Ever wonder what the poker scene in Los Angeles was like before Black Friday, the housing crisis, or even the Moneymaker boom? Well, David Leroy, Tournament Staff at Commerce Casino, can provide you with a glimpse into that very timeline by sharing some first-hand experiences during his poker-centric life in LA, which began, as most do, at a cash-game table.
“I first started playing cash here at the Commerce, actually, in the early 2000s. I had a buddy who brought me in,” Leroy recounted. “I started playing $9/$18, moved up to $20/$40, and then $40/$80.”
Your eyes might be widening at the thought of casually climbing up those seemingly high-roller stakes, but let Leroy explain... "I was a limit player.”
Simpler times
In the years before the online poker craze and Chris Moneymaker’s iconic tournament run in 2003, live poker dynamics were much simpler. No-limit Texas hold’em was not the staple, almost mandatory, game type as we know it today. It was limit hold’em that dominated the cash-game tables. And the player pool was quite different as well.
“Back in those days, the limit hold’em people were giving away their money. All you had to do was play A-B-C [poker],” said Leroy. “You know, you just sat there and waited for your premium hands. There wasn’t a whole lot of thought about the other player. The other players didn’t ever think about what your holdings were; they only thought about their holdings, so the games were very, very soft.”
A-B-C poker could be seen as the early 2000s version of Game Theory Optimal (GTO) strategy. Leroy employed this strategy to a tee, exploiting the common limit hold’em players of that time period, who would now be categorized as calling stations.
“They would call you down with bottom pair, you know,” Leroy mentioned. “If you had top pair, decent kicker, all you had to do was bet, and you’re getting two and three callers the whole way. And you kind of got a feel for when you got outdrawn,” he continued. “Back then, you didn’t have to [strategically] value bet. You just value bet because you’re going to get two or three callers.”
The sun run
Even with a solid strategy, variance cannot be eliminated from the game. However, sometimes the variance is on your side, and Leroy found this to be true during an epic string of cash-game sessions around 2002-03. A massive influx of good luck, mixed with his optimal A-B-C poker and an added dash of prudence, combined to create a perfect storm for a sun run.
“This was the craziest heater I’ve ever been on,” Leroy began. “I just remember it was 31 [profitable] sessions in a row playing $20/$40 or $40/$80. Some days I would just walk in, win a rack, quit, come back later, win $500 or $1,000, and then leave… It was unbelievable,” he continued. “Any pocket pair during that time, I would flop a set. If I had deuces and I didn’t flop a deuce, I said, ‘What happened?’ I would flop or turn a set almost non-stop."
Leroy’s cash-game prowess did translate to tournaments as well, although he did not delve into the tournament poker scene as much. Between 2004 and 2005, the LA County resident recorded five final-table finishes and his career-best score of $17,641, according to The Hendon Mob.
As the years went on, no-limit hold’em became the new sensation, and limit hold’em took a back seat, way in the back. Not only was there a fundamental change in game type, but also a big change in the player pool that Leroy explicitly remembers, one that was tied to a major financial shift in the United States around 2007/08.
“After the housing crisis, the action players went broke, and the other players got better, and they got better, and then the games became much tougher,” said Leroy. “Now people were check-raising you with middle pair when they thought you had nothing. There was a lot more thinking. They’d look at your style of play and what your position was. You know, they’d play back at you. In the earlier days, you never got played back. Not the deep thought that there is now. The games are so much tougher now than they were back then.”
Learning the ropes
With such a big adjustment in the world of poker, Leroy turned his sights to a slightly different path. He reminisced about his first introduction to managing a poker room: “After I played for a while, I had a friend of a friend who introduced me to a casino manager at Club Caribe. It was a little 10-15 table card club over in Cudahy near The Bike. We did pre-buy-in with $10 multi-re-buys with a $2,000 guarantee, and we would just get all the low rollers, and it was great!”
Leroy learned the ropes at Club Caribe, which permanently closed down in 2009. Both he and the Club Caribe casino manager eventually moved over to Hustler Casino, where Leroy grew more as a poker management professional.
From there, Leroy got a job at The Bicycle Hotel & Casino (commonly known as The Bike) working under the tutelage of Mo Fathipour. Fathipour is the longstanding tournament director at The Bike, with loads of experience when it comes to putting on poker series.
“I moved over to The Bike, where I worked for Mo,” Leroy stated. “I thought I knew everything, and then once I got over there, I realized I didn’t know anything. Mo taught me a lot.”
“Then I transitioned over here to Commerce, and I want to stay here,” he said. “I want to retire here. You know exactly what to expect here at The Commerce. There’s always action, and there are always games. Everything is done professionally. They take care of their employees.”
