Best city to play poker? [closed]

Question

In terms of availability of different types of poker games, and in terms of the quality of those poker games (i.e., a lot of action, with the occasional fish and donk to spice things up), and in terms of the quality of life in that particular city as well, what is the best city in the world to live in as a professional live poker player?

Most people say Las Vegas, but I think that city fails terribly on the last mark. It has almost no real city culture, it's small, it's in the desert, and the people are often highly pretentious. The quality of life is already so-so when you grind poker for hours on end, so when I am finally off, I want to be in a real city with real people.

Answer 1

The best city for the professional poker player is the one you make the best. I know that sounds stupid and that the answer your looking for contrasts the commercial casino cities, however casino cities are not the best place to make a living playing poker. Overhead is high with rakes, and typically high living costs and all those other diversions in the casino. Plus in the casino centers you find a lot of professional poker players, that are tough to beat, and the dreaded iron ass locals while not so tough to beat, just don't give up a lot.

Private Social Poker games are the best way to make a living. The downside is they can be tough to find and often tough to get a seat at. The upside is that they have very soft players, very few pros and the overhead with rake and such can be very low. Rumor is that Gabe Kaplan has made millions playing social poker, more then the vast majority of name brand players. He had his special in and connections. But all over the world there are high limits being played in private non commercial venues, like country clubs, fraternal organizations like Elk and Moose Lodges and private homes. It is a lot of work to learn your way around and to be safe. But if you can pull it off and find a seat in something like the Judges game depicted in Rounder's, you can make a lot of money.

Answer 2

Obviously subjective as @Grinch91 mentioned. However: I would say that Melbourne, Australia is certainly up there. Crown Casino (Host of the Aussie Millions) offers 24/7 action 7 days per week and is always profitable if you are smart about it. I am certainly no professional but I profit at Crown Casino fairly consistently in the lower stakes. It has a good amount of casual players and fish are not hard to come by. The action is constant all the way up to higher stakes. Though obviously not the huge amounts of tables in the higher stakes that you would find in Vegas.

As far as quality of life, well Melbourne has been voted the World's Most Livable City for seven years in a row now Reference! Without going on too much of a tangent is is affordable with ever-growing bars, clubs, sporting events, tonnes of beaches, a short drive to snowy mountain ranges or inland to the Australian outback... and great poker!

There is also an extremely active 'Pub Poker' scene with leagues such as 888PL (currently merging with APL ) where you can either play freeroll or buy-in tournaments and climb the state ladder, win your way into larger tournaments, state championships and even the Aussie Millions.!

Hope this helps...

Answer 3

Doesn't really matter where you are, if the locals can count and have a deck of cards and some $ there is always a game worth playing in. I found one little poker club with two people sitting at the table with $100 in chips and before the night was out there was over $200k on the table and the house chips had to be swapped out for the tournament chips.