L Club Is Really Gone — No False Alarm

[shipitfish]

So, while the U Club remains open, the L Club was in fact raided on Thursday night! I was actually there that night; W.D. and I couldn't be gladder that we left early to head over to the H Club!

I am sure this was a bust, because there was a a post on Craig's List, a comment in my journal, and W.D. himself stopped by after work yesterday to play a half only to find them gone and not answering the phone.

This club had a number of questionable policies and practices. I heard a rumor that the house people, who often played in the game when they should have been paying attention to the customer needs, were cheating. I doubt this was true, but what I do believe is that they structured table assignment to get a pyramid scheme going whereby extremely weak players dumped stacks to mediocre players who then would be placed at tables with big stacks than they could lose chips to the house players. They implemented this scheme through a creative and strange “must move” policy. (It was unlike any must-move setup I've ever seen at any casino I've visited, in part because the floor manipulated and changed the order of people's moves. They would also arbitrarily suspend the must-move policy for a few halves depending on who was where.)

I can't say I'm sad to see the club go. They had bad customer service, were rude to the customers, and treated their dealers badly. They flaunted their existence on public fora, so it's not surprising that they eventually got busted. I just hope this isn't a beginning of another round of city-wide busts.

Comments

[shipitfish.livejournal.com]

It should be noted that in another blog, I have gotten into a discussion about this. I will summarize my additional comments on this matter below:

As I've said in the post, I don't think there was cheating going on at the All In Card Club (AICC, or as I called in my journal, the L Club). I want to be clear that I think the rumors were false. I believe that maybe there was an ulterior motive by the staff to manipulate the must-move structure to get fish with big stacks in front of house players. I would not (and have not) classify it as cheating. I do think it was a manipulative and inappropriate way to run a club. AICC was poorly run no matter what way you look at it.

As for why people thought there was cheating going on, I can only speculate. I really think that poor floor decision-making and organization can leave a bad taste in people's mouths about such things. For example, AICC often used decks long after they became beat up and should have been retired; people wonder why this is and begin to worry. One guy voicing the rumors claimed to me they were marked decks; I doubt this is true, but if they changed decks more often, he'd have no basis to speculate. The goofiness of the poorly implemented must-move structure, even if it was pure incompetence (and not "fish moving" as I've suggested), looks like something weird is going on. People wonder why it is that house players won't give up their seat for other players. (Once I and a friend showed up at the club and they told us we'd have to wait, even though two house players were in the game!) These kinds of bad decisions on part of management breed rumors.

I'm one to always attribute to incompetence rather than malice. Perhaps I'm going overboard saying that the must-move manipulation was malice and not sheer incompetence. But, it's no surprise that this false rumors got started; when you make a lot of mistakes in running a business, people are wont to speculate widely about why.