[Tom Bayes]

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As far as comps go, I actually managed to find my card in my wallet (I had only been there once, about 3 years ago). The floor guy said you get the standard dollar per hour, however you can use it on anything in the place - hotel room, gift shop, concert tickets, and any restaurant. You can also accumulate comps, it's not use it or lose it.

I asked one the floor guys if they were going to spread a no-limit game. He said a couple of people had expressed interest but not enough to open a game that night, but he expected to get a one going on the weekend. I said "What are you thinking of having, 1/2, 1/3, 2/5?" He looked at me with a blank stare. I said "You know, the blinds - one dollar/two dollar", etc. He said "Oh no-no-no, if we did a no limit game, blinds would be like 5,10,25." I'm like "oh wow." Then the dealer standing next to him says "Yeah I think I heard a buy-in of $300-500" and the floor says "yeah, somewhere around $300-500 for the buy-in". So clearly there's a disconnect there somewhere, since I've never heard of a capped buy-in above 2/5, and if there was one for 5/10 or 10/25 it would be a lot higher than 300-500.



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Yeah, I've found a fair number of floorpeople in newer poker rooms in the Midwest that aren't terribly knowlegable about poker terms. The poker room at Harrah's Metropolis in southern Illinois opened about 5 or 6 weeks ago. I went on the 1st weekend and asked what games were being spread. Of the four tables, I was told 3 were $4/$8 limit and one was a "5 and 10" no-limit game. I thought this meant the blinds were $5/$10, which would make the game too big for me. Later I found out the blinds were $2/$5 (more reasonable for a small room in this part of the country) and that the person said $5/$10 because that was the size of the minimum bets preflop/flop and turn/river.

Another time I was at Casino Aztar Misery in Caruthersiville, Missouri (that's in the bootheel of extreme SE Missouri). The floor person told me they were spreading a "5 and 10" Omaha high game. I asked if it was limit or pot-limit. The guy looked at me like I was speaking Greek and just repeated "It's 5 and 10". Some regular overheard and told me it was limit, which made sense because that little low-roller boat couldn't support a $5/$10 PLO game.

Oh, and no such thing as chip runners at Harrah's in southern Illinois. They have a weird thing where the chips that are raked off go in the dealer's tray rather than into a locked box. You can buy chips from the dealer if there are enough in the tray. If there aren't enough chips in the tray, then you have to go to the other side of that level of the boat to buy chips at the cage.

And we get a whole $0.75/hour in comps.