Yet another story from a gambler's life

[William]

The biggest game in town was held 3 times a week in this luxurious appartment. Everything you wished for was provided to you. Alcohol, all the food you could eat, girls, you name it. If they didn't have it in the place, they would send somebody to get it for you.
Of course service had it's price and at this place the real challenge was going home with more in your pockets than the fare of a cab.

The club owner was somebody you definitely didn't wanted to mess around with. Either you accepted things as they were in his club or you could try to find a game somewhere else.
That was of course imposible unless you wanted to play at a much lower limit. Other big games where not allowed in town and the few that had tried to start one had enjoyed their new business for a few days before having a couple of gorillas knock at the door and gently explained that it truly was not such a good idea as they thought it would be.

Normally at the game you would find the following: the owner itself, sharks the owner allowed to play; usually 2/3 good players that had to pay up to 75% of their winnings to the house to be allowed to participate, a few well-off suckers that were addicted to poker and had no idea what was going on, and of course, the "piece de resistance", the co-owner.
The late was normally an very rich guy who liked to play poker, played poorly and showed up every time. He usually lasted something like 6 months, then was replaced by someone fresh".
The deal with these guys was that he was made a business associated. He had to come and play every time to get the game started, and received half of the house rake at the end of the session (minus expenses of course). He had the feeling that it was his game. That made him very proud.
In order to obtain such privilege, he usually had to pay a one-time large amount of money, but as it was explained to him, his share of the business would soon cover that investment. Needless to say that normally the guy would lose like 10 times his share of the rake every evening and after a few months would explain that he was too busy to keep playing all night several times a week and wished to become a silent partner and of course, that was not the deal and nobody would hear from him anymore for a long time.
By that time, a new partner candidate had been spotted (maybe some sucker that had won some big tourney) and to everybody's satisfaction his association with the house would be celebrated by a small cocktail party before the game. The pretty girls always seemed to like new business partners...

The rake was what we could call a "Mood rake" There was no fixed amount you knew would be taken from the table. Depending on the owner's mood and his luck at the game, he would just grab some chips from the pot whenever he felt like it and if you were not satisfied with the way things were run, you could always have one of the 2 Mike-Tyson-look-alike-fellows over there explain to you why it made perfect sense. As far as I remember, the rake for about 10 hours of play would be 25/30 grands and some times the game would go on for several days.

The club owner was a very sympathetic and popular person. He had a hard way of running his business, but he didn't hide how things were done and you were not forced to come if you didn't want to. He held all the good cards in the deals he made, but once you had agreed on something he was fair. Of course to be allowed to show up at his game if you were a winning player was another story. It was expensive and the waiting list was long.

For some that place was a gold mine, for others it was the road to ruin. Amounts won and lost were huge every time and because most of the winners were house players, one clever guy became very, very wealthy over the years.

[Chairman Wood]

boooring...

[tubalkain]

Flesh it out into a ten episode miniseries and pitch it to ESPN... they need something to drive the ratings that they lost when Tilt ended.