to take just 5% of each pot.

2) Every "organized" 7 card stud game I've ever been in--at local NYC "clubs", as well as in Atlantic City and Las Vegas--will allow eight players at the table. The thing is, players in these game almost always know what they are doing, so it is exceedingly rare, and I can't stress that enough, for all eight players to stay around for all seven cards. In the unlikely event that they do, then for the 7th and last card, the dealer uses the next remaining card from the deck, dealt face up, as a "common" card that everyone at the table uses.

3) I believe that you are mixing up a "fee" for playing, with a "buy-in". If they use chips at the game you are talking about, then the $350 on the weekends sounds like a minimum amount worth of chips that someone must buy before they are allowed to play. It's not fair to the other players in the game if, for example, they all sit down with $350 each, and someone else sits down at the game with only $50, because the person with the $50 has a chance to win all the money, but is risking far less.

No poker player in the world that knows what he's doing is gonna pay an up-front fee to sit down and play, because there is no guarantee how long the game will last. Suppose the game has me, a guy we'll call "Johnny The World's Greatest Player", and six suckers.

So "JTWGP" beats everyone, almost every hand, except me, because I won't get involved going against him because I know he's JTWGP. So after one or two hours 5 of the 6 suckers are out of the game, I'm about even, and Johnny is winning several thousand. So he picks himself and leaves too, since he doesn't care about the $350 entry fee because he's winning a ton. So I'm left with no game, and I'm out the $350.

BTW, Eddie, there's a store in NYC around Houston Street and Avenue A or B, called, I believe "Eddie The Plumber". Any connection?

I know the game you are talking about,
each player has common cards that are used
by all,this game has a specific name [?]
and yes the games are played that way,
I watch them on espn,the games played
at the card shop are buy-in games,plus
you must buy a set amount of checks,any
social club in the area runs the game
I am writing about,thats how we run these
games,we are not out to run 20 hour games
by no means,all games are timed and the winner
at each table will play each other for
the finally.Our games are different,thats all,
NO BIGGE.

That and to yell at people for sweeping up the cheese...

Nick

The game that you see on ESPN, Eddie, is "Texas Hold 'Em". That game is intentionally played with 5 upcards, which are common cards that everyone uses.

I was talking about the very rare situation in a 7 card stud game, where at least five of the eight players stay in for all seven cards, necessitating the use of one common card for everyone to use as their 7th card.

The type of game you are now describing, and i guess you wee describing before but I didn't realize it, where the winners of each table meet at a "final table", is really a "tournament" style game.

What I'm guessing the do is get, let's say 24 players, charge them $350 each to get in the tournament, and then seat them at 3 or 4 tables.

Then each player gets, let's say, $500 in "tournament chips", and start off playing a geme with a $20 maximum bet. Every hour or so, as some players accumulate more tournamnet chips at the expense of the other players, they raise the stakes.

Eventually, after about 3-4 hours of that I'd guess, there are maybe two players left at each table, or 6-8 players in total, who now hold all of the original $12,000 in tournament chips.

These remaining players get to sit at the "final table", and battle it out, again with the stakes being raised every hour so. The raising of the stakes periodically is what prevents the game from lasting forever.

Since the house had each of the 24 players in your game buy in for $350, there is $8,400 in the "prize pool". This has nothing to do with the $12,000 in tournament chips that were in play. Out of the $8,400, the house might keep maybe $2,400 as their share, and give the first, second, and third place finishers $3,000, $2,000, and $1,000, respectively, as their prizes.

And BTW, the Hold 'Em games on ESPN that you see are the "final tables" from a tournament which began with hundreds of players

I wouldn't say that the game was rigged or fixed. If it was you wouldn't get return players like Jr to come back and want to play. But like a Vegas/AC casino, the rules are set so the house has an advantage or there is a house percentage and it most always makes money. And of course, there's always the skim off of the houses winnings...