Why TPTA?

Florida poker has become the poster child of how a government of the people, by the people, and for the people can, in reality, be a hypocritical exercise in the rich getting richer, and the poor getting the shaft. As I sit here and contemplate the current atmosphere of Florida poker I begin to feel an uneasiness in the pit of my stomach. Things are not as they seem.

The legislators in this great state have bamboozled the public into thinking they are acting in their best interest. The lawmakers have put in place certain rules that are supposedly designed to protect the Florida poker player because he/she is unable to protect themselves. I can understand this line of thinking. There are many laws on the books designed to protect us from our own ignorance. One that comes immediately to mind is the seat belt law. Does anyone really think that wearing a seat belt is less safe than not wearing one? Probably not. But, still some people will not put them on because of the belief that "it could never happen to me". So, we now have a law requiring people to wear seat belts.

Let's get back to poker though. In Florida there is a rule which states a person may not buy into a game for more than $100. If you happen to lose that hundred dollar buy-in you can certainly buy back in for another hundred, but no more than one hundred at a time. Presumably, this is to stop a person from going completely off the deep end and spending the kiddies entire college fund on an alcohol induced gambling binge. I, however, believe there is a far deeper, and more sinister reason. Sinister, at least, from where I sit.

I am sure this law, or regulation, or rule, or whatever you wish to call it was designed not by lawmakers with the public in mind, but by the gambling lobbyists here in our state. If the lawmakers had the best interest of the public in mind they would have limited the blind structure in both limit, and no-limit hold em. A poker game is only as big as the blind structure allows. Instead, our state has zero limits on the amount of the blinds in any game. That is to say, a poker room could conceivably spread a game with a hundred dollar buy-in and blinds of 50-100. Talk about gambling! Of course, I have never seen this because even the dumbest poker players know that putting your whole stack in on the big blind would surely lead to disaster, eventually. It does not matter if you were to win the first three or four hands you played, eventually you would lose all of it, and you could only buy back in with a hundred!

The hundred dollar maximum buy-in does not stop people from losing the kiddies college tuition. It allows them to lose it more slowly. Now, guess who gets the lions share of the money lost. The poker rooms! Now, guess who hires lobbyists to convince our legislators to make these laws. The poker rooms! Why does the poker room get the lions share, you might ask. It is very simple.

The rake, or what the poker room takes from each hand as their revenue, is capped at 10% of the size of the pot, up to an amount of five dollars. This does not include the dollar taken for the bad beat jackpot, which is a problem of a different nature, and I will cover that another time. In an hour of play the poker dealer can put out between 30 and 40 hands per hour. At the lower end of the spectrum that is $150 per hour, coming off the poker table, and going into the coffers of the poker room, as well as the tax revenue for our state.

The state is doing a fine job of protecting the losing payer from giving his hard earned money over to a winning player, but the state is not helping the losing player to win. The losing player is going to still lose, but a higher percentage of the loss is going to go to the poker room, rather than another player. Score a victory for big business. Yippee, I'm thrilled.

This probably sounds like sour grapes coming from a winning poker player. It is. Basically, the state is saying "you can gamble, but we'll determine who the real winners are in this whole business". The poker rooms would love to have a situation where we all came to play, pay our $150 an hour in table rake, and then, at the end, split up whatever money is left so we can all come back and do it again tomorrow.

Here is what happens in a typical poker hand in a Florida poker room. One person picks up a good starting hand, let's say he has AA. He raises it to $15. This represents three times the big blind in this hypothetical 2-5 NL game. He now has $85 left. Usually, this raise will not force many people out of the hand before the flop as 3 or 4 people will routinely call. If three people call there is now $60 dollars in the pot and our hero has only $85 left. The flop comes of three small cards and our hero bets out $45. This represents 3/4 of the pot, and is a healthy bet. The only problem is that he will also bet this same amount with AK, or pocket 2's. So, anyone who has any resemblance of a hand, whether it be a made hand or a hand that is now a draw, should not fold here. So, usually two or three people will be all-in on the flop, and the "playing" of the hand is finished. This form of No limit poker is closer to blackjack than poker. If this is what our lawmakers envisioned when they wrote the laws, they should have made it clear from the start, either that or just allow us to play blackjack.

It's all a sham! Of course, we Florida players are just as much at fault because we blindly followed this path. We were jonesing for poker to be legalized in our state. We were willing to accept nearly anything they offered to us. Shame on us. Shame on me. Of course, some people made adjustments to their game. Some people, in an almost fanatical desire to make money playing a game they love, made radical changes to the way they approached this bastardization of No Limit hold em. It was out of this desire to win that "To Prevail Takes Apathy" was born.

Along with a search to find a way to win at Florida poker came the realization that this strategy can be employed in any no limit poker game, in any state. It is, in effect, a blocker to the hyper-aggressive players which dominate most games. It may very well change the way the game is played as a whole across the country. Keep your eyes open for people routinely limping in (not raising) with hands that are universally accepted as raising hands. You know, the big pocket pairs and the big aces (AK, AQ, AJ). When you spot this at a table, be sure to check out what the overly-aggressive players do in return. The game changes. The aggressive players become a little less aggressive as they are continually trapped into donating a large portion of their stacks to apathetic at the table. If the apathetic continue to win, then eventually there are no more pre-flop raises. Once the aggressive raiser figures out that the only ones willing to give him action are those folks that have him in a very bad spot, he will cut down his rampant raising of the pot pre-flop. He will limp in, along with others, and the play of the poker hand will take place post-flop, as it should.

Eventually the aggressive player will learn that skillful playing after the flop is more valuable than blind aggression before the flop. Maybe I should thank Florida, and our lawmakers. We are on the cusp of a poker revolution. Our lawmakers, and the poker lobbyists, are directly responsible. In their desire to get ALL of the money they have unwittingly changed the face of poker. I guess I don't blame them though, because I want ALL of the money too. I'm just not willing to lie, cheat, or steal to get it.

Don't hide behind the mask of protecting the idiots. Just admit that you have the poker rooms best interests at the heart of your decisions, not the people's. Admit it you lying, cheating, stealing bastards!!!

Rant done. I must remember to talk about the jackpot drop, but that is for another time.