Just about every cardroom in the Bay Area has two separate gaming sections. The first is the poker side, which is what most people typically picture when they think “poker room.” That’s where you’ll find all of the Texas Hold’em tables and sometimes one or two tables of Omaha Hi-Lo and Seven-Card Stud. The stakes are varied so that both experienced players and newcomers can usually find a table where they are comfortable. For poker players like myself, it’s the only part of the cardroom that really matters.
The other gaming section contains what are commonly called the “Asian Games.” Among those games are Pai Gow Tiles, which is Chinese in origin, but other games include Double Hand, Three-Card Poker, and variations of Blackjack, none of which are attributable to any particular ethnicity. So to some degree, referring to those tables collectively as the “Asian” side of the room is a misnomer, even though it’s a very common practice. Instead, I’ll refer to them as the “non-poker” games.
So what do all of those games have in common? Very simply, you are playing your hand against the dealer’s, or against a player who is “banking” and thereby assuming the role of dealer. If your hand beats his, you will win, and if not, you will lose. If there are other players at the table, their hands are essentially irrelevant for your purposes. That’s extremely different from a game like Texas Hold’em, where there are up to ten players at the table and you have to beat everyone in order to win the pot.
Anyone can walk in off the street and learn any of the non-poker games relatively easily, with the exception of Tiles, which might take a little longer. If you think you might find them appealing, you should certainly go in and take a shot. It might be intimidating at first, but that’s usually the case with anything that you are trying for the first time.
I purposely chose this point in time to distinguish between the poker side and the non-poker side of Bay Area cardrooms. There are some shake-ups happening as we speak that may affect the long-term local poker scene. I won’t speak on it any further until I have more information, but my guess is that the distinction between poker and non-poker games will be extremely important when discussing the future of the Bay Area poker scene.
