Deputy Editor
The underground poker clubs in New York City aren’t hard to find. In fact, if your targeted ad profile looks anything like mine, you’ll be bombarded with invites the second your plane lands and you start checking social media. Are they worth visiting? Based on my experience, the answer is no. In fact, you might end up staying longer than you planned and against your will.
If you’re in New York City and want to play poker, you’re theoretically in for a long drive. Parx and Borgata are among the closest destinations for casino games, and they’re both a couple of hours away. Two MGM properties, National Harbor and Springfield, are even farther.
In reality, multiple poker clubs essentially operate in plain sight. They advertise openly and have Google Maps listings. Make a post asking for NYC poker action on Reddit, and an agent will pop into the thread and throw you a link to get the sign-up process started.
I recently took a trip to NYC with a fellow poker player. Curious about the clubs and with nothing in particular to do one night after dinner, we decided to check one out.
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‘Press the Gray Buzzer. Don’t Mention Poker to Anyone’
I started our journey by clicking links on a couple of the ads. They promised “low fees” and “hot action.”
For one of the clubs, I filled out an online form explaining who I was and what stakes I wished to play. Then, I texted a New York area code the word “club.”
That club was affiliated with “Social Poker NYC.” They requested a LinkedIn account or other business page to verify my identity. I sent them to a page corroborating the initial info I’d provided.
A different club requested a photo of a picture ID with personal details blocked out, and asked me to text it to a number with a North Carolina area code. I complied with the request.
The Social Poker NYC game was the first to get back to me, saying they had three tables of $1-$3 No-Limit Hold’em running in Midtown Manhattan and that we were welcome any time. They sent an address with instructions.
“Press the gray buzzer,” it read. “Please don’t mention poker to anyone and wait inside the elevator for us to bring you up.”
The North Carolina number texted me two options. One was an address very close to the Social Poker NYC game in Manhattan. A quick Google Maps check tells me it was likely “Fish Tank NYC Poker.” A photo of a nondescript gray door instructed me on which buzzer to press to gain entry.
“$1-$3 Hold’em running in Midtown and Chinatown.”
I asked if they had any Pot-Limit Omaha. They said they had a $2-$2 game in Astoria, a neighborhood in Queens. I received instructions for entry, along with a different contact number (New York area code this time).
Since we were already in Manhattan without a car, we decided to check out the closer options. We headed to Social Poker NYC on foot.
Poker, Pizza, and Strange Staddles in Manhattan
We followed the instructions for entry to Social Poker NYC, waiting for the elevator after they’d buzzed us in. When we exited on the sixth floor, we were met by a barebones landing area, an empty hall with one gray door (“Rounders”-style) and a camera. A hulking security guard let us in.
Only two tables were running, and both were full. The game runner welcomed us and told us we were the first two on the list. In the meantime, we enjoyed a game of “NBA Jam” on an arcade cabinet in the waiting area — I lost. A couple of black leather couches and a chessboard took up most of the space there, along with the security guard’s desk-and-monitors setup.
About 30 minutes later, two seats opened at the same table. I bought $300 worth of chips, and my buddy bought $500.
A waitress, who seemed to double as the massage lady, offered us pizza — regular or grandma-style. A couple of our table-mates were partaking, and it looked pretty good, but we had just eaten.
We took our seats, several spots apart in the nine-handed setup. The table was on the cheaper side, but the dealer was professional, and the cards and chips were casino-quality. The game featured one of the strangest straddle mechanics I’ve ever seen.
It had a “rock” — poker slang for an automatic straddle posted by the winner of the last pot. In fact, some enterprising soul had brought an actual $10 Aria chip encased in small glass disc, just as one would find in the Aria rock games in Las Vegas.
The odd thing about this particular rock setup was that once a player won the pot, the rock only went into play if the player was under the gun or on the button. Otherwise, it sat dormant until such time. Non-mandatory straddles were allowed as well, but I can’t say I’ve ever seen a game where the rock waited until a player was in a traditional straddling position.
New York Poker Clubs Have Insane Action…
In any case, the cards began flying, and I soon realized that the ads touting hot action were underselling the situation. The game was exceptionally loose, and players were getting to showdown with some wild hands.
In one hand, for instance, another newly-seated player called a large early open despite buying in with only around $100. Someone in the blinds three-bet, the opener folded, and the cold-caller wound up getting it in with K-6 suited, cracking the other guy’s A-K.
Later on, my friend lost a monster hand where he three-bet huge preflop from the blinds against a younger player’s early open and several calls. The opener called and then went all-in when my friend made a continuation bet twice the size of the pot on a K-J-T flop.
“You’re good,” he lamented, when my friend snap-called with A-K.
My friend said he only had one pair, and his opponent perked up immediately when another J fell, saying he had trips. He showed J-5 suited and raked in a pot worth around $1,200.
The K-6 guy stacked me once in a straddled pot. He called an early $30 open from the younger kid, and I just jammed about $230 in with 6-6 from the cutoff. Mr. Suited Huge Gapper called me with Q-4 suited after the other guy folded, and he flopped queens up.
Sounds like an awesome game, right? Well, before you start checking flights to New York, I have some bad news. Though stocked with some of the worst players I’ve ever seen in real-money poker, these games are probably not beatable.
…But Exceptionally High Rake
I burned through my other buy-in playing a Double-Board Pot-Limit Omaha bomb pot on the dealer change. Three players — me, my friend, and the younger guy — got to the turn.
The dealer had already siphoned off $20 for the rake.
“Wow, $20 rake, huh?” my friend said.
“It’s $30 max,” the dealer replied.
Low fees, they are not. In fact, $30 is double what the social media ads had proclaimed, based on my memory.
My friend didn’t hold back his laugh, and the rake indeed hit the cap as we all got the rest of the dough in. I held top set on one board, though a possible straight was present, and top pair with the nut diamond draw on the other. I whiffed both rivers. My friend’s straight held up against my set, while the other player hit a backdoor club draw as my diamonds bricked out.
Having busted out twice, I was ready to call it a session. My friend texted me he would pick up after another orbit. That’s when things got awkward.
Held Hostage in a Manhattan Poker Game
We had only been playing for around an hour and hadn’t planned to play a long session anyway. When my friend moved to pick up, the game runner accused us of “hitting and running.”
My friend had run very hot at the start of the session, picking up several big pairs. Unsurprisingly, he got paid off every time and was up $300 or so.
On the other hand, I had lost $600. My friend rightfully pointed out that between us, we were net negative in the game. Apparently, that wasn’t good enough for the game runner, who demanded he play another 30 minutes.
Um, OK. Holding players hostage wouldn’t be my preferred method of running an illegal, raked poker game in the middle of a busy city bustling with police. At the same time, just playing out a couple of orbits seemed to be the path of least resistance, and I wasn’t in a hurry to get anywhere.
This happened before the aforementioned J-5 hand. That bad beat seemed to satisfy the game runner’s thirst for more of our money. At that point, we were allowed to leave, with my friend a small loser and me a larger one.
As we debriefed on the walk to our subway station, my friend opined that despite the rake, the games might be beatable.
The key factor, he noted, was that the $30 rake only represented three big blinds in the straddled pots. Combined with the exceptionally low level of play, a very tight player (playing even tighter in the non-straddled pots) might be able to overcome it.
Regulated Poker Can’t Come to NYC Soon Enough
Even so, it’s tough for me to recommend seeking out action in a place that features mammoth rake and shady game runners willing to intimidate players into staying longer than they’d planned to. Who knows how they’d have responded if we insisted on leaving, but it wasn’t really worth finding out.
Where does that leave poker in New York City?
Well, New York gambling is about to change in a big way. By December, licenses for new downstate casinos should have been awarded. Four finalists for the licenses have been whittled down to three, after MGM shockingly withdrew its bid despite being considered almost a cinch to win one of the licenses. Conveniently, that leaves three licenses and three applicants.
At this point, we’re very likely to see Bally’s (the Bronx), Hard Rock Metropolitan (Queens), and Resorts World NYC (Queens) get the licenses.
Will any of them open poker rooms? It’s tough to say. I’m at least a little bit optimistic about the Queens properties. Hard Rock and Resorts World operate some excellent poker rooms in various other U.S. cities. Bally’s less so, and it’s a bit farther away from lower Manhattan and Brooklyn, where many tourists stay. A Hard Rock poker room near Citi Field would seem the best bet for a thriving New York poker scene, given its location.
The void of legal poker options in New York has opened the way for these shady semi-underground rooms to thrive. Hopefully, one or more of these casinos will step up and render them obsolete.
Until then, I can’t recommend visiting these New York poker rooms. There is perhaps no other city on the planet that offers more things for tourists to do and see than New York, and the underground poker scene doesn’t deserve your money.
Photo courtesy of PokerScout Managing Editor Alex Weldon (personal work)
