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.
