I received more notes and follow up questions from my piece in Poker Player Magazine on "Getting Kicked Out" than from any article I've ever written for any publication. It convinced me to write an article on the many factors I use as a poker consumer to evaluate a poker room. We poker players spend a lot of money for the services offered by a poker room. We deserve to understand how much we're paying and what we're getting for our poker dollar.

Have you ever thought about how much money you have paid to card rooms for the privilege of playing poker? I'm not talking about how much money you may have lost - just the price for using their facilities. I did some calculations and they amazed me.

I keep a log of all of my poker play. During the past twelve months I played for roughly 300 hours in public poker rooms. This does not count my on line play of play in private "home games". This doesn't count the time it took me to get to the games - just the time actually playing at a public card table. Though I played in dozens of casinos and poker clubs, with many different structures for rakes and time charges, for the vast majority of my time I played in games with a rake of 10% of the pot with a $4.00 maximum or a time charge of $5 to $7 a half hour per player. That averaged out to about $10 per hour of play or roughly $3,000 for my one year of poker play. With tips of $1/hand and an average of four hands an hour, I paid a total of $4,200 to the card room and the dealers.

For a high roller, that may be a small sum. But for me, and for most typical poker players, the impact on our bottom line is potentially enormous. If you're a $5/10 player who has managed to gain a one bet an hour advantage over your opponents, this house charge would mean that at the end of a full year of your winning play you'd be down $1,200 after the rake! Multiply that times a poker playing career of fifty years or so and you have a very expensive hobby indeed.

Most of us probably play in a room out of habit or convenience. Some of us go based on the games that are spread - or have no choice between or among rooms because there's only one public poker room that we can get to. Others may only play in live games when traveling to gambling destinations, having no rooms in their immediate area. All of us, however, could elect to play on the Internet instead of in card rooms or in private games with friends or acquaintances where there is no rake.

There are advantages to playing in a public card room, to be sure. First of all, you don't have to work at getting a game together. There are house dealers. There are often many conveniences like food and beverage service and servers to attend to your needs. You can arrive when you want and leave when you want. You're not taking or losing money to people who know you, for the most part, so you don't have to worry about what people will say if you win or lose too much. And you're always assured of getting paid if you win.

As consumers of this expensive and useful service, we should be aware of how much we're paying and what we're getting for our money. In Part II of this series I'll explain some items for you to consider when evaluating a room. Everything isn't money of course, as you'll see. But you should have a strong handle on the actual cost of playing when you're evaluating the best place for your business.