New York City Poker Room Reviews -- Lower East Side

[Ed. note: This is the fifth in an ongoing series of reviews of the major New York City Poker Rooms. Due to the quasi-legality of these games, no room will be mentioned by name or specific address. While I realize these restrictions limit the usefulness of the reviews, I also respect that most of these rooms are trying to operate without drawing much attention to themselves. Anyone interested in learning more specifics about any club should contact me directly.]

[UPDATE: May-2-2005. The LES club is CLOSED. Whether this is because someone had a heart attack and died there recently, or just because they lacked enough business, I'm not sure. I'll try to find out if they're reopening elsewhere.]

Well, I did *not* make it to a new room on Saturday night like I planned. I forgot that it was Halloween weekend and that I had agreed to attend a party in Hobo-land Hoboken. It was a fun party, but since Sunday night is reserved for the Above Malibu II ring game, I didn't get a chance to visit my latest room, located in the Lower East Side, until tonight. My companion for the evening's cardplay was supposed to be Above Malibu's Deke, but he failed to materialize. Never one to turn down an opportunity to play some poker, I pressed on solo.

The LES room has been open since April. In fact, I blogged about it once before, immediately upon my return to the Big Apple. How sad is it that it took me over five months to make a visit?

The club is very inconspicuous, located in an unmarked apartment building within a five-minute walk of the Delancey Street F station. The only way to know you're even at the right place is from the building number. A buzzer (with security camera) outside the building is unmarked. After smiling for the camera, I was buzzed into the building. Two flights of stairs led to a door through which I could hear the soothing clicking of poker chips.

Mullansky (of Above Malibu) had given me an idea what to expect when I walked in, but I was still somewhat surprised. I was in a floor-through apartment. No walls -- presumably, they had been taken down -- but the remnants of the kitchen were still there, almost opposite the door through which I entered. The bathroom was to the left, near a large window obscured by vertical blinds, and the bulk of the club was to the right.

The bulk of the club consisted of four, blue felt poker tables and four television screens, one in each corner of the main portion of the room. Two were tuned to Monday Night Football, so I had the pleasure of watching my beloved, sad sack Jets demolish the Miami Dolphins while I played. Fantastic. A counter arrayed with various snacks separated the kitchen area from the "main room", and a waitress busily moved between the two, serving coffee, tea and soft drinks.

A guy named Tony was seated at a desk and small table by the front door, and introduced himself when I arrived. He explained that there was one 4/8 table going, one 10/20 table going, and an interest list for "baby no-limit" that had five or six names. He said he was positive the no-limit game would get going within a half hour and invited me to sit and watch the Jets game while I waited. When I asked what the blinds would be, he said it was up to the players at the table when we started -- either 1/2 with a $250 max, or 2/5 (presumably with a $500 max). I was a bit skeptical about that, but Tony told me he felt that it would be a 1/2 night, and he was right.

Before my table started up, I plopped down at an empty table to watch the Jets game and take some mental notes on the club. What I found most interesting was that, unlike some of the other clubs I've visited, this one seemed to have a viable playerbase for limit games -- and not just low limits, either. The 10/20 table had a waiting list several names deep, and dry erase boards around the club trumpeted a 30/60 game on Tuesday nights and 20/40 on other nights of the week. Mention was also made of one-table NLHE tournaments, for $150 and $50, on Thursdays, and of course there were the obligatory NLHE multi-table tournaments, for $100 and $40 (rebuy). The structure sounded pretty decent -- 2000 in starting chips -- but there was no mention of what the blinds were, other than that they increased every twenty minutes. When I bought in, the room manager, an amiable guy named Tony, mentioned a freeroll tournament scheduled for Saturday, but alas I already have way too many commitments on Saturday as it is.

Within twenty minutes of my arrival, a 7-handed 1/2 NLHE game got underway with time charges of $4 per half hour. Since the game started at twelve past the hour, we were charged only $2 for the first eighteen minutes of play. Like the Brooklyn room I reviewed, the club used only one deck per table. Slow, slow, slow. Thankfully, there was a decent amount of action. Not insane action, mind you, but enough that big hands got paid.

With a max buy-in of $250, I elected to start with $200 and told myself that under no circumstances was I going to reload. If I played poorly and pissed it all away, or suffered some massive suckout, so be it. Turns out I never dipped below $170. I played much, much tighter than I have been playing recently, helped out by a run of solidly average cards. I did not raise a single hand for an hour and a half. I limped a few -- QJ a few times, a couple of suited aces and some other medium connectors -- but not a single raise. I think I dragged two small pots, one when my T9o on the button flopped trips, and the other when I played blind from the CO in a 6-way pot and took it down uncontested with a $15 flop bet on a board of A-J-x. I peeked at my cards afterwards: T5o.

The one thing I'll say about folding lots of hands is that it gives you plenty of time to study your opponents. The table filled out to 10-handed pretty quickly. The 1-seat and 2-seat were Asian players who knew each other. They were solid and not particularly tricky. The 1-seat was acting the role of professor, Mr. I-Have-Got-My-Shit-Together. Shrug. Like I said, he was solid, but not particularly tricky.

I was in 3. A short buy-in in 4 was terrible. He raised from the BB to $15, got two callers, and then all three of them checked the whole way to the river. He showed QTs; they each had Kx. Nobody paired up. The 5-seat was a tight Indian player. A $20 raise from him meant a Group 1 hand; a $5 raise was a pot-building raise.

6 and 9 were both weak players that at least had some common sense. The same couldn't be said for 7, 8 and 10. They were definitely the soft spots at the table. The number of river bets they called when they were obviously beat was staggering. By himself, the 7-seat reloaded at least three times. And there I was, unable to connect with a flop! The two small pots kept me level, despite the time charges, as I waited and waited until I finally took down a couple of decent pots on back-to-back hands with TT and 88.

When I left at midnight, I was up $100. Even though two other players stood up from the table at the same time, players were still streaming in and out of the front door, leading me to believe that our vacant seats would be filled quickly.

After all was said and done, here's what the survey said --

Location: Not bad, as the Delancey-Essex F/J/M station is within five minutes. However, that's it. If you don't have convenient access to those subway lines, you're stuck with cabbing it, as there's nothing else even remotely close.
Hours: M-F, 7 til late; Sat 5 til late; closed Sunday
Club Atmosphere: Comfortable. Because it was formerly an apartment, the room feels like an oversized home game.
Extras: Soft drinks and snacks.
Quality of Play: Average, some decent players
Tournament Structure: Unknown, but looked decent
Cash Games: 4/8, 10/20, NL every day; higher limits (20/40, 30/60, $1500max NL) once or twice a week. Three full tables at midnight on a Monday night.
Worth Your Time?: Yes