Evolution of a card room

[Rico Suave]

I live in Tulsa OK, and about 6-8 months ago, the first card room in the area went up -- Cherokee Casino. It is a decent size room with 20+ tables. When I played there the first month it was open, they were spreading tons of 4/8 HE tables, 3-5 10/20 tables 1-2 20-40 tables, and several 1/2 No limit (maybe a couple of 2/5 no limit) and a smattering of stud and omaha. The room was absolutely packed on weekends.

Now, fast forward 6 months and the scene is quite different. Another smaller card room opened up and now you rarely have to wait to get a seat. But the main problem is that now have trouble even getting a 6/12 game going. Sometimes on saturday night they do, but usually 4/8 is the highest limit game they get going! WTF? It seems crazy to me that the games would dry up so quickly.

So my question.....is this typical of card rooms in small markets? --That is, do they have trouble getting even medium small stakes games going? Or will the consisitency of the bigger games come with time...as the player base grows a bit and the local poker market evolves? I gotta say, I am pretty disappointed that I finally live 15 minutes from a card room (and a decent sized one, at that) and the biggest limit game is 4/8. [img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img]

--Rico