One my major interests is playing poker seriously. My main game is structured Texas Hold-em, played in casino poker rooms.
Poker players are about as strange as are postal history collectors to everyone who isn't one of them. And finding other serious players outside of a poker room is about as hard as finding another collector of your kind of postal history material outside of a major stamp show.
Talking with other poker players has contributed a lot to my understanding of the game. I'm not planning to open a poker forum on this site (though I've thought about it), since it wouldn't be of much interest to most of the visitors here. However, if you're serious about poker, and wouldn't mind sharing thoughts back and forth, please drop me an e-mail.
9/06 Notes
Due to TV, the craze (and it has been a craze) is now all for no-limit Texas Hold-em. Low-blind no-limit games have pretty much killed off the mid-limit games in most of the places that I've played lately.
For those of you who are contemplating taking a flyer at no-limit Texas Hld-em, I have one suggestion. Don't.
Okay, make that 2 suggestions. If you must take the plunge, for Pete's sake (and yours), do a good bit of reading and talking to real poker players before you put your money on the table.
What you see on TV is not the same game that you will sit down to in your local card room (for any number of reasons that I'll be happy to explain if you want to know), even though the equipment and rules are the same. I am not an accomplished no-limit player. I have probably only about 400 hours in that format as opposed to a few thousand in limit Hold-em games. But, I brought in enough understanding and experience from the limit game to have some feel for the no-limit game. In part because of this, but probably even more because of the misconceptions brought to the table from TV by the new players, I have been doing okay in the no-limit format. And in the past year I've seen most of the newbies get chewed up and spit out by the players who understood what they were doing. (Not every time, of course -- a fire plug with 4 Aces can usually beat the best player at the table. Luck is still a big part of the game.)
In one of the poker books that I read early-on, long before the TV-induced craze, it was speculated that the no-limit game would eventually die out because the good no-limit players were so much better than the poor no-limit players that the poor ones would be killed off too quickly to sustain the game. (In the long run, good players playing good players only enrich the house as they pass money back and forth over the alligator. Being profit-oriented, the god layer will then look for a better game.) The tremendous influx of new/poor players over the last year or two has certainly made for good pickings for the sharks (and even for the squid, which is how I see myself). But survival of the fittest works: lately I am seeing a smaller percentage of bad players at the table. It will be interesting to see if, 5 years from now, there are enough no-limit fish left to make it worthwhile for the sharks.
3/08 Notes
It seems to me that Darwinian selection has been working very well in the world of no-limit Hold-em. In areas where the player pool is primarily local, the two years have seen the vast majority of the weak players either die out (okay, be wiped out; it is a predatory, game after all) or get better. This means that the average low-level ($1-2 blinds) no limit Hold-em game has become much tougher than it used to be. It will be interesting to see whether the players who did not get better will return to limit games, or whether they will simply abandon live, casino/cardroom-based, poker.
I've played in Biloxi, MS quite a few times in the past couple of years. All of my play has been at the Beau Rivage casino, which has a very vibrant and well-run card room. (Games are typically 1-2 and 2-5, with the occasional 2-5-10 no-limit Hold-em; 4-8 limit Hold-em; and 5-10 pot limit Omaha. There are also about a half dozen tournaments each week. You'll still need to go to Tunica almost any night that you want to play a mid-limit Hold-em game.) These games contain a pretty good percentage of non-residents in the evenings, notably from Florida, Georgia and Texas.
In addition to the Beau Rivage, the IP (formerly Imperial Palace) Casino and at the Hard Rock Casino also have poker rooms (established in the IP, just getting started at the Hard Rock). There may be others in the Gulfport-Biloxi area, but I've heard nothing about them.
Given the amount of casino money being poured into Biloxi (vs. the lack of recent development in Tunica) plus the greater entertainment options on the Gulf Coast, I would be surprised if, absent another hurricane disaster in the next 5 years, Biloxi-Gulfport failed to displace Tunica as the major casino (including poker) destination in the South.
Since my previous note I've also played a couple of multi-day sessions at the Casino Arizona poker room just outside Scottsdale, AZ (http://www.casinoarizona.com/), and I'm tremendously impressed by the room there. It has about 45 tables, and one night I counted 25 of them in action at 3 in the morning. It is very well run, and you can find mid-to upper (20-40, 40-80, even 60-120 on occasion) limit Hold-em games there most nights, along with low-limit Hold-em and Omaha games. No limit Hold-em is illegal in Arizona, so their main replacement for no limit is a $5-150 spread limit game, which is quite popular there. This takes a little getting used to, in that early aggressiveness can result in a pot so large that you can't force anyone off a draw later on with the maximum $150 bet.
There are in fact 2 Casino Arizona locations, both just East of Hwy 101 . The one with the poker room is just off of Indian Bend Road. There is no hotel at this location at the moment, but I'm told that there will be one within a year or two. Meanwhile (and maybe even after -- it's that good), The Inn at Pima (http://www.zmchotels.com/pima/index.php), about 2 miles away from the casino, has an excellent rate for people holding a Casino Arizona player card. It's a very nice facility, with a good staff, some shuttle service to the casino and a little food included in the room rate.