S04E42 - Lodge Austin - Room Review

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Lodge review

Bomb Pots, H-E-B, Big Red

The Lodge owns the poker market in Austin. There is a small room nearby that has one table on average running. And a couple more within 15 to 30 minutes. But other than TCH they all are one or two table rooms.

Run very well.
The poker atlas system allows for getting on list up to one hour ahead of arrival. This lets them know when an influx of players is coming so they always have dealers on standby to open new tables. I don’t think I ever waited more than 5 minutes for a seat other than the early morning hours between 7am and 11am.

11 per hour to play. No discounts for paying up front.

They don’t come to harass you at the table if you haven’t paid your time in advance like many Texas rooms. You settle up with them when they leave as they track your playing time.

Discount. Weekdays from 8am to 11am they let you play free. Me and my pro friend did this every weekday the first two weeks. The games are so bad it’s not worth the $11 hourly savings. Can you profit? Sure. But it won’t be much per hour. Better to just play later when the games are their best.

Dealers.

I’ve come up with a way to score dealers moving forward in my room reviews. Every dealer than personally deals to me I’ll rate 1 to 10. And i take notes. At the end of my trip all add ill of them together and divide by number of dealers for an average score. The lodge scored very high with a 8.4 average.

Michael “all in” loud as hell. Talks nonstop to players slows the games way down. I was too his right and he was yelling across the room at someone right into my ear. Killing me. I’m not a fan of loud dealers or dealers who talk too much. He is both. But he is a very good dealer technically.

N. Won’t say full name. Worst dealer in the room. And the only bad dealer really. Seemed relatively new. Tried to talk and do conversation which he isn’t ready for. He need to just concentrate on the make. He really was a problem in bomb pots.

Floor / Brush
I found them all to do their jobs very well. One particularly interesting thing is the floor can pull up camera for any table right on their phone (or perhaps it’s a poker room phone or device) and review a hand right there in real time. Had this happen twice during my month of playing there and it really sped up getting rulings that required reviewing video.

Players

I was traveling with a pro grinder friend. We discussed the lodge 1/2 players at great length. After a month this is out conclusions.

There are a ton of solid players, good regs and pros.

There are a ton of nits.

There aren’t a lot of people punting massively.

The gamblers seem to be made up of a lot of players who Save the gamble for bomb pots. This isn’t optimum for the holdem hands. We saw it time and time again. Bad players who didn’t gamble much in holdem. And would just punt massively in bomb pots. If you are planing to play here, spend lots of time getting good at double board PLO bomb pots.

Players who play bad but leave when down a couple buy ins or up a couple. Only one really deep game in 19 days (sessions 16) I was amazed how many days I’d be 4 or 6 hours into a session and there may be one stack over 500. Everyone else still in the 200 to 400 range. This is so much different than nearly any other 1/2 game I play.

Hands per hour.

One hour between the two bombs and a dealer floor player thing we had 16 hands in an hour.

Saw many bomb pot hands that took 10 minutes. Many. On average it’s probably 5 or 6 minutes.

This one dealer (Nick) who was the worst in the room miscalculated a split bomb pot. Two hands later two players start discussing it and he stops dealing mid hand while they work it out. Not only did the damn bomb pot take 8 minutes. It was another two minutes discussion during a hand I had the betting lead in.

Food Drinks etc

Water and soft drinks are free.
No food other than chips and peanuts and beef jerky etc.

They sell beer. BYOB liquor and wine.

You can bring your own food. Or order Door Dash.

Security.

I always felt safe there. They have anywhere from 1 to 3 armed security in there depending on time of day. They have a station with a screen of all the security cam views and are always checking it. I assume they would walk you to your car if you asked. I never did.

Overview.
This is a massive room and games are always running. You won’t ever have to wait long for a seat.

Player pool is better on average than nearly any other 1/2 player pool I’ve played anywhere. It’s beatable for sure. But I’d expect my hourly to be 1/2 what it normally is when combining the players and the bomb pot effect.

One aside. Many many of the locals who have been playing there from day one world often lament how much better it was before Doug Polk and company took over. They talked about the games being softer. How free breakfast was served. How every night was a different dinner. Like taco night. Pizza night. Lasagne night. Etc etc. So while the room is massive and generating more income for the owners I’m sure, the long time locals missed the good old days of softer games and more being given back by the owners.

I’ll never return to Austin TX to play poker