It’s been a long time since I played in Washington, but the scene continues to evolve, however strangely. See, it’s all about the weird rules and regulations. Podcast guest Mannes N. gives us an update on the state of the games.
The most important details are the rules for the tribal casinos and the rules for non-tribals, which are particularly hard on the poker player. To complicate matters, the tribes have basically quit the poker business, taking the big bets with them, and forcing all the traffic into small rooms around (but not within) Seattle.
Basically, that’s why Eric Persson, owner of many of the small poker rooms, can punt your rake money off at a surprising rate. It’s a great time to own a poker room in Washington State.
Mannes regularly plays at the Caribbean and Fortune rooms, two of the most popular in the current Seattle poker market. He occasionally posts on his “Owlkeeper” blog about poker, mainly tournament trips to Vegas. Here’s a post regarding the local games.

Living in the Raleigh, NC area, Mickey and I started to frequent bar league freeroll tournaments (lots of fun) and landed in our first home game, a low stakes NL progressive-blinds game upping the blinds every 30 minutes.
My first live cash tournament was at Mirage, 2009. I fearfully deposited the $85 buyin and with about 23 runners won the event for something like $575. Needless to say I had no idea what I was doing, played like a passive nit and ran well.

In the second part of the pod, we go over a couple hands under the Spread Limit regime.
HH #1:
– Cardroom: Fortune Renton, 3/5, buyin cap 1,000, betting cap 300. Discuss the 300 constraint and if/how it should influence play.
– Stack: 1080 (216 BB)
– Setup: 8 handed, Villain is Vpiping higher than most of the table, no prior history
– Hero is in S4, Main V is S5 (using the S1=Small Blind convention)
Preflop:
– S3 limp/call
– Hero S4 with A6hh 20
– Villian S5 call, V’s stack covers me
– Pot 60 after $8 rake
Flop: 652 with one heart
– S3 check/fold
– Hero S4 check/call
– S5 40
– Pot 140
Turn: Qh
– Hero S4 check/call
– S5 80
– Pot 300
River: offsuit 8
– Hero S4 check/ action to be revealed
– S5 250
HH #2:
– Cardroom: Caribbean Kirkland, 1/3, buyin cap 590, betting cap 300. Caribbean recently became part of Maverick gaming owned by Eric Persson of high stakes cash game infamy. The clientele is generally older than that of Fortune, it also gets some of the local tech crowd.
– Stack 515
– Setup: 7 handed, early in the session
– Hero is in S2 (bb)
Preflop:
– S4 10. This is “Jack” a 70-ish fun player who was once ejected from another cardroom for smuggling hard liquor in his “water bottle”. Likely playing a linear range with a short stack of approx. $110.
– S7 call, s approx $400. When he sat down he was introduced by someone else as an “action player” and seemed to live up to the tagline so far.
– Hero S2 with AQo call
– Pot 30 after rake
Flop: A86 rb
– Hero S2 check/ call
– S4 20
– S7 call
– Pot 90
Turn brick – think it was a 2
– Hero S2 check / 165
– S4 40/ call for approx 80 all in
– S7 call/call leaving 200 behind
– Pot 500
River 5
– Hero S2 check/ action to be revealed
– S7 200 all in
Mannes is also a thoughtful commenter on my blog, I want to thank him and all those readers who like t...