Baby No-Limit Holdem Game at Lucky Chances

Lucky Chances Casino, in Colma, California, is now spreading a small-buyin no-limit Texas hold'em game.

The structure is $1 blind on the dealer button, $1 middle blind and $2 big blind, with action starting at $4 to go. The minimum buy-in is $40 and the maximum is $100. You can only buy more chips if you have less than $100 in front of you, and only enough to bring your stack up to $100. Unlike the larger NLHE games at Lucky Chances, players may not kill, and new players do not need to post to get a hand. There's no rake or jackpot drop; instead there is a $6-per-half-hour time charge, collected when dealers change.

Except for the blind structure, peculiar to Northern California lowball and NLHE games, the game is structured identically to the no-limit games one finds at online poker sites, such as PokerStars or UltimateBet.

Lucky Chances' management is clearly hoping to capitalize on the interest in no-limit hold'em generated by poker games on television such as the World Poker Tour.

I am told that they began to spread the game last Wednesday (April 7). On Friday night, the game was lively and spirited, with a significant list of players waiting to get in. The quality of play was about what you might expect, i.e. terrible – not quite as bad as you'd find in the dime-and-quarter-blind games on PokerStars, but still pretty easy to beat over time. Be prepared to weather some outrageous beats, but on the whole and overall solid play is going to win the money.

I have no clue whether or not the game is going to be sustainable. No-limit poker is notorious for the ease with which the better players can take the poorer players' money. The game might burn out its player base really quickly. On the other hand, if no-limit hold'em on television continues to attract new players into cardrooms, this game might turn out to be sustainable over the long haul.

Grab your rods and reels and your best lures, folks! The fish are biting at Lucky Chances.

Addendum: Tommy Angelo points out that, aside from the blind structure, this game is structured identically to the small NLHE games now being played in Los Angeles cardrooms.

(Updated to add time charge info)