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Brantford or Rama?
Hey everyone,
I am planning on going to the casino tonight to play a little low limit, which one would you recommend and do you know what they have at those casinos. BTW I live in Brampton so it is about an hour drive to each.
Thanks
I am planning on going to the casino tonight to play a little low limit, which one would you recommend and do you know what they have at those casinos. BTW I live in Brampton so it is about an hour drive to each.
Thanks
Comments
i shall hunt down the blue airwalks! haha
People chase cards with bottom pair, hoping to match up or make trips.
They also chase like A high on Kxx boards. I saw some guy chase KT on Q235 board and hit it, 1 guy was pissed because he had AQ (and raise preflop, flop, and turn).
I was in MP and called JTo, and BB raised I call. Like 5 see flop
98x rainbow flop. Someone bets, and raises, and I call because there is enough money in pot (like $35+) 4 see turn
turn another low rag EP bets, I call $5, person fold, LP calls.
River is a Q (I got the nuts, but for some reason I thought only the K or 7 would help me) EP checks, I check, LP folds, I look at hand and bored and am like OMG OMG I checked the nuts!!! EP is shows 9Ts and says thanks guy, you saved me $5!!They're so bad, they CONFUSE ME!?!?
Did come up $72 on my session last Wednesday. Left my house @ 930 am, got to Woodside Square @ 10am (to take bus, cost $5 back only, free there). Got there my 12, sat down my 1230 and left @ 445 to go back home (bus leaves @ 5) and I had to go somewhere. So not bad a day. Hopefully it will be as profitable on Monday!!
Why not just play in Brantford?
Rama was fun; I made $50 playing the 2-5 for about 2 hours.
Getting up there and getting start was a real drag. 2 hours to get there because of the traffic and then 1 hour with my name on the list.
Got lucky and got on a good table.
Lot's of people would call pre-flop and the flop but then would back off on the turn. ($2 and $2 are ok to call but $5 was too rich for them).
Not many people where chasing cards and I didn’t get any bad beats. My wife wasn’t so lucky, she had 3 of a kind (3 fours) with Ace kicker on the flop and some one who only had a pair of 5’s (which he got on the turn) called her all the way to get a straight on the river and she was betting huge on the flop. She wasn’t too happy about that but at the end of the night she was up $30.
Earlier on I got a few monster pairs (KK, QQ,) or got a good flops (K, 10 in hand on the BB and K, 10, 2 comes out on the flop) which a lot of people tried calling me all the way and then paid in the end, so players always thought I had the cards and would start folding once I would raise. I later used that to my advantage raising weak pairs and having the table then fold to me.
I was very surprised cause towards the end I never had to show my cards and never made it to the river. Overall I had a lot of fun.
1) quality of play -
Brantford 5/10 had a slightly tighter table than at Rama and a little less chasing. I don’t know that this reflects on how the play is there normally, as a couple people at the table commented on how tight the table was. Actually I still wouldn’t call it tight, but it was slightly tighter than Rama. I would say that instead of having 4 guys who called almost every flop like there would be at Rama, there were 3 guys at Brantford who would call fairly often but not as often as the loose players at Rama. These players at Brantford might call a bet on the flop that they shouldn’t, but would usually fold to a bet on the turn if they didn’t improve, whereas at Rama they would chase to the end.
At Rama 2/5 most pots go to a showdown, at Brantford there were a reasonable amount of hands where everyone folded after the flop. At Rama you would more likely have 3-4 people going to the showdown, at Brantford it would be more likely to see the showdown being heads up. You could get people to lay down hands at Brantford. Don’t waste your time trying that at Rama’s 2/5. It can be done... but not very often.
Surprisingly, some of the worst players to join my 5/10 table at Brantford would only sit in for about 45 minutes before getting called to the 10/20 table. Anyways, I haven’t played enough at Brantford to give a true comparison. I’ll also have to see how the 5/10 table is at Rama.
2) tokes
Rama - it probably averages out to 4 people in the pot to showdown, so the pots were larger (in relative terms since I was at a lower limit). People tip $1 almost without fail, except for the occasional small pot.
Brantford – there were more small pots where no one tipped. A lot of players never tipped. On larger pots, I would say 1/3 of the players would always tip $1, 1/3 would sometimes tip $1, and 1/3 would never tip.
3) “chopping†the blinds
Brantford – at my table at least, there would be occasions where it folded all the way around to the blinds. I’d say this happened once every two rounds or so. When this happened, people would typically agree to take back their blinds. In fact, most people would agree to that even when they clearly had a hand that you would normally be very happy with i.e. I saw a guy agree to it and say “what the heck†from the big blind even though he had KQs (he showed his hand). No one took offence to the one guy who said “let’s play†one of these hands, but it seemed to be the general agreement not to play these hands, even if you had better than average cards.
Rama – I don’t know that I ever saw everyone fold to the blinds at Rama. I thought about this for a while because I found the Brantford “chop the blinds†scenario strange.
4) the dealers
Brantford – I found the dealers a little bit better at Brantford. They seemed less bored and robotic than at Rama. I did see one big mistake where the dealer dealt the turn card before the last player to act had a chance to bet, which he was going to do. He won the pot after the turn, but I think he lost out because I believe he would have had a few callers after the flop. I didn’t see any other mistakes, exposed cards, etc. in my 4.5 hours at the table.
Rama – maybe it’s just at 2/5, but a lot of the dealers seem like robots. They seem to switch dealers even more often than at Brantford, but it doesn’t seem to help. I found about 1/3 of the dealers friendly and more involved in the game, and these dealers seem to make fewer errors, but I have seen a fair amount of cases where the dealers exposed cards accidently, dealt to the wrong players, dealt to vacant seats, etc.. I haven’t seen one of these incidents really affect the outcome of a hand. In fairness to the dealers, the 2/5 game at Rama is more likely to have people not following the action, betting out of turn, making string bets, etc. etc. so I wonder if that’s why they look like they want to get away from the 2/5 table as soon as they can.
4) the atmosphere
Maybe it was the table I was at, but Brantford seemed a little more like a home game at times. Most of the players at my table were local regulars, and they knew each other, the dealer, or other players around at the other tables. At Rama, there are more tourists on bus tours, the table had a lot less talking, and there were more people who drove in from Toronto and area. I think you are more likely to run up against first time B&M poker players at Rama and people are intimidated so they don’t talk much.
Once I've played 5/10 at Rama I'll see if I can add further to this.
If you're talking about 5-10 here, I'd say you had a very unusually tight table. If 2-5, even moreso.
I typically see the blinds chopped 0 or 1 times *per session* at Brantford 5-10.
And it's almost invariably due to the fact that one of those 100% VP$IP (or close to it) players sees it folded to them on the button, and decides to "let them chop it". This amuses me because the player is seeing every other flop anyway, and now decides to pass in probably one of the most +EV (or least -EV) spots for a call (prefereably a raise, but this ain't gonna happen from the chronic must see the flop player) that he/she could have.
This is a great thread I think. It's interesting to see comparisons between these two poker rooms in particular because it seems like a large number of people have a pretty much equal choice between the two based on travel distance alone.
ScottyZ