From: brett@oce.orst.edu (Brett Barksdale)
Subject: Re: Trip Report, La Center, Washington
Organization: Oregon State University, College of Oceanography
Date: Tue, 6 Oct 1992 18:04:46 GMT


As a local Oregonian who spends a fair amount of time in La Center playing
Hold 'em, I figured I'd comment a bit on this trip report.

In article <1992Oct4.214829.28972@RedBrick.COM> jfr@RedBrick.COM writes:

>This place is a throwback to my remembrances of Nogales, Arizona.  It
>is a little town (you'll miss it if you blink) about two miles off of
>I-5 with five card rooms, two restaurants and three gas stations.
>Not much else.

 True enough.

>The Last Fronteir and the New Phoenix are the ritzier of the casinos, each
>with about five tables (round tables, no dealer, players deal all cards).
>The Phoenix offered player blackjack and low-limit hold-em ($1-3) while
>the Last Frontier had moderate limit hold-em ($3-6 and $3-5-5-7).  Neither

 $3-4-5-7 actually. They also occassionaly have a $5-5-5-10 game going as well.

>of these places had any open tables.  The Golden Dragon across the street
>(er alley is a better word), had Omaha/Tahoe dealer's choice at $.50-$2 
>and $3-6.  We played for about 2 hours there, my buddy winning $135 at
>the low limit Omaha game and I dropped $20.  Most of the players are not
>too skilled but play reasonably instinctively.  Tahoe is like hold-em but
>you get three cards instead of 2 and can play 0, 1 or 2 from your hand
>but not all three (as opposed to Omaha where you must play 2 from your
>hand exactly).  Omaha deals 4 or 5 cards, dealer's choice, when the game
>is short-handed.  5 cards makes it a wild game (10 starter pairs for
>each player...)  
>
>These card rooms are seedy and the players (locals) are pretty much farmer 
>or rancher types.  No one was too serious about the game.  

 Don't believe everything you see. While it's certainly possible (but rare) to
catch a table like this, most of the players come from the Portland/Vancouver
area and are not "rancher/farmer" types, whatever that means.

>There was some cheating.  One guy managed to dump his stack into the pot
>when he started to divide it and screwed my partner out of about $5 on
>the split.   This is a bad problem with player-dealt games, IMHO.  

 There are not a lot of problems with cheating in these games. Some incompetence
in the low-limit games, perhaps, but very little out-and-out cheating. You were
either mistaken or very unfortunate to run across such a situation.

>Playing fees are $1.50 a half-hour.  

 Pretty cheap compared to what I hear prices are in the aforementioned CA card
rooms.

>A good diversion, but not much as a great place to go for poker.

 Hmm. I beg to disagree. Cheap playing fees and LOTS of loose, passive players makes
for some of the best (read: profitable) low-limit games to be in. Especially nice is
the 0.50 - $2.00 Hold'em game at Poncho's. You can play semi-tight with your starting
hands for only $0.50 a pop and be assured of $2.00/bet action after the flop when
you hit something. It's probably the best starter hold'em game I've ever heard about.

Also, if you are very much into poker tournaments instead of standard ring games,
La Center offers dozens during any given week with Timmen's Card Room running a
large ($200 buy-in, $50,000 prize pool) tourny every 2 or months.

It's true the decor is not what it could be, but I go there to play cards and nothing
else, so it doesn't bother me.

-- 
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                     "Just waiting for the nuts..."
             Brett Barksdale        brett@porky.oce.orst.edu
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