Well I did it. New Panhandle Texas poker club opening in September (1 Viewer)

[TX_Golf_N_Poker]

Not fact checked so fwiw: I’ve actually read somewhere that the fastest growing age group on Facebook is 80+

Wouldn't surprise me. I tried to get my mother online in her 80s, with no luck. But that was over 10 years ago. But today, most people, even in their 80s have been fully exposed to the internet, and they want to get on to stay connected to their younger family members. It's the best way to keep up with their kids and grandkids, especially those who live out of town.

 

[Anthony Martino]

I kept coming back to Pampa Texas. Small 20,000 person town that's growing quickly, clean, and lots of FULL hotels currently for all of the energy related fields doing work in the area. There's no card house within 60 miles. There are 2 in Amarillo within 2 miles of each other. While I don't hope to pull Amarillo customers, if I can keep Pampa people here while drawing Borger, Dumas, & Canadian customers we hope to make a go of it. I have 6 tables but plan to open even smaller with 4. We may be able to bring out extras on tournament days if need be. I have many friends who work as Traveling dealers / floors on the WSOP / wpt circuits and some of them will be coming with me to help get the place open.

Just took a quick look at the area and looks like it's pretty sparsely populated in your market. Amarillo is an hour away and already has established players. The three other towns you mention are all 30-50 minutes or so from you as well, and your local county has a population of roughly the size of the small city I grew up in back in Massachusetts (we had around 22K residents)

If you do have workers who are staying in hotels and working out there, for sure that blue collar market is one to target. Have you reached out to any hotels? Usually many of them will have a "things to do in the area" booklet or an area where businesses can put pamphlets to advertise local businesses and activities.

If that's an option you could definitely get some of those put in there, maybe with a coupon for a free daily membership and your first hour of play free or something to get some more folks in the door.

Not sure how long those workers stay in the area though, can be hard relying on so many traveling people, but the area looks like there's probably not a ton for them to do so you could definitely fill their entertainment needs.

It looks like you have some major dealerships in the town, maybe you can put together a car dealership throwdown where you invite the staff from McGavock Chevy/GMC, Parkway Ford, Parkway CDRJ, Country Toyota to compete in a tournament and provide them with some free memberships and an initial entry into the tournament (with optional rebuys if they bust) just to get them in the door. Car sales and finance guys usually love to gamble and shit talk, so can be a good crowd to get into the mix. Have a trophy and bragging rights, maybe make it a seasonal thing so they can keep coming back to compete for their dealership to be ranked #1 for that period and get some free promotion in your room?

Try to partner with some local restaurants that deliver and tie them in with specific nights of the week (on Wednesdays enjoy food from Fire Creek Bar & Grill, Thursdays is Verona Italian Bistro, Friday is La Casa Tex Mex, etc) and maybe you can get into a cross promotion where their business promotes your room and you promote them, etc.

Some sort of partnership with a local liquor store to be the primary supplier of your room and they cross promote as well.

I dunno, just spit-balling. It's tough with such a small population to depend on, but given you have no competition for 60 miles and there likely isn't a ton of entertainment in a small town, you still have opportunities to stand out and make a splash.

No reason you can't get more than 1 table/night. Maybe setup a beginners day each week where people can come in, play some smaller learning stakes (or a low buyin tournament) and learn terminology, etiquette, etc.

 

[JThomas7]

Just a little 3 month'ish update. We're making it. We are what we are but it's working. We're a steady game a night room with a couple of tables on tournaments. We've had more than 1 game a few times but for most part we are what we are. #'s have picked up slowly but steadily in November after October was much lower than September. The Amarillo guys have found out about our Big O games, they've started coming over and it's really helped. Not so much in getting an extra table but we're getting more hours in per day. My dealers are making good money and happy.

We're doing OK financially. If my wife (a 20 year table game manager / poker room manager / dealer etc.) was over here making the dealing money as well I would have no worries in life. I'm leaning really hard into opening another location..... Like I said "we're making it" But I'm 250 miles from home. We're a 4 night a week room in a tiny town. I think if I try to go to 7 nights a week here I'm just going to ruin a good thing and spread my players too thin. Pampa was always a proof of concept in my mind with plans to open other rooms if it worked. I'm considering opening a room in Amarillo and just competing with the clubs there. I've also considered towns closer to the Oklahoma Boarder. A town that keeps popping up is Vernon. I'd be pretty close to the Altus Air force base, far enough to where I'm not drawing away my own customers from pampa etc. My startup costs would be low, I have extra tables, chairs, etc.

 

[Isorg]

Thanks for the update!! Glad to hear you got it working.

 

[warma]

With a lot of uncertainty in the economy, I might advise you really think about high capital cost expansions right now. I keep hearing good folks who launched a successful small business, expanded last year, and are now facing some real financial headwinds. I’m not sure if poker fits in the discretionary spending that get cut category, or the escapism category that remains category. Just want you to succeed in your goals, is all.

 

[Anthony Martino]

Just a little 3 month'ish update. We're making it. We are what we are but it's working. We're a steady game a night room with a couple of tables on tournaments. We've had more than 1 game a few times but for most part we are what we are. #'s have picked up slowly but steadily in November after October was much lower than September. The Amarillo guys have found out about our Big O games, they've started coming over and it's really helped. Not so much in getting an extra table but we're getting more hours in per day. My dealers are making good money and happy.

We're doing OK financially. If my wife (a 20 year table game manager / poker room manager / dealer etc.) was over here making the dealing money as well I would have no worries in life. I'm leaning really hard into opening another location..... Like I said "we're making it" But I'm 250 miles from home. We're a 4 night a week room in a tiny town. I think if I try to go to 7 nights a week here I'm just going to ruin a good thing and spread my players too thin. Pampa was always a proof of concept in my mind with plans to open other rooms if it worked. I'm considering opening a room in Amarillo and just competing with the clubs there. I've also considered towns closer to the Oklahoma Boarder. A town that keeps popping up is Vernon. I'd be pretty close to the Altus Air force base, far enough to where I'm not drawing away my own customers from pampa etc. My startup costs would be low, I have extra tables, chairs, etc.

No options to open something closer to home?

 

[JThomas7]

We definitely slowed down in December, even went our first day without a game. Something I hoped to never see. I drove over to Amarillo when we didn't get a game and found a room with no game as well. In a town 15x our size. I think a december slow down was to be expected and overall I'm still happy. My big project the last month has been trying to develop an app that fits our needs. Think "Poker atlas lite" I just can't pay them what they want to manage 1 or 2 cash tables a night. I'm not quite done. I'm using AI help and it messes the graphics stuff up every time. If I tell it to fix it it just breaks something else. I also need to build a function to over ride table clock in / out in case the dealer forgets to clock a player in or out of the game. Right now we sell $5 time tokens and collect them every half hour. This slows down the game, gives the player a constant reminder they are paying time etc. I'm also having problems where I made a super player friendly bulk rate of 20 time chips for $80. 2 or 3 players buy time then sell them all night player to player for $5. Minor issue but it's happening. $1 doesn't seem like much but it's 20%. We will go to $10 flat rate and allow players to "go in to the hole" once the app gets finished and published. I admit poker atlas does EVERYTHING better. But this doesn't cost me 20k to implement and $1600 a month.

 

[SALB]

Congrats and good luck on the new venture! Excited to see the finished tables.

 

[JThomas7]

Haven't updated in a while but just been busy with life. When February came around things started picking up for us. We have a steady 2nd game a few nights a week now. The biggest change is subtle. We've started getting players trickle in as the night goes on which has been a big deal. When we first opened we kind of had what we had when the game started. when we lost a few the game just got short and eventually died.

They just started on a massive data center project here that is temporarily increasing the towns population by almost 20 percent for the next 3-4 years. About 10 percent of those workers are already in town working on the concrete, dirt work and underground. We've seen some of these guys starting to trickle in as well. The "bulk" of the workers are supposed to be here around June / July. We're pretty excited for that as there's not a whole lot else to do here.